Replace Superdrive with internal 160GB ATA HDD

Hello,
I want to rescue some files from some old hard drives I used on my MDD G4. The hard drive in question is a maxtor 160GB ATA/133 HDD. If I recall correctly, I will not be able to connect this as a second hard drive in the G5 without buying a converter. Is it possible to swap out the superdrive and put in my HDD as a temporary way to pull the files off? Has anyone done this?
Thanks

I've not done this, but technically it should be possible if the master/slave jumper setting of the hard drive matches that of the optical drive. The setting should be on the sticky label on the outside of the drive. You'll also need the mounting bracket to hold the drive in place. It may not be the same size at the optical drive's mounting bracket. Easier would be to get a Firewire external hard drive case from http://www.macsales.com/ that supports Parallel ATA.

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I have a Macbook Pro 15 Late 2011, can i replace the superdrive with an data 3 hdd or does it only work with sata2?

I was wondering if the superdrive can be replace with an sata 3 hdd or whether it should be a sata2 hdd.
I´ve heard of problems with sata 3 ssd´s as superdrive replacement.
thx

thank you, but the hdd that i was thinking about comes with an 6Gb/s interface...
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/79BA810F702AD64E88257977006375D8/$ file/TS5K1000_ds.pdf
do you think i could use this model in the optibay ?

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I have an older Mac (Mid-2007) and I wanted to change the pre-installed Superdrive with this Blu-Ray internal rewriter, http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Arrival-100-Original-Slot-Load-BD-DVD-Rewrite r-UJ-225-PATA-Blu-ray-disk-Burner/168556
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To my knowledge Apple Mac OS X does not support Bluray at all. There may be an aftermarket program you could use but I'm not sure.
Also I doubt you will find a BR drive that will fit inside the space allotted for the Superdrive.

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At first it seems that my Mac was overall slow but it seems that it was just getting a bit too hot - when I opened Mac and at same time gave things a clean, I made the fan less efficient and more noisy - its OK now. Still seem to be getting hotter than I remember but it is now summer and my apartment is pretty warm.
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I am hving the same issue.
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Is it possible to take out the superdrive and somehow mount a laptop drive in it's place or a low power 3.5" drive? I see that MCE has an "optibay" for laptops who would like to replace their superdrives. I'm just wondering if it's possible to use this on an iMac as well or somehow figure out a way to mount it?
http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

Hello
This topic should really be in the +*Expanding your Intel-based iMac*+ forum.
Are you wanting to exchange the superdrive of your new 27" iMac for a 3.5" HD? In which case the answer is yes, but remember that it voids your guarantee, as the only user upgradeable part is the memory. You would be much better off adding a large fast external FW800 drive, at least while in guarantee.
If you did decide to upgrade anyway there are links available on how to open up and change a hard drive. But I would look more carefully at mcetech.com as their web page seems to be way outdated. They are offering to sell OS X v10.5.1(Leopard) and the iMac memory upgrades they offer are of 667MHz DDR2 PC2-5300, while the new iMac's use the much faster 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM.
Adam

MacPro 5,1 - 6 Hard Drives (with internal Superdrive)

