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I already replaced the internal DVD drive with a harddisk. But he space is there, why not removing the internal 7hours battery and place some extra USB2.0 Harddrives INSIDE the Macbook Pro and hook them to the USB ports? (There is only 2 internal sata ports in a Macbook Pro) Now, it sems that the Macbook does not only need the battery for keeping some preferences like date and time , but also uses it´s addiotional power when doing cpu-intensive tasks. Mine can be down to 90% when doing rendering for one night. So I guess a smaller battry must be used while making up space for two harddrives in the battery compartment. Using 4 750gb disks, it could be about 3TB in a Macbook pro. So here are my questions: -What are the exact voltages of (I guess there are several) of the battery? -Does anyone know the pinout of the 10-pins battery connector? -Does the system measure only the voltage of a battery when loading, or also the amperes?

  • The USB-cables of the extra harddisks should be soldered to the USB-connectors on the logic board. This is only possible with very thin wires or a flexible flat cable. Do USB specifications allow such cables, probaly ushielded? (Distance will be around 15-20mm. Thank you, all the best, Herbert Update Hello to all, thanks for the answers! Well, first of all: Working as a film-editor, you NEED storage. The footage of my recent documentary uses almost 3TB. About powering the drives: The footagl is already on three 1TB, usb powered harddisks. The mac´s usb-bus has no problem in powering them. Two buses would be “lost”, woth the mod there is still one left for adding an USB.hub externally, for printers, burners etc. But the big problem lithium-ion polymer battery: It´s cells need to be carefully balanced during charge by the mac´s echarging circuitry, so putting in a smaller type to make room for the hd´s seems to be a no-go. All the best, Herbert

I would be using a Mac Pro if I were you. Especially being a Film Editor. You would gain so much more by using the Mac Pro’s more powerful CPUs and ability to have the space you need. If you really have to have the MBP, I would get the Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt enclosure. I have the 6TB version in Raid 5 (5TB useable space) and it works beautifully. Super fast transfers. I’m a working DJ and have almost 3TB of music on there. Plus Ableton projects eat up a lot of space too. Don’t Eff up your machine on some crazy idea of 3TB of internal storage on a MBP. Quite frankly, that would fall into the “insane” category.

i would consider one of these http://store.apple.com/us/product/H5187V… i know some people that run personal web servers off of these machines so i think this should meet your needs.