This is how I set up two Solid State Drives (SSD) in my 17″ MacBook Pro.

For the last year or so, I’ve been struggling with the storage limitations of my 128GB SSD drive. With my professional photography, photos of my baby girls and client files alone, I was sorely lacking hard drive space. Distributing files across several external drives worked for a little while, but then just got too complex. Nothing sucks worse than having to sort through several external drives to find a photo when you’re on a deadline.

To solve my storage dilemma, I decided to add a second SSD drive to my MacBook Pro. I decided against adding a standard spinning hard drive because of the draw it would take on my battery – that and the heartbreaking drop in performance if I was editing massive photos from the standard drive.

I know OWC sells very nice internal 2.5″ drive bays for the MacBook Pro. They run about $75. There are other companies that sell similar drive bays for $90-ish. I found one on eBay for about $30 with shipping. It’s generic and not as pretty as the OWC version, but it fits and works fine.

For the second drive, I bought the Mushkin Enhanced Callisto Deluxe 240GB drive from newegg.com. It had the best ratings at the time, and it was hard to argue with 285MBs/275MBs read & write times.

These photos show the progression from single drive + DVD to dual SSD with no DVD.

Removing the screws from the MacBook Pro. The first time is slow – maybe 2-3 minutes. I can get in and out of the MBP case now in under 60 seconds.

This is the original 128GB Corsair P128 Solid State Drive I bought in 2009. It was running slowly due to outdated firmware and no effing firmware tool for Mac systems. I had to pull the drive, clone it to another drive, pop it in a Dell laptop to run the firmware update (which erased the drive) and then re-clone my data back. After the firmware update, the drive ran almost as fast as the day I bought it.

From the Department of Obvious Statements: the Mushkin SSD is exactly the same size as the Corsair drive. Same size, same weight.

To employ the second drive in the MacBook Pro, you need to pull the SuperDrive out of its snuggly, warm spot near the logicboard. Note: with your MBP case open, find yourself a can of compressed air and blow out the fans. You’ll see that mine were a little nasty. Clean fans = cool, fast laptop.

Be super careful removing the screws and the paper-thin SATA cable (the orange tab just to the right of the SuperDrive).

Once the SuperDrive has been removed, you can buy an external adapter to continue using it to read/write DVDs. External adapters cost about $20. Personally, I’m over the 8X speed and went with a 22X drive. More on that later.

Next, the secondary SSD is placed in the new drive bay. It fits very snugly and the drive height seemed about 1/2mm too much, but once the drive & bay were inserted into the SuperDrive spot, it fit perfectly. Oh, and don’t forget to put the little SATA cable back in place on the logicboard.

Here’s the P128 SSD in the drive bay, in the SuperDrive slot. And 8GB RAM from newegg. Twas $600 when it first came out, then $300 last summer. I got mine for $120 in November 2010. Last week, I saw it on sale for under $70. Good lordy, how prices change.

Here’s where I cloned the P128 with my OS X and files over to the new Mushkin 240GB SSD. Cloning SSD to SSD is pretty fast – roughly 2GB/minute.

Once the cloning is done and MacBook Pro is rebooted, I wiped the old drive clean for use as storage.

Lessons from using Dual SSDs in the MacBook Pro:
Lesson 1: Using the 240GB drive as the primary was a rookie mistake. I think I was tired (twins up all night) and not thinking right. The 128GB SSD should have been the primary with the 240GB used for all that fantastic, high-speed storage, scratch disk, etc. (Now I remember – the Mushkin drive was about 60MB/s faster than the Corsair and served better as the main drive.)
Lesson 2: FTLOG, OMG, keep a daily backup routine. Even though Solid State Drives like the Muskin Calisto 240GB have a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) rating of 2 million hours, you never know when it’s going to just puke on you and die. Unlike platter drives, SSD drives are very, very difficult to recover data from. My Mushkin drive died in under 30 days. Completely unresponsive. Not even visible connected to an external drive dock. Just friking dead. Gone. Toast. Mushkin said it happens to 1 in 1,000 drives, cannot be anticipated, prevented or recovered from.
Lesson 3: Again, backup to TimeMachine, Dropbox, Mozy, ZumoDrive, or whatever external, off-drive solution you like best; just make sure you do it daily. I use all four of those options concurrently. 50GB with Mozy, 2GB with Dropbox, 3GB with ZumoDrive and a 2TB FireWire 800 drive for TimeMachine.
Lesson 4: The potential of an SSD failure is not related to dual-drive action but just the facts of life in the hard drive world. You may get the 2 million hours of use from your drive (roughly 228 years – good luck testing that out!) but you also may get 20,000 hours, or just 200. A note in fairness – my Corsair P128 SSD has never had an issue and has been running strong, 20 hours per day, since June 2009.
Lesson 5: Running dual SSDs in a MacBook Pro is really quite awesome. To have extra storage, a super fast scratch disk, etc. is simply beautiful. If your MBP is out of warranty and/or you don’t mind risking warranty repairs, and if you don’t need to burn DVDs while on the road, then the dual SSD setup could work well for you.

