Torpedo

LOL, I could have one of those too. Somewhere. I swear. Excellent news, Shelly, I wish everything is under warranty and you get it back fixed and sounding awesome.

That was close, Steve. Glad to know you're fine and nothing really serious happened to your property.

Contrasted, smoky and dangerous as lava melting the ice.

Another DAC which I've been recently recommended, not DSD capable but perhaps could be in the future with a firmware upgrade, which might interest Justin is the Wyred4Sound DAC-2 I haven't listened to it though, but since I'm working a loan deal to try the Mytek, eventually might get this one too. Anyone has direct experience?

Eels - Wonderful, Glorious

Maillechort might be what we know in Spanish as "Alpaca" or "German Silver". Its English word could be "albata".

Thanks for the suggestion. VBox has this option too, but unfortunately, when installing it back again for its not working after the transition (no kernel loading) I deleted the old VM, so couldn't try a direct load. Fortunately I keep the old HDD and I have this device my brother in law loaned me, which allows to plug IDE or SATA drives thru USB. I'm recovering that VM and after I reinstall VBox, I can try if it works. What I find puzzling is that the VBox software can't detect and read the bootable Windows disc from an external USB drive. This could be a problem on many other new Macs don't having IDE/SATA optical drives.

Yep, it's carved in aluminum. Maxvla posted pics at the pirates' site http://www.changstar.com/index.php/topic,485.msg19710.html#msg19710

I've just discovered that the VM on Virtual Box (running a Windows 7) didn't work. It needs special drivers installed to boot from the SSD. I've reinstalled VB, but now that the optical is USB, there's no way the damn thing sees it as a boot device to run the Windows install disc. I've configured it to "get" the port, and have installed the extension pack which adds USB compatibility. VB seems to see the "generic USB" and the disc spins, but it says it can't read the bootable. If mounted on OSX, the disc shows perfectly all its contents. Moreover this is the very same disc I used to install W7 over VB in this very same MB before the upgrades. I've even tried a different external DVD-RW unit, with the same lack of success. Any suggestions? I've considered trying to make a bootable pen or SD card with W7, but I can't on OSX, nor know how to extract a CD/DVD to create an .iso or other image into a HDD on OSX. Not that I think that would work, but perhaps worth trying. I still may try Parallels or the other VM software, but for my purposes, VB worked very well and it's free

I have the DA-11 too and is pretty light, but doesn't play native DSD, which some people might want to try in a meet. Playing DSD over USB, there're the ones already mentioned by Padam and there's also this Matrix X-Sabre DAC. Its price is tempting and build quality seems pretty good. Unfortunately I haven't been able to try it yet, and the Chinese manufacturing it, haven't replied to my info queries so far. It's great they have a US distributor. There's also the Lynx Hilo, but it's more expensive and I have no personal experience with it either. It gets rave comments from the pros, plus has AD capabilities too. However, being overkill team, you need to show off a bit, so a dCS, EMM Labs / Meitner, MSB...

RIP

you're evil, Ken.

Yes, thanks, I'm keeping it "as is" just in case the SDD keeping the system files and apps goes fubar. Now everything is done. SSD drive went on the old HDD sATA slot. New 1TB HDD is placed on the old optical superdrive slot. The optical drive is now external and could be used by USB. The case is not bad, more plasticky than I expected, but for the price, I can't complain. The good mount is used to hold the new HDD inside the MBP. Changing the RAM and swapping the HDD for the SSD was silly easy. Replacing the optical was a bit more complicated, mostly for the screws having little room to be put in place, but nothing that with a good light, steady pulse, and some patience can't be done. Transition went flawlessly. Install from the SD card was fast, less than 5 minutes. Then transferring the old data from an external USB HDD, which keeps a time machine backup, needed almost 30'. Looks like everything is fine, Mail works, Google keeps configs and passwords, uTorrent looks as if nothing happened... I'm quite happy, the extra memory is a bless and the SSD is awesome, apps open in seconds. I haven't configured the system to work as a Fusion Drive. The SSD is the system disk, so in case it dies the old HDD can replace it in no time. The big one will keep pictures, books, music, etc. Now time to see if the slowness I was noticing on certain tasks is gone. If this machine only had a few more USB slots, and they were USB 3, I think I could live like this for "some time" Using a hub on a 2.0 USB slot is awful, speed goes down from 4xx MB/s to 12MB/s, which is enough for the DAC even playing 24/96, but boring slow for anything else. Thanks for all the input and suggestions, they've proved to be very helpful, guys

I wish you a great, wonderful, happy day. I'll toast to yours later with a sip of that excellent whiskey you know Que cumplas muchos más

Excellent news, Vicki. I wish you get back to full recovery in no time. Correct PT is amazingly effective.