I'm throwing this out there because I searched for a long time for an EASY way to set up 6 hard drives in the MacPro case. This is how I did it. I'll throw some comments in at the end for anyone interested and also what I would have liked to have done differently. (there aren't any pictures, but I'll put up links to what I used)
Parts List:
2.5 inch Sata II hard drive - Western Digital 160GB (Scorpio Black)
3.5 inch Sata II hard drive - Western Digital 2 TB (Caviar Black)
Optical Bay Mount - OWC Multi Mount - http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MM352A52MP9/
Sata II Internal RAID PCIe Card - Vantec - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QY7M9I/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00
Sata power splitter - StarTech - http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-PYO2SATA-Power-Splitter-Adapter/dp/B002N2EHVQ
7pin Sata data extension cable - http://www.ebay.com/itm/120999365424?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m143 9.l2649
1m 7pin Sata female to female cable - http://www.ebay.com/itm/221046259401?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m143 9.l2649
Setup:
1. Pull your optical bay sled and install your two drives using your chosen mount.
2. Install your PCIe RAID card with internal Sata II ports.
3. Remove the power supply cable cover (I think that's what it's called; it's the plate immediately behind the optical bay sled, comes out with two screws)
4. If you have a hard drive installed in Bay 1, remove it from the case and out of your way.
5. Run your 1m Sata data female to female cable from your RAID card, under the top-most portion of your PCIe fan (do not remove the fan), and follow the bundled cables up through the divider, and in front of the optical bay doors.
6. Replace the power supply cable cover, being careful to route the Sata cable along with the other cables, and re-secure cover.
7. Connect Sata data splitter to Mac lower Sata connector. You will have to do minor fabrication to the splitter to allow it to fit.
8. Connect the 7pin Sata data extension cable to Mac lower Sata connector. You will have to do more minor fabrication to the splitter to allow it to fit.
9. Carefully replace your optical bay sled and begin connecting cables. You should connect your superdrive to the Mac upper Sata connector first. You should then connect the power splitter to both drives. Then connect your Sata data cables to both drives. You may have to adjust the position of the optical bay sled to adequately connect all cables.
10. Replace anything you removed (like your Bay 1 hard drive), and close up your tower.
11. If needed, install drivers for your PCIe card.
12. That's it, you're done. Take note that if your RAID card does not have boot capability, you will only get boot functionality out of the drive that you connected using the data extension cable. The drive you connected to the RAID card will only have boot capability if your card supports it.
My present computer:
MacPro 5,1 - Quad core Xeon 2.8GHz
Hard drive 1, 2 - 64GB Striped RAID for Scratch Disk
Hard drive 1, 2 - 900GB Unused (trying to convert at least half to a Windows XP drive, but that's another issue)
Hard drive 3, 4 - 2TB Striped RAID for Main Data
Hard drive lower - 160GB 2.5 inch Boot Drive
Hard drive external (PCIe) - 2TB Time Machine
Not including hard drives, we're talking about $60. I wasn't sure if this combination of items was going to work out, so I wanted to keep the dollar total low.
In retrospect, if I'm being totally honest, I should have just done what everyone said and used an external drive for time machine (or whatever 6th hard drive I wanted). Here's why: My RAID card doesn't have boot functionality, which I didn't think would matter. I planned on using the drive connected to the RAID card for my Time Machine. Everything works great, except I can't boot from my homemade OSX USB recovery drive and use Time Machine for a restore. This is because the RAID card drivers aren't on it. I could probably make a workaround, but I will just use my external clone if I ever need to do a full restore. Had I used an external FireWire 800 enclosure in the first place, I wouldn't have had to worry about it.
Notes about cables:
Don't buy the cheapest ones you can find on eBay. After fabricating my data extension cable, the L-shaped portion that the connectors lay on broke off inside my Mac's connector. I threaded the connectors back in, but for now, the two are married with electrical tape. Not very pretty, and a big reason why I didn't take the system apart to make pictures for the guide.
Know what lengths you need. I kind of guessed about lengths. The data extension cable should preferably be the same length as the power splitter. Unfortunately my power splitter was a little long, and my data extension cable was a little short. This created the need to bend them excessively so that I could cram them into the little space that was left. This caused my above issue in which one of the connectors broke.
OWC MultiMount:
This is what started my quest in the first place. This product existed, so clearly there must be an answer for how to do it. You can fit two drives in the lower bay, so you should do it, right? I love OWC, but this mount is pretty junky. It works, but it's not OEM styled. The material they use (which they say is aluminum) is very flimsy. I had to bend it back into position in several places to make the brackets line up. There's no sound from the bracket while the machine is running, which is good. But I was surprised at how seemingly low quality this mount was. I would have been much happier with a machined aluminum mount with rubber grommets like the stock hard drive sleds.
A word about which mount you get: You will be much happier if you mount 2 2.5-inch drives in the lower bay (at least in a vertical configuration). You'll have more space to work with, and other than price, there's no reason to stick a 3.5-inch drive in there (unless you're cheap like me).
When all is said and done, I'm happy that I got 6 Hard drives crammed into my case. I'll never (hopefully) outgrow my system. I have 2TB of data storage (which I doubt I'll surpass). I've got a boot disk that's plenty large, I've got a scratch disk that's super fast, and I've even got some additional high-speed hard drive space I'll hopefully get a Windows partition onto. The better option though, would be to put one hard drive in that bay. Skip all the add-ons, and get an external FireWire 800 enclosure. Dedicate one port on the rear of the tower to it, and stash it out of sight. It's exactly the same but easier to remove.
Feel free to ask any questions. I'll do my best to answer them.

