9.5 mm PATA Optical Bay SATA Hard Drive Enclosure

My Problem

The original 200 Gb hard drive was no longer sufficient for my storage needs, so it was time to upgrade it to a 1 Tb (hybrid) drive. The DVD drive was swapped out with the 200 Gb drive to have Windows 8.1 as the dual boot option.

I have an older set of tools that generally work very well when dealing with desktop computers, but are inadequate when dealing with laptops (and smaller devices in general). It was time for new tools along with the Optical Bay Hard Drive Enclosure.

My Fix

It was good. I followed the steps for the 'MacBook Pro 15" Core 2 Duo Models A1226 and A1260 Hard Drive Replacement' guide and essentially continued from step 10 of 'Installing MacBook Pro 15" Core 2 Duo Models A1226 and A1260 Dual Hard Drive' guide.

My Advice

I cloned the contents of the original 200 Gb hard drive to the new 1 Tb (hybrid) drive FIRST! The new drive was connected via a SATA to USB connector. If anything was wrong with the new drive, it would've been MUCH easier to simply pack it up for an exchange/return to vendor without having to open up the laptop again. But since the cloning went without a hitch, it was time to put my new tools to use...

I already knew to proceed cautiously, but this was most emphasized when dealing with the hard drive ribbon cable, specifically, loosening the adhesive that secures the portion of the cable on the top of the (older) hard drive. The spudger that comes with the Pro Tech Toolkit was the best tool for this. I decided to leave this ribbon cable connected to the logic board so that I wouldn't have to deal with the adhesive that kept it on the metal plate (next to the left fan and ExpressCard connector). But in order to still have room to remove the old hard drive itself, I disconnected the sleep light and IR sensor connectors from the ribbon cable.

When reconnecting the SuperDrive ribbon cable to the logic board, I found that it can be tricky to get it plugged back in, but some patience and a close look with a flashlight can make it easier.

When it comes to installing Windows 8.1, Boot Camp is only needed to download the latest Windows support software. Make sure this software is put on a USB flash drive formatted in FAT16 or ExFAT; without this, the Windows installation will stall and go nowhere. With an external USB blu ray drive, it was just Option key away from installing Windows 8.1. As long as the older hard drive is selected for partition deletion(s) and reformatting, the Windows installation should go normally.

My Problem

Never used the optical drive on my old Macbook so I figured I would replace it with a HDD. Heard about doing this online so I thought I would give it a shot. Having an extra 2.5 inch HDD lying around was also good motivation.

My Fix

Good and bad. I did not realize there were so many screws in a Macbook. Sadly I ended up stripping one really badly so it did not get put back in.

If you don't have the proper screw driver for this ... be sure to buy it here. I was lucky since I had one from a tool box.

My Advice

Have a mason jar or something handy that you can put all the screws into. I almost lost a few several times.

Be gentle when working on your macbook. Don't yank, pull or force anything. If something isen't moving ... there is probably a screw you missed somewhere.

Book about one to two hours. It's not a difficult job ... it's just that there are a lot of screws.

My Problem

My son gave me a MacBook Pro 3,1 that he said had become unusable. I replaced the HDD with a 480 GB SSD and upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 6GB. The optical drive was not working and I wanted to replace it with a HDD. Problem: the optical drive used a PATA connection and large PATA drives are essentially non-existent. The iFixit adapter accepting a SATA drive was a perfect fit.

My Fix

Opening the laptop was routine. The only tedious part was moving mounting hardware from the optical drive to the adapter. Everything fit perfectly! I put in a 1TB HDD and then used the OS X (El Capitan) terminal to quickly combine the SSD and HDD into a 1.48 TB Fusion Drive. A restoration from the Time Machine completed the transformation. While not a screamer with a decade old processor and FSB and RAM typical of that era, the resulting laptop performs better than new with over 15 times the storage capacity.

My Advice

Check the required interfaces before starting. While specs always include the capacities or speeds, they often omit the interfaces and the default choices change over time.

My Problem

MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.16 Ghz 4GB RAM 240GB Intel SSD 160GB Apple HDD..... Screen Bezel clips were broken and wanted to change color from black to white. Also wanted a dual hard drive as I had recently purchased an SSD to speed up my MacBook C2D and wanted to run three Mac OS's as well as a copy of Windows 10.

My Fix

Took less than 45 minutes to complete both repairs. The simple guides at ifixit helped me along the way.

My Advice

Take your time. Read twice if necessary. And have fun fixing!

My Problem

I got a used 2007 Macbook Core 2 Duo a couple years ago. When I got it the SuperDrive wasn't reading discs, so one of the first things I did was replace it. However, as that era of SuperDrives were notoriously faulty, my new SuperDrive also failed, so bad that I had to pry a DVD out of it with tweezers. Left a nasty scratch but thankfully the disc still plays.

Anyway, a after having a useless drive for over a year, my HDD started to go out, so I decided to replace the optical drive while I replace the HDD.

My Fix

I used ifixit's HD enclosure and life saving guide to install my new 750GB HD where my broken optical drive had been, and while I was at it I replaced my old HD with a new 90GB SSD. For daily tasks, my 2007 Macbook now feels lightning fast, especially compared to previous performance. Very happy to be making use of all the space in the laptop after having a dead drive for so long.

The repair went super smoothly. Thanks to ifixit's guides I am now fairly familiar with the inside of my Macbook. Best of all I didn't lose any screws this time!

My Advice

Best way to speed up an old MacBook without losing storage space: Put a SSD where the HD was and a HD where the optical drive was.

My Problem

I have other more powerful desktops in the house and office but for some reason I continue to want to use my MacBook Pro it is my workhorse. Well, my work horse has been acting a little like an old mare for the past year, so I decided to upgrade the RAM an solve other problems. Adding more hard drive space was the last thing I needed to do.

My Fix

With the step by step walkthroughs provided by iFixit I had the confidence to do the work that would have cost an arm and a leg to fix using a repair shop or the Apple store

My Advice

The only advice I can probably gig that I sure everyone has heard before is, read all the instructions BEFORE you start!

My Problem

I never use my DVD drive anymore and when I travel I still prefer to take my MacBook Pro with me vs my windows laptop. So I wanted to boost the performance on this little guy.

My Fix

The repair guide went smoothly. Because I was replacing the optical drive with an ssd I was focused on making it a fusion drive since my MacBook runs 10.9. It was smooth sailing.

My Advice

I would say get a recovery USB of the is you want to install, as there won't be a DVD drive to rescue you in case you thought you'd just use the original Mac discs. I also realized after creating the fusion drive that I needed to use a trim application for my brand new fusion ssd drive.