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Dual internal Drives in a MacBook Pro with “OWC Data Doubler” Bracket
Related: hard drive, laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Other World Computing, RAID, SSD
OWC’s Data Doubler $64.99 drive bracket for the MacBook Pro is now shipping. I’ve been using a prototype of this bracket for several months now in my MPG Pro Laptop, and it’s a first rate metal bracket which fits perfectly. (Other such brackets exist, but I have no experience with them).
Here is a handy shopping cart with all the drive I recommend for use with it, and a few related items.
Use of this bracket means removing the internal optical drive. Since many of us have little use for the built-in optical drive, this is a fantastic way to get a lot more storage inside your MacBook Pro (models from recent years only, those with a SATA connector for the optical drive).
You can install the second drive yourself, but you can also just order the MPG Pro Laptop, and get a great system and have OWC install and test it for you. New or existing laptop, OWC can handle it. Order here.
I run my own MacBook Pro Core i7 with dual 200GB solid state drives as a 400GB RAID-0 stripe, for an incredibly responsive 400GB single volume. A popular MPG Pro Laptop configuration is a 240GB SSD + 1TB hard drive. There are many possibilities:
- Dual solid state drives as a single double-speed and double-capacity striped RAID (RAID-0 stripe recommended only with enterprise grade SSDs);
- Dual solid state drives as separate volumes eg Boot and Data;
- An solid state drive (100-480GB), along with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive for extra data storage;
- Dual 500GB hard disk drives as a RAID-1 mirror for reliability (low cost, high reliability!);
- A 500GB hard drive and a 1TB hard drive for maximum storage capacity.
