Replacing Superdrive with SSD
August 15 2011 10:00 CET
Since I made the switch to SSD one thing has been annoying me. The lack of disk space.
I installed the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD in my old MBP and my new MBP came with the 128GB SSD option.
Neither of course was sufficiently when you have iPhone backup taking 20-30 GB, a 8 GB music library, 20GB of pictures, VMs and so on.
So when I read that you could exchange the Superdrive in the MBP with a SATA drive of your choice I naturally was intrigued.
I opted to put my old X25-M 80GB drive in my MBP since this would be sufficient for a while and I have developed a dislike of spinning disks.
Here is a small guide of how I did this.
First of, you will need a tray to hold the extra disk. Be aware that the superdrive connector is micro SATA, so you can’t just attach a drive directly unless it is also micro SATA. A lot of solutions for this exists. A popular choice seems to be Optibay. However, this is expensive. Instead I found this on eBay: SATA Hard Drive HDD caddy Apple MacBook Pro 721 700 723. The numbers denote the MBP model number.
The tray was just $16.99 with free shipping and arrived at my home in Odense, Denmark about a week after I ordered it.
After installing your drive of choice in the tray, unscrew the screws on the back of your MBP circled in red and remove the back cover. You might need to wiggle it a little.
Next, disconnect the cables for the board placed on top of the superdrive and the superdrive itself. Also unscrew the screws holding that board in place.
Undo the screws holding the superdrive in place.
Remove the superdrive.
Disconnect the micro SATA connector from the superdrive.
Unscrew the bracket at the back of the superdrive and attach it to the new tray.
Place the tray where the superdrive previously was seated, redo the screws and cables. Finally, replace the back cover.
And that is it! Pretty easy, and you should now see the extra disk in Disk Utility.
