one inch frame

Discussion and pictures as I open up my MacBook Pro, take out the optical drive, and install an OptiBay second hard drive.

We all need more disk space, right? It used to be that when I needed more disk space, I cracked open the case on my machine, and put in a new second, third, or fourth hard disk. When I got desperate, I’d replace my main drive with a larger one, and start the rebuilding or copying process. It wasn’t too painful, fairly easy in fact.

Now, people seem hooked on external hard drives. I like them too, and use several. But, as my needs have changed from a desktop machine to a laptop, External drives play less of a role. I do have a couple that I use when my laptop is sitting on my desk, plugged in to my fullsize keyboard, big monitor, and trackball. I also keep a LaCie mobile hard drive in my laptop bag for some overflow and one-off backups. But external hard drives are klunky: cables going everywhere, some space on your desk or lap or the laptop itself to sit the drive, and so on. They’re still usable and they still have their place, but external portable hard drives are just not the optimal solution for a laptop.

Somewhere around the ‘net, I heard of the OptiBay solution from MCE. I’ve dealt with MCE before (I replaced the hard drive in my old PowerBook G4 with one of their kits), so I had some idea that this would be a good solution. After my last “Low Disk Space” warning, I ordered the 80GB kit for my 15” MacBook Pro. It arrived yesterday, and I installed it this morning.

MCE is pretty good at giving you everything you need, including well-written instructions, with pictures. Here’s what came in the box:

The contents of the OptiBay shipping box. The instruction booklet, screwdriver (what we’ve always called a “tweaker,” some torx Allen wrenches, and the drive, in its OptiBay.

The instruction booklet has good documentation on the disassembly of the laptop, and installation instructions for the OptiBay. Overall, the quality of the instructions are excellent.

Apple has a well-deserved reputation for beautifully engineered products, and the MacBook Pro continues that tradition. There were lots of screws to remove, but the MCE instructions holds your hand through the process.

Eventually, the MBP is apart:

What we’ve just passed is known as the point of no return.

The trickiest part of the disassembly are four clips that hold the top onto the bottom. There are three of these clips above the optical bay, and one just to the other side of the latch. The MCE documentation says “Some firm yet careful lifting in this area will cause them to disengage.” They’re not kidding. It takes more effort than you might think, and there are some very disconcerting popping noises as the two halves come apart. Here’s a close-up of one of these clips:

One of the clips that must be forcably disengaged to get at the Apple-y goodness inside the MBP

Once those clips come off, you’re rewarded with the elegant design of the inside of an Apple MacBook Pro:

The inside of the MBP, before the optical drive is extracted

Four screws hold the optical drive in place. Here I have a note on the MCE documentation. The booklet says there are three screws, and marks them. There are four. Interestingly, the booklet does say that one of the screws is a Torx screw, but none of the screws marked were in my MBP; the one they didn’t circle was the Torx. Perhaps Apple has revised the design, or perhaps the MCE documentation is just incorrect.

In another problem with the MCE kit here, while they do provide you with a “tweaker” and the two Torx wrenches, I found that the two screws toward the front of the laptop that hold the drive in place were too small to use the tools provided. I had to use my mini screwdriver to get those little guys out.

Once the screws are out, and the cable disconnected, the very slim SuperDrive comes right out:

The SuperDrive, free from the trappings of a laptop

Next up, the OptiBay:

The OptiBay, with hard drive

Side by side, for comparison. The SuperDrive might be slightly taller than the OptiBay.

Before I put the OptiBay in place, I notice some graffiti under the SuperDrive. It means nothing to me, but I guess there’s someone at Apple paid to write on the inside of laptops.

Maybe this means something to someone.

Next step: A dry fitting to make sure we’re in the right place:

The OptiBay drive, laid in the spot newly vacated by the SuperDrive

Stepping back a bit, it hits me. I’ve got two hard drives in my laptop!

240GB of platter spinnin’ goodness

An interesting thing about the OptiBay installation is that the screws that held the SuperDrive in place are not used to hold the OptiBay in place. There are no screws holding the OptiBay in place. There are strips of two-sided foam tape at strategically-placed points on the OptiBay, but the strips exposing the outside adhesive stay in place (at least, the instructions didn’t tell me to tape it down). The OptiBay has a bit of lateral movement, but, the combination of the foam and the data+power cable (which you reuse from the SuperDrive) give it a plenty snug enough fit, without screws. I don’t know why the decision not to use screws was made, and I’m not sure I agree with it, but it certainly is in there good enough without them.

Cable connected, nice snug fit

The only thing left to do is go through the disassembly instructions in reverse order, pressing those clips back down (more popping, ugh), and putting the screws in place. I powered up the machine, and, whoa, Disk Utility now sees another drive:

DU sees another 80GB drive in my laptop

A quick partition and format later, and even df is impressed:

df shows a that on a clean disk, you can seek forever

The downside of this process, besides the stress of taking a laptop apart, is that the MBP no longer has an internal optical drive. MCE will sell you an external burner, or, of your SuperDrive is a standard type (not so with the one in the 15” MBP), they’ll sell you a kit for mounting your SuperDrive in an external housing. I opted for neither of these. My Linux box has a DVD burner in it, should I need it, plus I have an adapter for a bare DVD drive to make it into a USB drive, plus we have a Firewire DVD burner from LaCie at the Lab, so I think I’m fine. Certainly, I didn’t do enought with the internal SuperDrive to the point where I think I’m going to miss it much. Time will tell, though.

One last pic, of all the screws that I took out of my laptop during this process. You’ll notice that I laid them all out on a punch card (I’ve got thousands of punch cards, and am resisting the urge to make a D*I*Y Planner PunchCard pack), labeling their positions. I’ve found this makes a pretty good process, knowing where each screw went, how I had the laptop oriented, and which position was which. I remember with my Powerbook that some of the screws along the side were of different lengths, meaning that you couldn’t just take the screws you took out of that side and put them back in in a random order. This helps me keep things a bit more organized.

The 25 screws taken out of the 15” MacBook Pro to take it apart and remove the SuperDrive

On the whole, the process took about an hour, and was only mildly stressful. I don’t suppose that I would ever get used to the sound those clips make as they’re being disengaged and then re-engaged. It just sounds so wrong. But, I’m fairly comfortable taking laptops apart now-a-days, even though there’s still the stress of this being my laptop. I was pretty pleased with the ease of the install, as there are all sorts of Really Bad Things that could go wrong, and am very pleased with the result of having another 80GB drive in my laptop.

The OptiBay appears to be made up of a standard 2.5” laptop drive in a custom housing. I do think that I could replace the 80GB with a larger drive in the future, should I need to. The main reason that I didn’t in this install is that I didn’t want to change too many things at once. We’ll see how fast the 80GB drive fills up, and, if need be, I’ll grab the screwdrivers and pop the case open again.

To wrap this up, I’d say that, if you feel you’re familiar enough with taking precision equipment like the MacBook Pro apart, and don’t mind a little stress, The OptiBay is a worthwhile upgrade for those of us with an unquenchable thirst for more disk space. You do have to give up your optical drive with this, which means that it might not be a great option for you. I do believe I’ll be able to live without it, but some people cannot. I wonder what effect this will have on the battery life (MCE says the result is negligible), but I don’t run my laptop on battery all that much, anyway. I do know that I’ll very much enjoy the extra space, and not have to hook up various cables for external hard drives, or find room on my desk or lap for the mobile external drive, quite as often now that the OptiBay is in my 15” MacBook Pro.