The Second Hard Drive Dilemma

As some of you may remember, I purchased a second hard drive bay from iFixit a while back. Well, unfortunately I have been having some issues. The bay was causing my computer to lock up constantly. Finder would become unresponsive. It would even force me to turn the computer off manually. Even worse, that would cause my hard drive to go into "read only mode". Read only mode meant that my hard drive had to be formatted to be writable again. After this happened three times I made a point to call iFixit to try and solve the issue. The representative told me it was most likely the bay causing the problem, but just to be sure I should remove the drive and test it else where. So I disassembled my Macbook, removed the drive, and proceeded to test it on my desktop computer via a USB to SATA adapter. There was absolutely no issue with the drive at all. At this point I called iFixit it back.


I was told that since it must be the bay at this point, they would send me a replacement bay and that I would send back the old bay. After waiting 3-4 days, the new bay finally came. As a side note: I made sure to leave the laptop disassembled so I could clean it, and to save me the time installing the new bay. With the new bay finally here, I put it back together. As far as I can tell it is working fine. I noticed that the drive still makes programs open slower then I would like, but at this point I believe it is an issue between the drive SATA- ATA adapter which is slowing it down. I haven't sent back the old bay yet as I am waiting to see if this new bay gives me any problems. In the event it does give problems, I have to give iFixit a call back and go from there.

~Dave

After a short Hiatus

It has been quite a while since I was able to post an update. I have been busy running around here and there. However, I just received the parts for my additional hard drive bay for my Macbook. So, as most people who are very excited, I got right to upgrading my laptop. This time I took extreme precaution. I was dealing with a component which would cost me extra if I broke it. In addition, I had to be able to re-use it when done. So what did I do? First, I followed the guide on iFixit.com on how to remove an Optical Drive Bay in a Macbook Core 2 Duo laptop. With every step that included screws being removed, I made sure to place those screws in their own little boxes, making sure they were in the order they were removed. Once I had removed the drive, I proceeded to install the new HDD drive bay with the HDD inside it. Since there were no directions on how to screw it into place, I did the one logical thing I could think of, I followed the iFixit guide backwards. In order, I put the screws back, reapplied the tape, put the bluetooth back, everything. I took special care to properly connect the cables, as well as to make sure they were secure. After almost an hour of work my laptop was back together (with a lot less dust since I could blow some of it out). I held my breath and booted up the computer. I heard the familiar "Bummmmm", and then the Apple logo appeared. Once I had logged in, the computer notified me there was a disk that "was in an unrecognized format". This made sense since the disk had not yet been formatted. I click "Initialize" and then, within Disk Utility, formatted the disk as Mac OS X Journaled. At this point, I figured I was home free. Well, I was slightly wrong. You see, in my effort to save some cash I purchased a very cheap CD/DVD external encasement bay. However, I was in a rush when I did so and did not look at the specifications. The bay I purchased was for a SATA CD/DVD drive. My computer has an ATA CD/DVD drive. Because of this, I will have to make a return of the old drive, and spend MORE money to buy the right drive. This time, I will buy from OWC because they are really good at documenting exactly what their product offers. On the upside, I am now able to offload a ton of files onto my newly installed HDD. I can say, from experience, that if you follow instructions, and you know what you are doing, you should have no problem at all performing this upgrade. It is worth the time and money to do! ~Dave