One of my favorite laptop accessories is/was made by an Oregon company and sold in local Mac Stores. They’re the ever useful and popular Dr. Bodelin’s laptop bumpers. The laptop bumpers raise the back end laptops up by about 1″ or so, dramatically increasing air flow thereby reducing internal and external temperatures. Ultimately, this can extend the life expectancy of a laptop. For $10, it’s a pretty good deal. Anyway, I recently needed a new set of silver laptop feet, so I called the Mac Store closest to me. I was mortified to find that they no longer carried the silver ones and that they only had white or gold. Gold?! Ugh. And white laptop feet on an aluminum MacBook Pro?? The horror. Being somewhat resourceful, I called Dr. Bodelin’s customer service line to see if the silver feet were really gone. Yup, confirmed. Not even a private stash at the company headquarters. Frak.

I did some Googling and found very few alternatives – some looked flimsy, some were bulky, some were plain ugly and they were all way too expensive for what they are – molded plastic nubs.
 

What to do…

As you can see here, the MacBook Pro has less than half a millimeter of airspace underneath. It’s part of Apple’s super sleek design, but it naturally restricts significant air flow.

I’ve used two 3M “Self Stick Rubber Pads” under the laptop and right next to the paper-thin feet Apple supplied.

Here you can see the MacBook Pro with the 3M rubber pads – the back is raised by about 1/4″. The pads hold up under moderate heat. Super warm laptops may eventually turn the 3M glue a little gooey. It takes a bit of heat, though. The 3M rubber pads cost $2.50 for 12 – enough for 6 laptops or 6 applications.


 

The solution I went with…

The MacBook Pro is lifted by roughly 1/2″, providing extra air flow. The 3M mini hook is strong, gives a very comfortable angle of lift for ergonomic typing, etc. The 3M mini hooks are $3.50 for a set of 6, enough for 3 laptops or 3 applications.

Here are the two 3M packages. I got mine at The Container Store, but they’re available in lots of stores. And not to be too obvious, but #1 is the 3M rubber feet ($2.50) and #2 is the 3M mini hooks ($3.50).

 

I went ahead and picked up the granddaddy of all laptop hard drives for my MacBook Pro – the Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM with SATA 3.0 (model ST9500420AS). I upgraded from a Hitachi 320GB 7200RPM drive and boy, what a wonderful difference!

Using Carbon Copy Cloner, it took roughly 3 1/2 hours to clone the contents of my 320GB drive to the 500GB. 120GB of photos was the #1 slow down, and #2 was the 320GB drive dragging its proverbial feet. Once the cloning was done, replacing the 320 with the 500 took about 2 minutes – 5 little screws (1 brace and 4 stabilizers on the drive).

The first thing I noticed was that the 500GB Seagate drive boots about 40% faster than the 320GB Hitachi. Apps open up a little faster – not 40% faster, but certainly 20% or so.

Once I’d booted up, I ran several tests and scans on the drive to make sure the drive was going to be stable and error free. Nothing sucks quite so much as banking on a new hard drive, only to have it melt down. Tests showed no drive flaws.

I then ran an XBench test to compare the two drives. The 500GB drive scored well over twice as fast as the 320GB with sequential and random reads/writes. For the non-techies, this simply means that this new Seagate drive whips the snot out of the Hitachi drive.

(XBench is a free utility that every Mac user should have, even if it’s rarely used.)

On the down side, the Seagate drive is just as loud as the 320GB Hitachi. That was a little disappointment to me. That said, the drive isn’t “noisy” per se, it’s just that the spinning is clearly audible in a near silent room or if one listens within 6 or 7 inches of the laptop body. No huge deal.

Other positives? XP boots and runs faster in Parallels. So does Windows 7. So does Linux. Photoshop CS4 opens up 25% faster and runs actions in an instant. File transfers to other 7200RPM drives are way faster. In short, pretty much everything is better and faster.

The best part of all? After Leopard, tons of apps, tens of thousands of photos, etc. I’ve got about 300GB free. Awesome!!

If you’re considering buying the Seagate 500GB drive, I hope these comments help. And hopefully you wind up with a good stable drive that passes any tests you subject it to.

After Apple generously replaced my ailing 2.4GHz MacBook Pro with the new unibody 2.4GHz MacBook Pro, I went from 4GB down to 2GB RAM. Even though the new MBP has a faster bus speed and better hard drive, I felt the shortage of RAM when using Final Cut, Photoshop and Parallels.

Crucial and newegg to the rescue! I ordered a pair of DDR3 1067Mhz RAM chips for $125. That’s pretty affordable!

