Replacing a MacBook Pro optical drive with a SSD: stripped screws a-plenty

Older model MacBook Pros typically came with a rotational hard disk and an optical  disk. Some models had a 6Gbps SATA controller for the HDD and a 3Gbps controller on the optical drive bay. It’s worth checking in the System Information tool if the controller for the optical bay is not slower than the HDD bay. If it is then you might want to consider swapping out your HDD for the SDD. If both bays are 6Gbps on both sides, then it’s ok to put an SDD in the optical bay and not limit it’s throughput.

My mid-2012 MBP has 6Gbps on both bays:

HDD:

Optical bay:

 

I used an OWC drive doubler bracket to put my SSD into my optical bay. Here’s the patient open and ready to receive it’s new drive. Existing HDD at the top right, optical drive bay bottom right. The bag of tools comes with the OWC bracket:

 The OWC bracket is more pricey at $29 on Amazon, compared to the cheaper alternatives at < $10, but the difference in price seems to be you get everything you need in be box, including tools, replacement screws, and a manual. The manual is incredibly detailed and covers step by step with photos for each MBP model that the bracket fits. Find you model, follow the steps, done.

The replacement probably should take you less than an hour, but I ran into one of the soft black screws that wouldn’t budge and it stripped pretty much instantly. I tried the elastic band trick, I tried supergluing a screwdriver to the screw.., no good.

Drilling out a stripped screw is probably the last resort, unless you can reach it with a dremel and cut a slot into the top. This one was recessed, so did some reading around and a ‘Grabit’ seemed to be the way to go.

The screw in question for me was the larger one in step #8 in iFixit’s instructions here. The instructions even say:

Take care, as these screws are unusually easy to strip

Yep. I think that should actually say:

These screws are guaranteed to strip. Make sure you have tools at hand to remove them when stripped.

The Grabit Micro #1 and #2 did the job for me. The #1 seemed the one to use. Using the drill end, it took a while to drill a whole into the top of my stripped screw. Flipping the drill bit around to the extraction end, it didn’t catch like it was supposed to. At that point I thought my only option was to drill the screw out, so I swapped the next up size and started slowly drilling, but the drill bit end actually caught inside the hole. Since the drill and extractor ends both turn anticlockwise, it immediately started to remove the screw. Phew!

So hows the SSD? It’s awesome. Whereas before El Capitan seemed to take more than a minute (I hadn’t timed it, but roughly) to cold boot on my i7 2012 MacBook Pro, from a clean install on this SanDisk SSD, it boots to logon in around 6 to 7 seconds. Pretty damn incredible. It boots from cold it the same time it would take to come out of sleep from my HDD. And using OS X is incredibly damn fast and fluid. My 2012 MBP has a couple more years of life to go 🙂

OS X El Capitan trackpad 3-finger drag

Having just reinstalled OS X EL Capitan from fresh on a new SSD, I looked around for a while for the trackpad 3-finger drag. For whatever reason it’s no longer in the Trackpad settings, but it’s in Accessibility. Details here.

Creating an OS X El Capitan install flash drive

Format the USB Flash Drive using Disk Utils:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2990837/storage/how-to-format-a-startup-drive-in-el-capitan.html

The volume name in the next step is /Volumes/name-you-gave-the-volume-in-the-first-step.

Copy install files to the Flash Drive using createinstallmedia:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2981585/operating-systems/how-to-make-a-bootable-os-x-10-11-el-capitan-installer-drive.html

To boot from the flash drive, reboot your Mac holding down the Option key and the choose the icon for the flash drive.

Installing OpenJDK 8 on Linux Mint 17.3

Linux Mint has OpenJDK 7 available in the default repos, but not 8 for some reason. You have a couple of options:

To install OpenJDK 8 from a restricted PPA (instructions from here):

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:openjdk-r/ppa

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

 

Or you can install Oracle Java 8, downloading the .far file from here:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html

gunzip, tar xvf and then move the jdk1.8.0_xxx dir somewhere like /opt/java, and then (from instructions here):

sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/opt/java/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/java" 1
sudo update-alternatives --set java /opt/java/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/java