SSD in 2011 MBP "Magically" FIXED when running Black Magic Speed Test

I have just undergone one of the strangest twists of fate in all of my days of personal computing and am utterly dumbfounded. There doesn't seem to exist a forum post anywhere within Google's field of view that mentions anything like this, so here goes...

Macbook Pro Late 2011 (8,2) running 10.8.5 currently, 16GB ram, and two Crucial M500 960 GB SSD's, one in the main bay and one inside an OWC Data Doubler aluminum enclosure, lets call them Alpha and Bravo respectively.

I made this upgrade (the two SSD's) a few months ago after doing much research on what sort of SSD's would work best within this system. The install went smooth but one of the last steps--re-plugging the motherboard to optical drive cable--seemed a bit chincy, as if the female receptacle on the optibay was blown out a bit and it didn't seem to seat properly: it felt loose. I only began to consider it a problem after I had to re-open the laptop to check the serial #'s (the two drive were identical) to see which drive I had installed where when attempting to choose the boot drive, and that small cable seemed to have unseated just a hair. Maybe it was just my neurosis. I still have no idea.

Anyhow, after getting everything up and running... I noticed no problems with the Alpha drive, it was blazing like a champ (Black Magic Speed Test had it topping out at 513 mb/s, a HUGE upgrade from the stock 5400 rpm dinosaur it replaced.) The Bravo drive tested out the same. All is well, right?

note: anyone with knowledge of this setup might be shaking there head at this point due to my decision to install TWO 6G drives in the machine even after OWC recommends against it in this model due to the inconsistencies with the MBP 2011 erratically throttling down 6G drives to 1.5 (and worse) link speeds. But I must stress that many batches of 2011 MBP's that shipped late in the year and beyond had been quietly upgraded to have that 6G capable connector in that spot and I was sure to verify BEFORE attempting any of this that I was lucky enough to have one of those MBP's. System Report had my optical drive at 6 gigabit link speeds.

Needless to say soon after install and those first Black Magic tests it became clear something was very wrong with the Bravo configuration. Erratic reads and writes (would do 2 gb in a few seconds then endless beach-balling), there would be hanging, any large file count writing to the drive would timeout and ultimately truncate--sometimes the drive would disappear altogether!

Called everyone, Crucial, OWC, Apple... searched high and low on Google. There wasn't enough people out there with this same configuration that I could compare notes with, and there was no consensus on the problem. It certainly didn't seem to be a drive problem. It didn't seem to be a problem with system settings or parameters because I had taken great care to execute the ideal set of terminal commands to accommodate the SSD setup in OSX. I kept going back to that connector that seemed chincy. But was it the optibay's receptacle that was at fault or the apple connector that shipped with the MBP?? And since I was lucky enough to have one of the 6G connectors in that model MBP, simply ordering a new connector seemed like a waste of time and money--after talking to Apple ad nauseum on this subject, there was simply no way I could verify before buying that I would be getting an identically equipped connector to test out...

So I just let it slide. Didn't have the time to gut the computer again (as I had just started a different job that was keeping me busy 90hrs/wk) and swap in the old 5400 for the Bravo drive. And even though they are only a measley $15 on ebay, I didn't have the stomach to just start importing those small connectors from Hong Kong to see if any did the trick. One 960 GB SSD was an upgrade as it is and I just made do with that until I had the time to re address the situation.

PS, although I thought of doing it, upgrading the firmware on the Bravo drive to mu3.0 just didn't work out after my first go at it, because I couldn't get the boot disk to work on a flash drive and i don't have a working optical drive at the moment. OH, the irony!

So today I was clearing space on the Alpha drive in prep for a Holiday out of the country (during which I will likely be dumping massive amounts of RAW photos to the MBP.) In the past few months when I have had the time to await the sluggishness of writing to the Bravo drive I have employed it as a sort of backup to my backups so I decided to do a couple of large writes to it today. Moved 100gb dropbox folder to it and a 200 gb iphoto library I hardly access anymore. And again... the sluggishness... I thought it would take all day. Also, it should be noted that I initiated both of these writes simultaneously. After a few moments of writing at full speed (maybe 2-3 GB's written) the Copy dialog box in Finder listed "2 days" time remaining. Then "3 days"... ugh. The dropbox "moving dropbox" progress bar had stalled at 1k out of 100k files....

There would be spurts of writing. A couple more GB's would cross over and then another full stop on both writes...

NOW HERE'S THE GOOD PART:

Out of mild frustration, I booted up Black Magic Speed Test in the middle of these two writes and selected Bravo as target disk. Bang, the ticker was off to the races at 473 mb/s and rising, and I kind of half raised my eyebrows and clicked back over to check the status of the the two writes. They were BLAZING. I was in shock.

And what is better... as the Black Magic Speed Test seems to take 10-15 minutes to test every possible scenario of reading and writing... this super fast speed did not timeout, lag or beach ball at all for the remainder of those two writes 300 GB's later (maybe 5-10 minutes tops?) it was as if there were never any problems at all with that Bravo SSD in the optibay... WEIRD.

So what gives? It seems clear to me that whatever is causing issue with this drive in this configuration is strictly software related. There is some sort of OSX level bottleneck being imposed that is entirely artificial. Is this not the case?? I imagine the circumstances would be the same were it not a Crucial M500 SSD, any 6G SSD in this configuration would likely give the same results... I have tried this repeatedly since this morning and I can assure you I have not been drinking... This $h!t works. Still can't fix the mysterious abrupt and uncalled for unmounting that the drive still is prone to do... but Heavens to BETSY! Seriously, ANY input anyone has would be much appreciated!

"Running Black Magic Speed Test Simultaneously With Any Reads/Writes Temporarily Cures my SSD in Optibay Woes."