Have you checked this site? They are out of stock at the moment, but more should arrive soon:
http://store.apple.com/au/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

Any method to use a Samsung 160GB IDE HDD to replace original 60GB HDD in zt3030AP Notebook

Hi,
Anyone know if BIOS version F.55 supports HDD > 137GB?
I want to use Samsung 160GB IDE HDD to replace the original 60GB HDD that has bad sectors?
Any method like BIOS upgrade or must find a 120GB HDD?
Many thanks,
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I jus bought a brand new macbook pro 13" entry level
If I Replace my SuperDrive with a Hard Drive or Solid State Drive. Will it void my warranty?
Or is it possible to change it as I`ve said and put the extra hdd in the optical drive if its done somewere like bestbuy?

LowLuster, greetings:
LowLuster wrote:
It will void your warranty if Apple finds out that you have made this modification. But if you ever have a need to use the Apple warranty you should put the optical drive back in before taking it to an Apple store for the warranty work.
This is contrary to the terms of use:
8. Keep within the Law
1. No material may be submitted that is intended to promote or commit an illegal act.
Ciao.

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As my Satellite M30-642 doesn't offer a modular bay to switch drives and as I got an additional DVD writer for USB which I can use I am thinking of trying an experiment: removal of DVD drive and replacing it with an additional HDD/SSD.
As the SSDs are very light weight, have no moving parts and do not necessarily require screws to be installed and as the DVD slot delivers IDE and power connector this could work. The SSD needs to be placed inside an old and modified slimline cd-rom to ensure that the modification isn't visible and the notebook is safe from dust etc.
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Hi
As far as I know the Sat M30 doesnt support the slim select bay and therefore you cannot use such adaptor instead of the CD/DVD drive.
Sorry this is not possible
Bye

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Hello I hope somebody can help. I have an ipod classic 6th generation which has a 160gb MK1626GCB HDD in it. This drive has failed so I bought a new one. I don't know how I've managed it but I've ended up with a 160gb MK1634GAL. The connectors on the hdds are different on the hdd end but look the same on the mb end. Can I just get a different ribbon so it fits? Ive looked for one and have found a couple of different ones and the seem to be specific to the ipod although I cannot find one specific for the 160g. Can anyone shed some light onto this?

Your computer is called an iMac.
Did you turn proxies on? If so, you should turn them off.

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Hi,
I inherited my late husband's 2008 Mac Pro (3,1 model) which had 2 x 500GB hard drives in it and 6GB of RAM. I filled the remaining hard drive bays with 1TB drives (I take a lot of video so needed the extra space). The boot drive was partitioned 50/50 in Boot Camp. I've upgraded the RAM to 10GB and I am currently running Lion.
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more than likely it is your video card. If it is ATI 2600XT, tell it bye-bye. The card is barely used at all in TDM or Safe Boot Mode. The 2600 and Lion and the issues with that card, even if it seems okay, is not.
Depending on Windows OS as to how it mounts and sees your Lion HFSX (there is a nice HFSX driver from Paragon, and an NTFS driver for Lion too)
480GB SSD is overkill for any system unless you are pushing CS6 2-3GB images and then for scratch. All you need for a boot drive is about 100GB.
If you have an SSD now, then 1) you need to do a full image backup and restore (regularly as maintenance), and 2) TRIM Enabler
Save Lion and you can always do a clean Lion install w/o going back to SL - but you might want to keep SL (dual boot) and handy if you run into anything you still need that required PowerPC/Rosetta
FBDIMM RAM dies, Amazon has $32 kits of 4GB. And having all 8 DIMM slots filled improves things. If you need or want to and feel 16GB isn't overkill.
SSD and issues are always possible. you should not just go along. not without a clone image. And you should have another drive w/ TRIM Enabler so that you can do a repair and "trim" what is needed.
Clone a system with CCC regularly. Bootable. And can also be used by Setup Assistant.
Install Lion over a heavily used SL system and there are likely remnants of old things that get in the way and left in there and not removed.

Replace Superdrive with internal 160GB ATA HDD

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