Here are a few shots to illustrate how easy it is to upgrade the RAM (and, coincidentally, the hard drive) in the new MacBook Pro and MacBook. Thankfully, upgrading RAM and hard drives on the new unibody MacBook Pro is easy and won’t void or risk the warranty. (Just don’t sneeze or drool onto the logic board when doing work and you should be fine.)

 
First, remove the battery plate and battery. This exposes the hard drive for easy replacement if you ever want to upgrade to a 320GB 7200RPM drive or even one of the new 500GB 5400RPM drives. (I wonder if the MacBook Pro could be run off an external 10,000RPM SATA drive like the VelociRaptor. That’d be awesome!)

Removing the battery plate does not expose the memory bay like in the earlier MacBook Pros, so there’s more work to do.

There are 8 screws to remove from the bottom plate of the MacBook Pro. You’ll need a simple jeweler’s screwdriver. Remember the order of screws as there are three different sizes.

Here you can see the inside of the MacBook Pro exposed. It’s gorgeous. I was pretty impressed with the exterior design of the MacBook Pro, but this shows it’s true inner beauty.

This is where the RAM chips go. There are little tabs on each side of the chips. Pulling those tabs apart by less than a millimeter will “eject” the RAM for removal.

You put the new RAM in and take the old RAM out. You do the hokey pokey and turn yourself about. (Gag, I know.)

Here you see the new RAM installed. Check out the logic board and fans. Everything is so compact, tight and compartmentalized.

Another inside shot.

Put the botom plate back on and put the screws back in. Tighten well, but not too much. You don’t want to strip the threads.

That’s it! It took less than 5 minutes for the whole operation. With 4GB RAM, boot time is marginally better, but the real benefit comes with running larger apps like Photoshop, Parallels, Final Cut, etc. I can have much more going at one time than I could before.

A side note: I also notice that the new MacBook Pro runs much cooler than the old versions. When running generic apps like Mail, Safari, Firefox, etc., the old MacBook Pro would usually keep at a warm 130°. When running Photoshop and/or Parallels for more than a few minutes on my previous MacBook Pro, the internal temp would rise to no less than 160° and would often top 185°. This new unibody MacBook Pro runs between 96° and 110° for normal apps and hasn’t risen above 130° even when running Final Cut. Very cool, indeed!
 

AKA: Yet another reason to love Apple, Inc.

After experiencing months of crippling trouble with the video card in my 2.4GHz MacBook Pro laptop (resulting in multiple logic board replacements, LCD screen replacements, etc.), I was generously given a replacement laptop from Apple. Yes, a full replacement. Stunning level of customer service and tech support – clearly above and beyond the norm.

Here’s the new machine. So nice! This new design and the new specs are so far advanced that I look back to my “old” MacBook Pro with a sense of analog nostalgia.

P.S. By way of Google, I found this image of the new logic board for the latest MacBook Pro. Pretty crazy shape!

P.P.S. The only bummer about getting a replacement computer from Apple is that one’s Apple Care warranty doesn’t follow to the new machine. I’ll have to buy another extended warranty asap. It’s a minor factor, but still – darn.

After having upgraded my older, out-of-warranty MacBook Pro to a 200GB, 7200RPM hard drive a few months ago, I spotted a great item on sale at Costco. It was the Western Digital My Passport Elite 320GB external 2.5″ hard drive. The regular price was $170, and I got it for $140. As soon as I got it home, I took it apart so I could put it to proper use – inside my 2.16GHz MacBook Pro.

Here are some pics showing the process of taking the WD Passport Elite drive apart.

Here’s the prey in its natural habitat:

A credit card or thick fingernail is the best tool for prying the wide edge open. There are quite a few notches – very tough, very resistant to force. Careful, or *snap*, the case will break!

You can see the notches that hold the case together.

Because the case wants to snap back together, it’s necessary to hold it apart from all angles. I used four credit/gift cards to do the trick.

Here’s the center frame extruded from the outer case.

All the parts…

As you can see, the drive inside is a Western Digital 320GB SATA drive with a 5400RPM rotational speed. These drives sell for $130 to $170 online, and for much, much more in retail stores.

Here you can see the SATA drive separated from the tiny little SATA-USB controller. This controller works fine on its own. You can use it with or without the WD enclosure.

BONUS PICS:
I dropped the 320GB drive into my 2.16GHz MacBook Pro. It formats to 298.09GB. So far, I’ve got 219GB free. Wow.

Close-up inside the MacBook Pro…

Another close-up inside the MacBook Pro. I like the paper-thin SATA interface.

FINAL WORDS:
What I like about the Western Digital My Passport Elite 320GB is that it’s a great hard drive for laptop use. It’s much cheaper than a generic OEM drive. The outer case is flat-out awesome – better than most 2.5″ cases you can buy online for $50 or more. An additional perk – the Western Digital My Passport Elite 320GB case is 100% bus-powered. No need for an external power supply or dual-USB cable setup to power the drive. I’m very happy with this purchase.

