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Late 2011 model, A1278 / 2.4 GHz i5 or 2.8 GHz i7 processor.

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Best HDD replacement for optical drive

Hi guys im on SSD(main drive) + HDD setup, my HDD was broken (optical drive HDD) last week so I decide to buy an 1tb WD scorpio blue but I recently found out that the optical drive only accepts 3g sata my 1tb WD scorpio blue is a 6gb sata so what brand model would you recommend for this I cant return this because compatibility is buyer responsibility here in the philippines

Im running on yosemite

So here are my questions

1) is there a possible solution for this HDD to work on my mac (1tb WD Scorpio blue 6gb ata

2) What brand or model of HDD should i buy that's compatible to my late 2011 macbook pro 13"

3) After I removed the broken HDD it worked on my HDD enclosure is there another problem like sata cable or optical caddy? (I used disk utility before I removed the HDD it says that the drive is failing and cant be repaired back up as much as possible SMART status : Fail)

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First see if you can use jumpers to slow the drive. If not look at the list of drive on the lower portion of this list for 3 GBs drives: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products....

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Sorry not familiar with jumpers is it a device or a software?

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look on the connection end of the drive and see if there are 8 uncovered pins.

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there are only 4 uncovered pins the exact model is WD10JPVX

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It does not appear that this drive can be jumped down. Here is a list of WD drives and those that can be: http://support.wdc.com/product/install.a...

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As mayer says, your drive doesn't appear to have jumpers which will allow more control. All the 6Gb drives WD describes are auto-sensing. They do list a variety of 3Gb drives, including 1TB drives at the same 5400 RPM speed as your current drive. Remember, greater bus speed on an HD doesn't help you here, because the drive is physically not fast enough to fill even a 3Gb bus. 6Gb speed is really to open up the bus for SSDs.

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The problem you are facing is the drives inability to sync up with the systems SATA port.

Auto sensing drives are unable to figure out what the optical drives SATA ports speed is. Its not SATA II or SATA III but something in-between. This is why you need a fixed speed drive (HD, SSD or SSHD). And the SATA spec must be fixed to SATA II (3.0 Gb/s)

Please review this OWC note in Red here: OWC Data Doubler.

"Testing has demonstrated that Apple factory hardware does not reliably support a 6G (6Gb/s) Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive in the optical bay of 2011 MacBook Pros (ModeI ID8,1; 8,2; 8,3). If your OWC Data Doubler bundle comes with a 6G drive, you should ONLY install that drive in the main drive bay and utilize the Data Doubler to re-task your existing drive or install a new 3G SSD or HDD in the optical bay. PRE-2011 models can utilize a 6G drive in the optical bay, but will do so at a reduced 3G (3Gb/s) speed."

Sadly, you'll need to get a new drive or if it has a compatibility jumper that can set the data rate at SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) that will work as well. Many of the newer drives have dropped the jumper option so you may not have no choice other than getting a older version of the drive if you can find one. Other wise you'll need to forget going with a dual drive setup.

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It makes no difference who's carrier you use here as the carrier is nothing more than an extension cable moving the connection point to different placement.

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According to WDC's technical notes, the xPVX series of drives is backwards-compatible to SATA II/3Gb. Have you actually tried to install and format the drive?

It's often easier to attach a new drive externally (through a USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt interface) and format it first, before installing it in the optical slot. That way you can be sure the drive itself works before dismantling the machine. If a correctly formatted drive doesn't work once it's installed, then the HD-computer interface is the problem. That's when you look at the optical drive SATA cable, the bridge board in the drive carrier, or the connector on the logic board. Check to see that you're getting good function out of the optical drive before you remove it; that's a pretty good confirmation that the connector and SATA cable work.

If you've already copied the data off your old failing HD onto the SSD, and you have safe backups of everything, one option is to do a low-level format of the old drive. That will map out any bad blocks, so the system won't attempt to write new data to failing sectors. If the drive is mounted externally, SMART won't tell you anything about it - a drive needs to be attached to an internal bus to get a SMART reading. You could install the old drive into the optical bay, which would give you a SMART reading. It's likely that if it was failing before, it will still be failing even after the reformat. It's just that when you're running it externally, the SMART function on the drive is complaining, but the computer isn't listening to the complaints. Still, it would be an interesting experiment.

It's remotely possible you might have gotten a bad SMART reading on the old drive because of a damaged SATA cable. If that's the case, you might also be getting such readings from the SSD, since you probably didn't replace the cable when you replaced the drive.

Please post back and let us know how this turns out.

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already tried to reformat the new HDD but still no luck it cant even make a folder I keep on receiving errors

For the old HDD it wont allow me to do a reformat and in disk utility it says "the drive has a hardware problem that cant be repaired"

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or would it be possible that the caddy is the problem?

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It certainly might be possible. There's a bridging module that converts the HD's SATA connector to an optical drive connector; there's some circuitry in there, so there's probably variations between manufacturers. Some manufacturers will do better jobs than others, and some may not play nice with Macs. Who's the manufacturer of your caddy? The favored option in the US is OtherWorld Computing's Data Doubler. OWC has been a Mac-specialty retailer and manufacturer for over 25 years, and their products stand up to hard use...Are you having the formatting issue only with the drive mounted in the optical slot, or have you also tried attaching it externally through USB and formatting it that way?

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The issue is not the carrier.

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I can reformat the drive when it's not installed(w/hdd enclosure), and the old hdd which i though was broken is working

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