Chosen Solution
I have an Early 2011 Macbook Pro 15” 2.2 Ghz model I have my original HDD in its original spot I have a Crucial SSD in a mount seated where my optical drive used to be. I have all of my Windows 10 install files ready to go on a flash drive I love the boot speed from the SSD, and I love the storage on my drive. What I want is to partition my SSD to boot both my OSX and my Windows. When I try to use Bootcamp to partition the SSD, it tells me I can’t do so without my optical drive, even though I have all of the windows install files on a flash drive which Bootcamp itself set up. Do I have any options here, without moving my hard drives around again?
Sadly no, this will likely not work ;-{ First the optical bay has a speed issue. Review this OWC Data Doubler you’ll see your system has a Red note. The issue is not the carrier, it’s the systems optical drives SATA port. So you’ll need to get a fixed SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) most SSD’s sold today are either fixed SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) or auto sense which allows them to work in either a SATA I, II or III system. This is where the auto sense logic wont work correctly as the system will confuse it. Now you have a second issue if you decide to swap the drives around as the HD bay’s port has additional logic to protect the HDD from a head crash (Crash Guard) so you then put your HD’s data at risk. Then you have an issue with BootCamp as it must be on the Boot Drive.
