MacBook Pro :: Weight Advantage For Removing Optical Drive?
Apr 23, 2010
A bit silly perhaps, but I was curious if anyone has ever considered removing the optical drive on their MBP in order to save weight. If you do not use it, and don't need to attach a 2nd HD inside, can you not just simply remove it and make your MBP lighter?I looked around for some specs on the internal drive but could not find how much it weighed. Anyone know?The gains would be minimal but hey every little bit helps right? I mean if it's a couple hundred grams that's almost half a pound.
I'm wondering if it would be possible to fit an extra 1.8" sata ssd in my macbookpro 15" without removing the optical drive. This way i can keep my 500GB storage and move the OS to a 128Gb ssd. I was hoping to stick a 1.8" ssd on to my standard hdd. since the 1.8" is only 5mm thick. This would require a new sata cable from the motherboard to my 2.5" and to my 1.8" I'm not sure this exists. Does anybody think this is possible? or not?
I have a late 2009 macbook pro unibody 15" and I hardly use the optical drive, in fact that startup whine is really annoying, would it be harmful if I just removed the drive completly and not leave anything plugged in?
I was thinking of removing my DVD Superdrive and adding a SSD drive. Will I be able to put the DVD drive in an enclosure and use it as an external drive?
The manual states to lift the latch and pull out the bay. The latch is lifted but the tray feels like it's still stuck on something. I've never worked on a Pro before and obviously don't want to break anything. How much force is needed
Being all of my life a 'PC' user with knowledge I now realise I have been missing out in life (and neglectful of the prospect) of being a Mac owner. I know this will change everything! I would like to buy the 27" Imac buthave held back because of all the problems related on this forum. What I don't quite understand is what are the main reasons a lot of you are fitting the SSD Drives for and is it worth it?
Which Apple computers are 64-bit? Is the Macbook? I was looking at the info page for snow leopard and it was talking about 64-bit and I was just wondering if I bought a new MacBook now if I would be able to take advantage of it being 64-bit.
So I have a Macbook (late 2008 model), and the optical drive essentially went bye bye. If I put a disc in, it will have trouble recognizing it and then it will eject out. Anyways, last night, I did some maintenance on OnyX and it said that my volume needs to be repaired. Even Disc Utility failed to finish and said that the "filesystem verify or repair failed."
The short of it, I need to put the Leopard disc in there and do a disc repair. However, is there a way, via firewire, where I could actually use my iMac's optical disc drive in place of the Macbook and connect via firewire, then do the disc repair? If so, what would be the specific way to do this?
I went to Apple store yesterday. I want a new MBA badly. Only problem is the memory of current model is 2G only not expandable. The guy in the shop has no idea when new MBA will be released.
I was looking at new 13" or 15" Macbook Pro, I like it, and wonder since I don't use DVD that much, is it possible to take the drive out and reduce weight a lot?
as an extension to my question regarding RAM utilization, I've decided to upgrade my RAM. I went through the process of removing the underside of my MBP. After taking the screws out and mentally marking which slot they came out of (some are of different size), I pulled the lid up at the black trim area (the "neck" of the display mount) as this was the easiest way to get a non-damaging grip on the metal underside -- read: I avoided using a screw driver on the lid. As I started to lift, I was surprised at the amount of force I needed to use in order to remove the lid; something near the center of the cover was still holding the lid to the underside of the body. In fact, the amount of force I needed to use made me pause to question if I missed an important step other than simply removing the screws. I decided to "go for it" and applied more pressure while pulling the lid up and away from the body and heard a "pop" noise.
Is it possible to take advantage of my external monitor's built in speakers when my MBP is plugged into it? (The monitor is a TV as well). If so, what sort of connector do you imagine I'd need?
I have a MacbookPro. The factory fitted DVD/CD drive plays dvds fine but spits out CDs [even originals]. I have Windows XP installed via bootcamp which doesn't cause me any problems.
My next Mac will be a laptop, and I will NEVER need the Macbook pro's power. I just web-surf and listen to music mostly. I only use the optical drive to watch dvds. But I have a separate player for my much larger TV now. So for say 99 percent of the time, an optical drive would be unnecessary. But I would buy apple's separate optical drive; which I think is a good idea. On my present computer, a first generation Mac Mini, the DVD drive is obviously obsolete now, especially when it comes to Blu-Ray. But what if a like in 2 years a new optical format comes out, or at least a much faster version? If I had a Macbook I would be stuck, never being able to upgrade the internal drive. If the Macbook's optical drive was easily upgradable, then this would be a no brainer.
