Chosen Solution

Hi everyone, Although this question had been posed previously here, I’m still searching the reason why I simply cannot place my additional SSD drive inside my Macbook Pro early 2011 . I’m presenlty using this drive as an external one, but USB connection everybody knows is hard to use. This way, anyone availble who might had same issue and found a solution in his case would be appreciated. I’ve used this drive inside my previous macbook late 2008 and worked perfectly. Any clues??? Thank you very much indeed. Rgds Marco

Make sure you have formatted the drive GUID and Mac OS X journaled. The drive will work externally on just about any type format but not internally. UPDATE This model and the 2012 model had a lot of problems with the hard drive IR cable especially when upgrading to faster drives. I would suggest replacing that cable with the one from the 2012 MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Mid 2012) Hard Drive Cable

If you don’t mind losing your DVD drive, or at least making that external: mac sales has the part you need: macsales and a suitable SSD will do the trick - they have combos If you go down this route, check first what speed the DVD is connected at (3 or 6G) as the 3G SSD’s will be slightly cheaper. To do this:

  • bring up System Information… Opt-Click on Apple MenuGo to SATA/SATA ExpressHighlight the Intel Series Chipset entry above the Optical drive Speed is displayed Just remember that your battery life will decrease a bit, depending on usage

@bellarosa Hold on here! Depending on the exact model of your system you can encounter an issue with the optical drives clocking. So a fixed speed SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) drive or even an auto sense drive {one that is able to run in either SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) or SATA III (6.0 Gb/s)} won’t work! If its one of the red marked systems in the notes at the bottom of the OWC Data Doubler you’ll need get a fixed SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) SSD for it to work. Forget about looking at the System Report info as it will tell you the port can support SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) but it really can’t. You see Apple messed up the clock timing of the CPU which then mis-times the PCH. As it turns out the added logic Apple put into place on the HD port for HD crash guard smoothed out the glitch so that port will work at SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) speed unlike the optical drives. MacBook Pro Early/Late 2011 (MacBookPro8,1) 2.3 GHz (Core i5) or 2.7 GHz (Core i7) Will Work!2.4GHz (Core i5) or 2.8GHz (Core i7) Won’t work! Check your SSD spec sheet to see what it says.