Macbook pro 13″ 2011 2nd hard drive Question?
I have 120GB SSD and now need more space so I’m thinking to replace the Optical drive with 500GB SATA 2.5″ drive. So my question is:
1) Can I make the 2nd drive bootable exclusively for Windows? Or Do I need VMware Fusion on 2nd drive (FYI, I do have VMware fusion on my 1st SSD drive). My future application is on Windows so I am looking to install Windows on mac.
2) What is best hard drive option (SATA or ATA) for my macbook pro?
3) Since I will be replacing the optical drive? Will any external cheaper optical drive work? Or Do i need to buy Mac compatible optical drive
4) Any good websites where I can purchase the 2nd HDD kit?
Any suggestion on 2nd drive will be nice and of course best answer will be rewarded with points.
1) Yes, you can choose in Bootcamp Assistant to Install Windows and use the entire secondary hard drive as a Windows drive. A Virtual Machine like VMWare is decent too, if you want to run Windows right on top of Mac OS X so you can run both at the same time. This is great for most software, unless you are gaming or need all the GPU graphics power… then you’d want to dual boot with Bootcamp to get the max performance.
2) Your machine only uses SATA hard drives. Any 2.5″ 9.5mm height drive will fit and work. Do not get the bit 12.5mm height drives, they are too thick to fit in a Macbook Pro.
3) almost any Optical Drive will work, but if you buy one do make sure it says its Mac compatible, since a few out there are not… mainly because they are ultra cheap junk.
4) I got my kit from MCE a couple of years ago, and have used it in 2 different macbook Pros now. It works great and it even came with an (really cheap) USB enclosure so i could just use the internal DVD drive via USB and not have to buy a new optical drive.
http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
Pretty much the biggest hard drive you can get right now that will fit in there is a 750gb, which is tons of space… just be very careful when looking for internal 2.5″ drives that they are no taller than 9.5mm !!
Upgrading an old MacBook Pro Hard Drive to SSD (Discussion)
|
|
Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD2 $154.99 The 128GB CRUCIAL M4 2.5IN SATA 6GB/S…. |
|
|
Vantec NexStar TX 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure $6.99 The Vantec NST-210S2-BK NexStar TX Hard Drive Enclosure can accommodate up to 500GB of hard drive space and offers lightning fast transfer rates via its USB 2.0 interface! This hot-swappable, plug & play enclosure makes adding storage to any system a cinch…. |
|
|
Crucial 64 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT064M4SSD2 $90.00 Low power, lightweight, and durable, the Crucial CT064M4SSD2 m4 2.5″ Solid State Drive empowers high-speed synchronous MLC NAND, advanced controller technology, optimized NAND management, and the second-generation SATA 6Gb/s interface…. |