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Level 1

11 points

Is My MBP MID 2012 13IN Hard Drive (Samsung 860 EVO) Compatible If installed with OWC Data Doubler in Optical Drive Bay?

What I want to do:

I want to move my main SSD (Samsung 860 EVO) to the the OWC data doubler install it in the optical bay and install a new SSD into a hard drive bay (Samsung 860 PRO).

Heres the situation:

OWC says that the Apple factory hardware does not reliably support a 6G (6Gb/s) Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive in the optical bay of 2011 and 2012 MacBook Pros, The optical bay interface may either be SATA Revision 2.0 3Gb/s (300MB/s max) OR SATA Revision 3.0 6Gb/s. There is no way to specify/order this data interface with Apple, but you can confirm what interface version your optical bay offers by using 'About this Mac, More Info, Serial-ATA' info display.

My questions:

Has anyone used this configuration before?
Has anyone installed a SATA lll SSD with data doubler into the hard drive bay of this type of macbook and had no problems?
Is my current configuration compatible?

My current device configurations:

Posted on Mar 10, 2021 3:41 AM

Best reply

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,762 points

Posted on Mar 10, 2021 8:49 AM

There is no way to specify/order this data interface with Apple, but you can confirm what interface version your optical bay offers by using 'About this Mac, More Info, Serial-ATA' info display.

My confirmation:

Both System Information and the MacTracker database show that the MacBook Pro9,2 (I own the same one, also upgraded but with the OWC SSD) has having SATA 6GB/sec buses for both the HDD bay and the optical drive bay.

MacTracker:

Your system information screenshot:

and my MBP 2012 non-Retina 13-inch:

show the same information except for the brand of optical drive.

The 1.5 GB value in the "Negotiated Link Speed" is clocked back by the optical drive, which is slow anyway. The line above that correctly shows the max link speed as 6GB/sec that the system reports.

However, I need my optical drive a bit longer so I have not tried putting another drive in its place.

👉🏻 You can test by temporarily putting your current SSD in the optical bay with double-sided tape and see if SI shows the negotiated speed jumping to 6GB/sec. If it does, get the Data Doubler for a secure mounting. That is the best data you can get on what speed is supported.

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Is My MBP MID 2012 13IN Hard Drive (Samsung 860 EVO) Compatible If installed with OWC Data Doubler in Optical Drive Bay?

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