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Mid 2012 model, A1278 / 2.5 GHz i5 or 2.9 GHz i7 processor.

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Can I use an ssd and hdd together to get better performance?

Hi! I'm curious about something. I want to replace my optical drive with my old hdd drive from my macbook pro since I just recently replaced it with a ssd. my question is after I install the hdd with a caddy what steps do I take to set it up in my Mac. do I partition it and will that make then both run together as duel systems and make the system run better? or do I just have to use it as a second storage device? please let me know! thank you!

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Awesome thanks as always Dan! Thanks for the help with all my trouble this last week or two! You’ve revived my MacBook! Appreciate all the help!

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Well, things aren’t that simple!

The HD bay SATA port offers HD crash guard protection so moving it to the optical drives SATA port will lose that so that’s not smart.

So what is the performance difference between the SATA ports? None! So putting the SSD into the optical bay won’t be an issue.

OK, the next is the elephant in the room! Does it make sense having a dual drive setup? Laptop PCH chips are not designed with the higher I/O a desktop PCH chip offers so while you can run two drives the collective total performance is not worth dual drives in a RAID setup and having different technologies also has a bearing here as well as you really can’t RAID them.

That only leaves having two drives (partitions) so you will constantly need to move your files around making space as you want to leave at least 1/4 of the SSD (boot drive) free for the OS to use for virtual RAM and cacheing and depending on your applications they will also have caching and scratch space needs too. That over time will be a pain!

So… I strongly recommend not wasting your monies trying to save your HD. You can get at BestBuy for $180 USD! Samsung - 870 QVO 2TB which is what I would do! Leaving the optical drive alone.

One last point a dual drive will require more power so if you are on battery your run time will be a bit less. HD’s also need more power than the SSD even a bigger one!

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Alright thanks Dan? Would it be bad to just use it as extra storage rather than a second operating system?

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@xstreamgamerdad - I didn't say you couldn't do it, its just a matter of what you have to work with and getting the best bang for the buck.

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Joshua crwdns2934231:0crwdne2934231:0
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