So I have a 2.2GHz SR MBP, and the superdrive just went out on me. It will read and write to CDs, but won't recognize any DVDs that I insert into it. I bought a USB enclosure and DVD drive, and it works fine to read and write to DVDs when in Snow Leopard, but I am unable to boot from it (specifically so I can install Windows 7, but I can't boot SL either). I reboot and and hold down option, and only see Macintosh HD, not the disk I'm trying to boot off. I've cloned SL to my flash drive and I can boot off that fine, but unfortunately I'm unable to do that with Windows...
Any ideas? I've googled it and it seems like booting off a USB optical drive is supported, so I'm unsure why it's not working for me...
I had a MBA. I needed more RAM, higher CPU and larger drive capacity. So I changed to MBP. What I dont need is the optical drive. Apple should ditch the optical drive in MBPs or at least have an option not having an optical. Instead more battery and 2 disk bays.
How do I eject a CD that won't come out of the optical drive on a MacBook Pro . I have tried the ejcct key on the keyboard. There is no longer an eject disk on the drop down menus.
There is the hardware test, but it does not seem to include the Optical drive, I did the extended test and it says that everything is working fine, obviously it is not, everytime I insert a CD/DVD it plays it right, but it does not come out on its own and i have a hard time to get it out somehow, this happen exactly 1 week after the guarantee run out! I have a MacbookPro 15 inch 2.4GHZ, 2GB Ram 250 Hard Drive?
Can I just keep the existing system on my non-SSD HDD, and after having Lion on SSD keep just data and delete the system libraries? Or is it better to format the whole disk and restore data from time machine backup (so it is not fragmented..
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), MacBook Pro 2010
since 2 days my optical drive makes one very strange noise every time in "wake it up" or turn it on. The sound is done three times. I realized today that now I'm not able to put a disc into the drive, instead of "absorving" the disc, the drive expels it.
I want to keep the optical drive constantly spinning. I am running music for a dance recital, and all their music is on CDs and I would prefer not to rip it in. My problem is that for the rehearsals, every time they rehearse a new song, I have to wait minimum 10 seconds for the drive to spin up and load the song. Is there any way I can keep the drive spinning until im done with it? Or a way to temporarily load the CD into RAM?
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.2GHz i7, 8GB RAM
I'm going to purchase a Crucial M4 128GB SSD for my Late 2011 13" i7 Macbook Pro. I don't use my optical drive at all, so I figure I may as well swap that out for my current 750GB HDD, and put the SSD in the main harddrive bay. I know full well how to physically install the respective drives, but my confusion comes when cloning the current HD onto the SSD, then moving all your media files (music, movies, documents etc) over to the HD, while keeping your system files and applications on the SSD.
So what I really need, is a PROPER in depth guide from the start of the setup process (First boot after installation of physical drives) detailing how to copy my system files and applications over to the SSD so I can boot from it, while keeping my data & media files on the HD and being able to access them all as I normally would through finder.
I've installed a Crucial M4 256GB SSD into the traditional hard drive bay of my Mid 2009, Macbook Pro (5,4). I started getting beachballs immediately after the least bit of intensive CPU usage and pinpointed the problem to be the faulty EFI 1.7 firmware update. I then downgraded to EFI 1.6, and the beachballs ceased, but the problem now is that the Hard Drive controller now only allow for up to 1.5 GB/s interfaces. With that, I'm now only using 25% of the speed potential of my SSD, which is quite frankly a waste of money.
I'm thinking of installing an optibay, in place of the optical drive and installing the SSD there, leaving my original hard drive in the original hard drive bay. The problem is, I don't know if this alternative will be worthwhile, as I have no idea how fast the Optical Drive's GB/seconds are. how fast the optical drive connector's GB/seconds is? If it's anything faster than 1.5, I'm definitely purchasing an optical bay for my HD.
I am thinking of buying the new macbook pro with retina display.I do not intend to get and external optical drive.I want to split the hard disk and install a windows 7 ultimate, which I own and have as an CD image ( ISO file ).
how can I install windows from my ISO without burning it into a CD or creating an external drive? is it possible?
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
