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Model A1297 Unibody: Early 2009, Mid 2009, Mid 2010, Early 2011 & Late 2011

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Replace HD/Optical drives with SSD/Hybrid drives,use external optical?

I currently have a 500Gb HD and a Superdrive that is no longer functioning. Can I:

1) Replace current HD with an SSD?

2) Replace Superdrive with a 1TB Hybrid drive?

3) Then use an external USB Superdrive?

4) Dual Boot with Lion OSX7.x and OSX Mavericks?

5) Mount my old HD with a USB enclosure and transfer data to either drive?

I'm looking to breathe new life into my laptop, but I need the ability to burn and read CD/DVDs. I am also concerned with continuing to be able to run some apps that are not compatible with Mavericks.

Thanks in advance!!

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How about giving us the last four digits of your serial number so we can correctly ID which model you have.

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I think you're asking a lot of this older system.

As to some of your questions yes you can replace your current HD with either a SSD or a hybrid drive.

And yes, you could also replace your optical drive out as well with either a SSD or hybrid drive. But theres a down side here, your optical drives I/O is painfully slow Vs the SATA I/O your current HD has. In addition your battery power will be taxed supporting two drives cutting down its run time.

So I would opt for the hybrid drive alone and fix the optical drive. We gave up on the dual drive setups and use the hybrid drive alone. I would stick with Mavericks alone here (if your model can support it). There just is no good reason to dual boot different OS-X releases unless you are a developer. In that case I would use different external drives with different versions of OS's.

Use a FireWire case if you can still find one as its just much faster than USB2. Sadly your system can't use USB3 devices running at USB3 speed.

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Thanks for your reply Dan, I hadn't thought about the optical drive I/O...very good point. I assume the entire machine would run hotter too. Unfortunately I can't find a replacement internal optical drive for my machine (mid 2009 17" Macbook Pro Unibody model A1297 model identifier 5,2). I have an Apple external USB superdrive that I cannot use with my machine, as I'm sure you know, although I have heard there is a Terminal hack that will enable it's use. Any experience with that? Any suggestions for a workaround?

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so I did the hack for the superdrive and it worked perfectly!

http://www.hardturm.ch/luz/2011/10/how-t...

Thanks for your help. I think I'll upgrade my RAM and call it a day.

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rstrait will be eternally grateful.
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