Yeah, I understood that, but I want to put a larger HDD, the current one is rather small. This has the advantage that if at some point the SSD fails, just putting the current HDD in the optical bay I could possibly get the machine running again pretty quickly, as long as I don't convert SSD+HDD into a Fusion Drive. More food for thought

Sounds like a plan. However I'd need to open the poor MBP twice, once to install the SSD, closing to start it and running the migration assistant, then open again to replace the HDD. Apple warns against running the machine with the guts open, however if you think it's safe, I'd give it a go. I've checked the SD and now I understand why the clean install I tried from it last time didn't work. Now I think it will work, but unsure it has the command option to create a Fusion Drive. I'll backup the drive as an image which I could restore, also the information sensitive files and folders, but will try the Migration Tool. I think I'm going to be well covered in the case something goes wrong. After all nothing really important is in this drive, and what's important is already backed up. I still would appreciate some advice about which folders in the ~/Library directory are the most important to keep most of the information (passwords in Chrome, iTunes library, contacts, mail accounts, etc.).

FYI two links where it's explained how to make a SSD+HDD combination into a Fusion drive: Hrdwrk they sell SSD mounting kits. Macsales blog. These say you need a 2012 Macmini to get the disk utility version with the command to make the Fusion Drive. The other guys don't mention that. I have installed in this MBP 10.8.2. Hopefully creating the boot/install disk here is enough to get the thing done. This other article by Tom Nelson seems to confirm that just any 10.8.2 command line diskutil should work. OTOH I'm not sure, for the kind of use I give to this computer, a FD is going to be an improvement over the classical SSD for the OS and applications, HDD for the files. Opinions?

You have a point. A good one indeed. Placing the HDD in the optical drive bay would also favor its heat dissipation --just guessing-- for the discs groove next to it. I'll look at it when I receive the stuff, hopefully the HDD is compatible with the mounting chassis too.

It's a Crucial M4 which supposedly is SATA-60 and SATA-300 compatible. Its bus is 3G I think, but its speeds don't seem to use all that pipe. I've got it from Amazon.es and there're some comments of people having used it on a mid 2010 13" MBP. Hopefully it's true. Thanks for the heads up, I'd still be able to cancel the order

I think I've misexplained, so I'll try to clarify. Optical drive goes away, and will be converted into an external USB superdrive. In the optical drive slot with an adapter, will go the SSD 256GB drive. The adapter and the case to convert the optical into an USB external is rather affordable and is sold as a kit. The current HDD (320GB) will be replaced with a WD 1TB drive. It's a 5200rpm one, but I don't really need it to be fast, and this way it saves battery and get more space, the larger 7200 I've found is 750GB and is about 30% more power hungry. The SD card (it's a class 10 one with about 32Mb/s transfer speed) will be used only as the means to make the clean install. I think it's faster than the external USB superdrive. Moreover I don't have a ML DVD but the Snow Leopard DVD which came with the MBP. Funnily enough when I updated from SL to ML, I ended up using the DVD because ML in the SD card said the HDD had irrecuperable errors and wasn't able to delete or format it. I needed to use the DVD, then it was possible installing ML from the SD card. My first thought was making a clone of the current HDD into the SSD before installing it into the laptop, but then I was concerned there could be problems due to different sizes involved and drivers required, so why not doing a clean install from scratch, then adding the required information. I've learned how to find that damn hidden ~/Library folder, I didn't know the "goto" trick. As I said, I'm a complete ignorant about OSX despite having this MBP for almost 3 years Now with this clearer, I think I should be able to backup and replace the important configuration and data folders into the new install. Now the critic part, which folders should I keep if I do the backup manually? For your comments looks like the Migration Tool should be able to keep all the stuff I need, so I'll have to give it further investigation too. Thanks for the attention PS: I've read elsewhere that there's an option in the Disk Utility in ML which lets us convert two drives into a single fusion one, more or less in the same way we can create a RAID. No need of an hybrid SSD/HDD disk. I haven't investigated that yet, but if it exists, it could be a way to optimize the performance once the OS and most used stuff is moved by ML into the SSD faster drive.

Sorry to read that bad outcome, Shelly. The M51 sounds like a good choice but wait until PSA says something, maybe the DAC has an easy fix and will work up to your expectations.

Since it's possible this topic is helpful to someone else, I've decided to start a new thread, instead of posting the question at the venerable Mac thread. I'm about upgrading a mid 2010 13"MBP adding more memory (actually changing both chips for larger ones), replacing the optic drive for a 256 SSD one, and changing the stock HDD for a WD 1TB unit. This MB has become my main computer until I'm sure I really want/need a 27"iMac (mostly a 6 weeks delivery term sucks). Still I'm a OSX rookie and I can't find the folders which should be transferred from this old-to-be system HDD into the new system SSD drive. They're supposed to be in the root user directory but they're not. I'd like to keep Mail accounts, messages and inboxes, most internet sites cookies, passwords, and a few applications configurations, such as uTorrent, Calibre, iTunes, OO, etc. I've looked into the Migration Utility, but it seems to be designed to transfer data from a working Mac into the new one. Unsure it can be used for this purpose. I wouldn't like to just backup the current system and restoring it into the upgraded MB, I much prefer doing a clean install. The idea is using a SD card I keep with Mountain Lion as boot drive, so I can do a clean install into the SSD. Unsure it's a good idea configuring the SSD and the HDD as a Fusion Drive in the Disks Utility. Any advice about proceedings, information to keep and transfer, tips and pitfalls will be very welcome.

I wasn't expecting less than a new machine from Apple service, the replacement offer didn't sound "proper". Good to know, thanks for sharing the experience, and congrats, I wish the new one works fine