Caveat: moving from a 7200RPM drive to a 5400RPM drive can result in a slow-down here and there, but I’ve found that this 320GB drive is pretty swift on its feet so far. Boot time is only 3-4 seconds slower, Photoshop runs roughly the same and only video conversion seems significantly affected (by about 20%). All else is good.

After becoming accustomed to upgrading to newer MacBook Pro models every year, I finally convinced myself that I’d try hanging onto the same 2.16GHz laptop for a little longer, even if it was out of warranty and a whole 240MHz slower than the latest-greatest. I already had 4GB RAM installed, so I figured it’d be best to just upgrade the hard drive. Granted, the 160GB 5,400RPM stock hard drive I was using had more than 60GB free, so I wasn’t exactly aching for storage, but bigger is always better, right? I found a great 200GB 7,200RPM SATA drive on newegg.com for only $139 after $30 rebate, so I bought it.

I cloned my 160GB drive to the 200GB drive. Unfortunately, it took nearly 4 hours thanks to the 80GB of data running over a USB 2.0 connection. USB 2.0 sucks. Really.

Once the cloning was done, I got my handy-dandy Torx screwdriver set out and began disassembling the MacBook Pro. I used the awesome (but somewhat outdated) instructions from iFixit.com.

MacBook Pro, ready to go. Note the awesome Dr. Bodelin’s Laptop Bumpers that keep the MBP raised up a little for heat dissipation. I have a set for each of my laptops, my wife’s laptop, etc. You should, too.

Beginning surgery:

Removing screws from the body of the MacBook Pro is simple.

I found that placing the screws along side the iFixit instructions made things easier on me. So many screws, but so little to worry about.

Lifting the top off the MacBook Pro is easy… kind of. The rear, left and right pry loose with almost no effort, but the front was a real pain in the butt. There are some little plastic tabs that are hooked just under the lip of the front bezel. They just don’t want to let go. After a leap (or tug) of faith, I wrestled the entire top of the laptop off.

Pretty stuff under the hood:

Old drive with heat sensor:

Old drive and new:

200GB drive snugly in place in the MacBook Pro:

Putting the MacBook Pro back together was dirt simple. It took no more than 4 minutes and everything looks as good as it did before the whole upgrade process.

- – - – - -

The Good
After replacing the hard drive, I’ve got nearly 120GB free space. Wow. I noticed that moving data to and from my FireWire 800 backup drive is much, much faster. A 10GB transfer used to take 6-8 minutes, and now it rips through in less than 4 minutes. Parallels seems to open and run faster, too.

I’ve noticed almost no increase in heat with this new drive, and it’s actually quieter than the 160GB drive that came with the MacBook Pro. Hooray!

The Bad
With a 7,200RPM drive, I was expecting a serious decrease in boot time. I saw a significant increase – like 15-20 seconds slower. Converting AVI files to MP4 (for AppleTV) went from 5 mins 20 seconds to 6 mins 40 seconds. Time to open big RAW images in Photoshop remained the same. A bit of a disappointment.

The Ugly
During the cloning process, something must have gone awry, because the Leopard video drivers got seriously messed up. The colors on the MBP screen looked washed out and my 24″ LCD screen, which was previously gorgeous at 1920×1200, was now rendered dull brown-ish green in color and wouldn’t display anything above 1440×900. I re-installed the video card firmware update that Apple released in late February, but that didn’t fix it.

I ran a full battery of cleanups with Leopard’s Disk Utility and OnyX. Neither made any notable improvement.

After several fruitless calls to Apple Genius bars, I decided to wipe the drive clean and see how things would go. The fresh install of Leopard fixed the video problem, but it didn’t seem to make any difference with the speed I was hoping to see in the 7,200RPM drive.

Even with 4GB RAM and a fresh OS X installation, the apps I use most often seem to move at the same (or slower) pace with this new drive. Bogus.

Final Verdict
While I’m happy with the extra hard drive space, I am pretty disappointed with the fact that I’m not seeing any real-world, “holy crap!” increase in speed. Aside from the kick-ass transfer rates with my external backup drives, the 200GB 7,200RPM upgrade seems to have been a bit ho-hum.

Update on New Upgrade:

After using the 200GB 7,200RPM drive for a couple months, I swapped it out for a 320GB 5,400RPM drive made by Western Digital. Check out the installation process for photos, notes, etc. Comparing this modded 2.16GHz MacBook Pro to my newer 2.4GHz MBP, they’re really running about even.

These same display problems eventually plagued my 2.4GHz MBP and I had to have Apple replace the logic board. Thankfully, that fixed it – and it was free. – Jason