xtcian

and i hunted bison afterwards

9/2/10

Okay, it's Labor Day weekend, and none of you will be reading this, and to make matters worse, I'm about to post MY MOST BORING, NICHE, TECHIE POST EVER. Oh, I'll try to make it interesting, I really will, but you will doze off in about three sentences. Your eyelids are already getting heavy. Don't fight it. Just give in.

Because of a tiny, offhand comment yesterday about SSDs (solid state drives), I've gotten a surprising amount of interest in how I replaced the hard drive in my Macbook Pro with a SSD, and the incipit benefits. Lemme say this: best Mac computer mod in my career. And that includes going as Heatmiser for Halloween at Carolina in 1988.

What is an SSD? Glad you asked. You know those little USB "thumb drives" people have, the kind with lots of memory but no moving parts? Those have gotten big enough to run your whole computer, and they can do it so much faster than a regular hard drive. Fast enough that even casual users ought to be interested. Fast enough that you'll actually get more things done, and I don't say that lightly.

Problem is, SSDs are still too fucking expensive. The 500GB ones (as of today) will run you $1599 when you can get the same size storage in a regular hard drive for $45. That's crazy. But sometimes you can get a deal, and I saw a 128GB SSD for $199 (that price has now changed slightly).

(Note to the future: yes, I know this all looks silly, paying all this money for what YOU consider a tiny amount of storage. We're all stuck with our current circumstances, you included, asshole.)

But that's not enough storage. True enough. I currently have over 300GB of stuff on my laptop, including all the Madeline in Paris TV shows I downloaded for Lucy. But there's a sneaky way to get away with it, which I first discovered from the fine folks at Lifehacker.

Unless you're still getting your Netflix DVDs mailed to you, and you're watching all your movies on your laptop, you probably never use your CD/DVD (optical) drive except for occasionally installing big programs. MCE Technologies has this great thing called the Optibay, which allows you to remove the optical drive and put in a regular hard drive instead. They also include an "enclosure" for your optical drive, so you can still hook it up to a USB port if you need it.

Wait, so your laptop has TWO hard drives now? Yes. One of them is the 128GB SSD in the main bay, which has Mac OS X system on it, as well as all my applications. The other, bigger drive, has all the files (documents, music, movies, etc.) and they work together. Not only does it make your computer go a billion miles an hour, but this way you have 628GB at your disposal.

Fine. Do you need a degree in spine surgery from John's Hopkins to perform this task? No, in fact, figuratively, all you need is balls. You have to be cool with opening your computer and keeping track of some tiny screws. I happen to love that sort of thing, but it may not be your cup of tea. But remember, nobody on their deathbed ever said "I'm sure glad I never saw the inside of my computer."

That sounds vaguely awesome. Let me ruminate on that awhile. You do that. And have a great Labor Day weekend. You're done reading this entry.

*shuffle shuffle shuffle, hubbub hubbub hubbub*

Um... a couple of us are still here and want to know how to do this for reals. What are the steps?

• okay, first read the thread over at MacObserver.com for a specific overview. They're talking about a 48GB SSD "memory stick" but the exact same rules apply.

• First off, if you just want to swap out your hard drive for an SSD, just buy a SSD that has enough memory (and will fit in your computer), clone your current drive onto it with Carbon Copy Cloner, and shove it in there by watching any of the many videos out there. Just make sure the video is concerning your specific laptop.

• If you want to do what I did, then get two things: an SSD big enough to hold your system folder and applications (80GB should be plenty) and the Optibay.

• Back everything up before you start. Seriously. De-authorize your computer from iTunes, Audible, Photoshop, and whatever else you've got, so you can authorize it back in a few hours. Adobe has a "suspend activation" button that works nicely.

• Open up your laptop and remove your optical drive. Then take out your old hard drive as well, put it into the Optibay, and install it where the optical drive was.

• Install the new SSD where your old hard drive was. Close up your computer and restart - the computer should find your old hard drive, so nothing looks amiss. Using Disk Utility, erase/format your new SSD (the default setting should be "GUID Partition Table"). Then put your old optical drive into MCE's enclosure, pop in the Mac OS X install disc, and do a fresh install of the system onto the SSD. NOT ONTO YOUR OLD HARD DRIVE. THAT WOULD BE BAD.

• Now restart. It should use the SSD since it's in the primary bay. And it should be so fast that you'll be stunned. Run Software Update at least twice.

• Here's the nutty part. You need to change the location of your "home" folder so that documents get saved on your old hard drive. Go to System Prefs -> Accounts -> (click lock to make changes) -> control-click on your account at left to bring up "Advanced Options" -> change the location of your "home directory" to your user folder on the old hard drive - click OK.

• Now re-install all your applications onto the SSD - some of them can be dragged over from your old hard drive, but try not to do that if you can help it.

• Once you're convinced you've got all the applications you want to keep, take the plunge and delete everything on your old hard drive EXCEPT for the "Users" folder. Now your old hard drive will no longer have a System on it, it'll just be a shelf for your files. You're done. Do a shot of Jaegermeister.

Posted by Ian Williams at September 2, 2010 11:46 PM