After five long years with my original white MacBook and given the fact that Lion won't support its 32 bit Core Duo processor, I decided it was time for a new laptop. As I was really pleased with the form factor of my old 13" MacBook (after all, I have a big screen iMac upstairs) I ordered the new 13" MacBook Pro. Now there was one thing that really bothered me: I had this nifty fast 64GB SSD (Supertalent Ultradrive ME) in my old MacBook that I really didn't want to give up and I couldn't bear anything in my new laptop being slower than in the old one. On the other hand, 64GB on a new machine seemed far to little (and larger SSDs are still not really affordable). So the only solution was to order an adapter for the optical drive bay to keep the 320GB HDD while adding the SSD as a fast drive for the system and applications. Here's how I did it.
At first, the SSD needed a fresh start. To really erase all data and reset the internal block allocation tables (i.e. to bring it back to full speed), you need to to a security erase on the device. There exist a lot of ugly windows tools for that, but I went the following way: Using an Ubuntu boot CD, I booted Linux on my old MacBook (by holding c on startup) and went to the console. The following commands should have been enough to reset the SSD:
hdparm --security-set-pass NULL /dev/sda
hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sda
However, all I got was an Input/Output error. That's because something (probably the EFI) locks the internal drive on boot and prevents this kind of commands for it. The solution sound dangerous, but works without a problem: Just pull the SSD out while the computer is still running, then plug it back in and it won't be locked anymore so you can fire up those hdparm commands.
Next was preparing the optical drive bay. This step was quite easy: The SSD just needs to be plugged in. To fix it, I used a small strip of tape and two hair ties (don't ask).
Now to the exciting part - voiding the warranty on day one. First, I got something to collect all those little screws. I used a milk tooth jar (again, don't ask). Then I removed all the screws on the back side of the macbook.
After removing the back cover, you can directly see the optical drive and the 3 flat cables which need to be unplugged first. To prevent electrostatic discharge, during the whole procedure, I touched a grounded spot every few seconds.
To remove the optical drive, a small plastic part carrying the wifi chip and the speaker needs to be lifted a bit. Fortunately, no antenna cables have to be removed, just 3 screws. This part needs to be shifted to the right just enough to unscrew one of the 3 screws that hold the optical drive. The other two screws are easy to find and reach. After they have been removed, the drive can be carefully lifted out.
That's it for the hard part, I thought, but unfortunately the optical drive adapter I bought wasn't really suited for the 13" MacBook Pro. Using a saw and a file, I needed to remove some of the plastic on the front side of the "drive" before it fit (see the image below). I was a bit supprised that the drive bay didn't need any screws, but as it's not a moving part and the little plastic thing with the wifi chip and the speaker on it presses it into its position, it seems quite stable.
After assembling everything, I started up the MacBook and to my suprise, everything still worked. I then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the original drive to the SSD, formated the HDD and set up some symlinks (for example the Movies and Downloads folder) to point from my home directory (which is located on the SSD) to the HDD. Finally, I set the SSD as the startup drive and rebooted. Voilà: Super fast and not too expensive while still offering enough space. The only drawback: There's no optical drive anymore, but I can't remember when I used that the last time on my old MacBook...
PS: Sorry for the bad image quality. I only had my iPhone 3GS at hand.