ssd in macbook pro

I've been thinking of cleaning up my Macbook Pro. I got it in 2008 when Emile-Alexandre broke my previous laptop, an iBook. The DVD/CD drive stopped working a long time ago; same with the drive in the Mac Mini. I got an external Samsung DVD writer for $50. Much better idea. How often do I use an optical drive these days? Couple times a year.

I'd heard about replacing the DVD drive with a second hard drive, and I'd thought about using an SSD (Solid State Drive). So I got a 40gig Intel SSD for a hunnerd bux.

I followed instructions here and at ifixit.com. I got an adapter at newmodeus.com. It is a little confusing figuring out which adapter to use. This probook has an ATA bus for the DVD. ATA is now called PATA. Parallel ATA, which is for some reason slower than the new Serial ATA. So, the hard drive is SATA and the tray to replace the DVD has an ATA buss on the outside and SATA on the inside.

It fit perfectly. I moved the old drive into the DVD bay and put the SSD in the boot drive location. Then I assigned ~/home to the old drive in the new location. You do this in advanced options of the login preference. A right click is necessary to find this hidden advanced option. Non obvious.

So after installing OSX snow leopard onto the SSD and re-assigning ~/home and rebooting I have a fast system and a big user area for all files. Applications are installed on the SSD boot drive. I deleted all the old system files from the original 120gig (now the second drive, remember?)

Kul