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Hey there, I put a SanDisk SDSSDHP256G in the optical bay SATA hard drive enclosue in my late 2011 MBP. (1) On start up there is a error massage that the drive couldn’t be initialized. So in the disk utility I format the SSD to journaled (extended) and when I restart, the same problem occurs and the SSD is unformatted again. (2) When I use the Partition Tab and apply one partition, after a restart the SSD isn’t being recognized and even won’t show up in the Disk Utility! With a SMC + a PRAM/NVNRAM reset the SSD will be in state (1) again. Any help or suggestions? I run Mountain Lion with the latest updates. P.S. I put the same SSD model into an early 2008 MacBook and that just works fine.

This series of system has a PATA optical drive so the I/O through it will be slow. You have the best configuration for this system now. As to why it wouldn’t boot up the other way around was due to the SSD being too fast for the firmware boot logic when you had it in the optical bay carrier. The SATA link speed being reported is what the I/O is to the converter logic within the carrier not the link as a whole. In fact it’s lying to you as the links limit is the PATA ports limit (slowest part of the total link). It is what it is here, sorry. But look at the bright side of things you have quick loading OS & Apps! From the SSD. As for TRIM that doesn’t effect speed only how the OS recovers space on the SSD (a good thing!) I would cleanup the HD in any case as a drive that full tends to frag up more. Do you have a defrag app like Drive Genius? if not I would get one. I like Drive Genius as it offers more than just defrag it’s my swiss army knife when it comes to HD & SDD storage maintenance.

Put the new drive into the 2008 machine and do your formatting and partitioning. Let us know if your problem persists. From SanDisk: Formatting on a Mac computer How do I format my device using a Mac computer? WARNING: Formatting will erase all data on the device. Back up all your data before proceeding. NOTE: When using a memory card, it is recommended to reformat the card in the camera instead of formatting it through your computer. To format a device on your Mac OS X:

  1. Double-click on Macintosh HD - or in the Finder menu click File > New Finder Window
  2. Click the Applications folder - if using a Finder Window Applications will be in the left side menu.
  3. Click the Utilities folder.
  4. Double-click Disk Utility.
  5. On the left side of the window are the drives connected to the computer. Select the capacity of the drive respective to the one containing the device you wish to format then click the Erase tab. Example: If the drive is called “NO NAME”, directly above that, you should see the drive capacity of “XXXX”. Select this capacity.
  6. Verify Volume Format is set to MS-DOS file system or exFAT, then click Erase. NOTE: exFAT can be used on flash drives to transfer files larger than 4GB. exFAT is used on SDXC card (64GB and higher). NOTE: MAC OS 10.6.2 or higher is required for exFAT file system. Some older operating systems must have a patch installed before they can use the exFAT file system.

You must know if your optical bay kit Supports: SATA 6G Interface because that’s the transfer speed of that drive. If your kit doesn’t you’ll get read/write/formatting errors… sounds like yours doesn’t so either you must find one that will, or use a drive with a SATA speed it can handle. If this Answer is helpful please remember to return and mark it Accepted.

SOLVED : SSD SATA III working in Optical Drive now. Followed Erick McWayne solution above and it worked for me. I have a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011) - 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7. I have a EVO 850 SSD as main drive and a 500 GB HDD in “Optical Drive”, But it was taking too much battery/ too much noise. I put a new Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SATA III SSD in optical drive. For some reason it was not working. After reading the post above, I realized that my caddy is not SATA III compatible. So I clicked on the link provided https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FM… It looked exactly like my previous caddy but something inside, a chip or something is new. Make sure seller is “HIGHFINE”. NOTE : After installing new Caddy in optical drive with SSD Sata III, I started computer and was able to see SSD in DISK UTILITY. I initialized/ formatted it. BUT drive was showing in some weird small size. I restarted Laptop and it came on FINE.