Iowa TechTalk

Most laptops anymore come with anywhere from 250-500 GB of hard drive space. For most users this is PLENTY of space, but for people who like to dabble in IT, you can quickly find yourself running out of room. Those who are desktop owners know that 1 and 2 TB drives are readily available already, and 3 TB drives are starting to be released. For those of us who are mobile warriors and use laptops only, the largest readily available (and affordable) drives are 640 GB drives. 1 TB laptop drives are becoming available, however the cost is extremely high at this point and in most cases, isn’t worth it to gain a meager 500 GB of additional space.

So, what’s a laptop user to do who is running out of precious storage space? Going through and cleaning up unnecessary files is a good starting place, but that will only get you so far. A week ago I found myself cleaning off the 500 GB hard drive in my MacBook Pro yet again and thought “there has to be a better way”. External hard drives are readily available and are quite affordable (I have one myself for Time Machine backups) but you see a big performance drop on these drives compared to internal hard drives. Plus, in many cases you can’t run an operating system from an external hard drive so it would only be good for data storage, not running Mac OS X or Windows. So I began to research options and decided that the best option for me was to remove the DVD/RW drive from my MacBook Pro and replace it with a 2nd Hard Drive. Some users would balk at this idea, after all how will you watch movies or load software without your optical drive?? I gave it serious consideration and came to the conclusion that I only used my optical drive on average 2-4 times per month. I also own a very nice LG external DVD/RW drive (same speed as my internal optical drive) so I chose to throw that in my laptop bag and go through with replacing the internal drive with a 2nd hard drive.

I quickly found that this type of modification is one that is done quite frequently to the MacBook Pro. Some people like myself simply need more space. Others choose to add a like sized hard drive and setup a RAID for data redundancy. There are even people who add in a smaller SSD (Solid State Disk) and load their operating system onto it and use a standard hard drive for data storage. SSD’s tend to be faster than standard hard drives (albeit astronomically more expensive) so it is usually only feasible to pick up a smaller one, say 64 GB, and load Mac OS X or Windows onto it for faster boot times. My research showed me that I basically had 2 options: I could buy adapters and splice wires and put together a solution on my own for a very small cost (maybe $5 in parts) or I could spend a little money and buy a drive caddy that simply snaps into the system. I’m not one to shy away from making custom modifications, but when it comes to splicing wires on an expensive Apple laptop, no thank you!

There are a few manufacturers of these caddy’s that offer different options at various prices. The option that I went with from NewModeUS only ended up costing me $42 in parts. Click here to see the caddy that I purchased for my laptop. The other option that seemed reasonable was a product from MCE Technologies (Click here to view). It had a higher price but for many users this may actually be the way to go. Their drive caddy costs $99, however it also includes a USB enclosure for your optical drive so you can use it instead of having to purchase an external optical drive. In my case, I already had an external drive so this wasn’t a selling point for me. MCE also offers fairly affordable hard drives along with their caddy’s. For anywhere from $149 to $249 you can purchase the caddy, the external enclosure for your internal optical drive, and a 320 – 750 GB hard drive. In my case, I still had the original 250 GB hard drive that came with my MacBook Pro, so for the purposes of testing out the solution to see if it was right for me, I went with the caddy only $42 option from NewModeUS.

When my caddy arrived in the mail I performed one last Time Machine backup (just in case!) and took the shell off the bottom of my MacBook Pro. For those of you with the Mid-2009 or later models, this is easier than prior models as there is only one panel to remove that is secured by 10 screws. Here is a picture of the panel on the bottom of my laptop:

Once you have the bottom of the laptop taken off, you have access to everything you need. There are 3 screws that hold the optical drive into the MacBook Pro and all 3 are easily accessible. There is a cable that runs along the optical drive for the LCD display however it is easily moved out of the way so you can remove the optical drive. Here is a picture of the inside of the laptop prior to removing the optical drive (the optical drive is in the lower right corner):

Once you remove the optical drive, it is time to insert your additional hard drive into the new caddy. The drive must be inserted at a slight angle so that you are able to connect the SATA connectors, then it snaps down. Here is a picture of my 250 GB hard drive installed into the drive caddy:

Once the drive is inserted, we install the caddy into the laptop. The one thing that I was nervous about was that there is only 1 screw to hold the caddy into the unit instead of the 3 that held in the optical drive. The opening for the drive caddy is fairly compact though and really only provides just enough room for the caddy itself, so movement does not appear to be an issue. Here is a picture of the drive caddy installed into the unit (drive caddy is in lower right corner):

After the caddy is installed you simply re-attach the bottom cover of the MacBook Pro, boot up the system, and use Disk Utility to format the hard drive. In my scenario, I previously had my 500 GB hard drive partitioned and part of it was being used by Windows 7 (Boot Camp) so I took this opportunity to move Windows 7 over to the new 250 GB hard drive and re-expand my 500 GB hard drive to one 500 GB partition. This freed up plenty of space on my 500 GB hard drive to be used by Mac OS X, and now I also have plenty of space for Windows 7 as well on the 250 GB hard drive. Here is a nice screen shot from OS X showing off the results of my hard work:

All in all this took me about 30 minutes of actual work (not including researching the drive caddy options). I would say most users probably will want to go with the slightly more expensive option from MCE Technologies since most people don’t have the luxury of having an external DVD/RW and 250 GB laptop hard drive just sitting around collecting dust If you don’t need an optical drive and/or already have your own hard drive then the more affordable option from NewModeUS is definitely the way to go.

So, was the upgrade worth it? After 1 week I can honestly say, yes it has definitely been worth it! I now have plenty of free space on both hard drives, and now that I know how “easy” the modification is, I wouldn’t hesitate to upgrade both hard drives in the future as bigger drives become available and drop in price. Ideally I would like to replace my Mac OS X hard drive with a 1 or 2 TB drive and then use the 500 GB hard drive that I currently have for Windows. I live in Mac OS X 95% of the time so I have a much greater need for storage space for it. I generally only use Windows 7 when I absolutely need a Windows computer for work, so 250 GB of space is probably more than I would ever need, but if I’m ever going to replace the 500 GB why not move it over to Windows?

Lastly, would I recommend someone else do this to their own system? That really has to be answered on a case by case basis. Some people are very technically inclined and will find this modification to be mere child’s play. Nothing that I came across during the installation process was something that I would consider to be difficult, however if you are not comfortable maneuvering around inside of a laptop then I would say you probably don’t want to do this on your own. If you are comfortable with it though I would say it is definitely a VERY cost effective method to gain additional storage space and is well worth it!