If you have ever dreamed of having a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) or dual hard drives internal to your MacBook, MacBook Pro or PowerBook then your time has come. A new tutorial is floating around that shows you how to swap out your Mac laptop optical drive and replace it with a second hard drive. With this it is possible to have as much as 360GB of storage in your Mac laptop with one 200GB drive and one 160GB hard drive. Some people just can’t get enough.

The trade off is that you’ll need an external DVD drive in order to watch DVDs or burn any type of file. For me, that wouldn’t be worth it, I’d rather continue using my external hard drive and plugging it in when I need it but by the same token, I have yet to watch a DVD on the road.

MacStein talks about the OptiBay Hard Drive Kit which is the corner stone of this set up. Then again taking apart your MacBook Pro is not the easiest thing in the world to do and reconnecting all those small wires and the tiny plastic cables would scare the living daylights out of me.

I’ve dealt with working on PC laptop optical drives and hard drives but most of those reside in a bay by which you can slide the old one out, put the new one in, secure any screws and mounting and you’re done, it’s not so simple on the MacBook Pro.

In the first place, I don’t want to lose use of my internal optical drive, in the second place the surgery required for the MacBook Pro, just isn’t worth it and don’t count on that Apple Care warranty if you botch the job.

MacStein does offer the courtesy of a “professional installation” for a fee but you still have to send your precious Apple laptop to them for servicing, one, I couldn’t be without my laptop and two, I don’t even want to know how much it costs for the installation.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 12:47 pm under Apple, Notebook, Storage, Technology.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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