FEB 27 2011 UPDATE!!!!
As of this date, the pictures of the disassembly and reassembly have been accidentally erased! I will post new ones once I have a chance to do so.
Many people say that I’m a bit on the weird side when they hear that I have two hard drives in my 13 inch MacBook Pro. What they don’t realize, I’m not only a truck driver, but also have to keep up on the latest operating systems that Microsoft, Apple, and the Open Source World come up with. So today, I will be showing how to install the Opti-Bay hard drive enclosure. First, a word of warning! This will void your warranty that you have on the Machine. So, if you want to keep your warranty, please don’t do this.
Step 1: BACKUP YOUR IMPORTANT FILES!!!!!!
Step 2: Unplug and Shutdown your machine!
Step 3: Close the lid and turn your laptop upside down.
Step 4: This will require you to use a #00 Philips screwdriver. There are 10 screws (4 on the front, 4 on the back and 1 on each side) you will need to unscrew in order to get the bottom off the laptop. One word of warning, 3 of the screws on the back are longer than the rest. Make sure you remember which ones these are.
Step 5: Lift the bottom of the laptop straight up and set it aside. You should have a laptop just like the picture below.
Now that you can see the insides of the laptop, here is what you are looking at. On the left side, Top Left is the Super Drive (which we will be taking out). Bottom Left is the main laptop hard drive. Top Right, is the main motherboard for the laptop. And lastly, Bottom Right is the battery. Once you have your bearings inside the case, you can now proceed to the next step.
Step 6: Remove the three screws that hold the Super Drive into place. Be careful, these screws are very small! There is also a small ribbon cable coming off the main motherboard to the Super Drive. If you pull straight up, it should disconnect.
Step 7: Gently lift up the Super Drive from the side closest to the hard drive and pull the Super Drive out.
PLEASE NOTE!!!! Make sure that you take off the small ribbon cable that is attached to the Super Drive. You will need this for the Opti-Bay.
Now that you have the Super Drive out, you can put it into an external case from the folks that make the Opti-Bay. Or, you can just put it on the shelf for a later project.
Ok, let’s take a look at the Opti-Bay drive holder and the hard drive I have selected for this project. The first image below is of the cheap knock-off of the real Opti-Bay product. I used this instead of the real Opti-Bay just to demonstrate how to install the Opti-Bay. The second image is of the 500 GB hard drive I added to the laptop as well. It’s very simple to plug the hard drive into the Opti-Bay and then add the small ribbon cable to it and then follow the instructions above in reverse order to put the Opti-Bay into the laptop. Once done, you should have a second drive icon in the Disk Utilities and you can format it any way you want. I had mine already formatted with Windows 7 Home Premium. The last image is of my own laptop booting while holding down the option key. Have fun with adding your own second hard drive to your 13inch MacBook Pro.
