Question about installing 2nd drive into an MBP.

[Jelokin1]

So I am installing a 2nd drive (128GB M4 SSD) into my 2011 MBP. I hear its faster if you put it in the normal drive slot instead of the Optical Drive Bay so I will put my SSD in the normal drive slot and my 500GB HDD in the optical drive bay. What files do I have to transfer to the SSD to make it the boot drive? And will all connections to the files on my HDD (music, photos, docs) still work? Thanks!

P.S. Also I have yet to upgrade to ML but I plan on it if that helps.

 

[joshhedge]

I would recommend backing up your data from the 500GB HDD and format both drives. Then do a clean install of ML on the SSD.

Most importantly. Do not forget to install 'Trim Enabler' from Groths.org
Enjoy the super fast SSD experience

 

[Tyranicus]

I don't know for sure about the 2011 MacBook Pro, but the SATA bus is the same for both bays in my late 2008 MacBook Pro. I put the SSD in the optical bay and left the HDD in its original bay because the optical bay does not have a sudden motion sensor.

 

[PCTC2]

I don't know for sure about the 2011 MacBook Pro, but the SATA bus is the same for both bays in my late 2008 MacBook Pro. I put the SSD in the optical bay and left the HDD in its original bay because the optical bay does not have a sudden motion sensor.

For the 2011, I'm pretty sure the internal bay is 6Gbps and the optical bay is 3Gbps so he's doing the right thing.

As for the boot, I'd say create a Mountain Lion Recovery USB recovery drive, boot from the USB drive, and then install a fresh install to the SSD. Boot to the SSD. You can migrate your Applications over using Migration Assistant if you want. Don't migrate your User directory (especially if it's too large).

Now you have a choice. You can keep your user directory on your HDD or you can move it to the SSD and then keep any large files manually on the HDD.

To keep your user directory on the HDD, activate the root account and log into it. Remove /Users from your SSD (since your user directory is empty or should be if you didn't migrate it). Now symlink the Users on your HDD to your SSD

ln -s /Volumes/<name_of_HDD>/Users /Users

You can remove everything except the Users directory on the HDD (unless there's other directories you want to keep). You won't need system directories on the HDD.

To manually keep files on your HDD, just do what you want. Or you can symlink individual directories back.