Adding SSD-drive to Macbook pro

Lately I wanted to speed up my unibody Macbook pro laptop by adding SSD-drive. Since large ssd drives cost a fortune and I almost never use the dvd-drive, I decided to install ssd in place of dvd-drive.

Since the dvd-drive is bigger than regular hd, adapter needs to be installed. After some Googling I found company called Mcetech, which sells these adapters but with very steep price. I thought for a while to build my own adapter, until I noticed that ebay is filled with these for low $9.99 price from various chinese suppliers.

After receiving the adapter and 120GB OCZ SSD-drive it was time to start working. The setup I wanted was to have operating system on SSD-drive and home-directory on the old (large) drive. Not to make things too easy I’m using filevault (encryption) on my home directory. Since figuring out the steps required to make this all work were not exactly easy to come up with, I decided to write short post for someone struggling with same problems.

1. Since Timemachine backups can’t be restored on smaller drive (even if it has necessary space available) for some stupid reason, alternate route must be followed. Start by booting from OS X dvd and connect ssd-drive to computer using for example external hd enclosure.
2. Do regular os x installation to ssd-drive.
3. Install the ssd to dvd-adapter and install the adapter in place of dvd-drive.
4. After installation is completed create new user for each user on your old drive that are using filevault. Be sure to use exactly same user names.
5. On System preferences, accounts section right-click each of these created users and select “Advanced options…” (You need to open the lock first to access this menu). On advanced settings change home directory to point the existing directory on old hd.
6. Use “Migration assistant” to transfer applications, settings and users that do not have file vault enabled from old drive to ssd-drive.
7. After rebooting, check that all the stuff was copied correctly. When satisfied, you can delete everything except the home directories from old hd.

I’m not sure if this is an optimal method, but in this way, you can always revert to your old drive if something goes wrong, since no changes are made to it until the new install is working.