MacBook – Make external optical drive appear identical to internal SuperDrive

Having exactly the same problem. It took a long time, and a lot of trail/error/forum reading to get to where you did (editing info.plist). I removed my 'useless' superdrive also.

Refit has a utility to rebuld partition info as Mac likes it (after using gparted, in my case to grow the bootcamp partition as I made it too small), but after that nothing wants to boot into my windows boot usb key to run the final step which is the repair of the windows install/boot config.

Maybe osx adds some boot info immediately after you commence creating the bootcamp environment with Boot Camp Assistant. I remember it always booted into windows until you finish setting windows up... either by 'Option' selecting OSX on boot, then rebooting from system prefs, boot disk page. Or rebooting from Windows bootcamp tools. This worked also into windows setup if your USB was in. Once you have done that though, nothing wants to boot off your Windows install USB. Not even refit.

Unfortunately for me, that's where the windows repair utility lives which will complete the fix of my partition resize.

Obviously recreating the bootcamp partition would do it. But that defeats the purpose of trying to grow it without reinstalling windows in the first place.

Bloody hell, I already had to open my MBP up as the windows installer likes to fail if you have a HD attached to your Super Drive Sata port.

Might have to wipe, disconnect OSX and reinstall windows all over. Paragon Boot Tune is supposed to be able to resize Boot camp, but the damn thing requires a superdrive to burn a boot disc to!

Only other thing I can think of is that refit ruined something. But I don't think so. FYI I also removed refit and can select the Win Boot Camp partition or Boot USB Key but they fail that way also.

Anyone reading this... make sure your Bootcamp partition/drive is at least 30gb. Windows takes 15-25 (if you include room to move for temp files, caches and updates etc. Then you got apps on top of that.

1. The OptiDrive and similar products work very well. I have the similar Date Doubler (OWC) installed in my 2009 Mac Mini and am very pleased. The combination of the fast but small SSD and still having the larger but slower HDD is the best you can do until prices come down. Optical media is passé, as you can see by Apple now systematically dropping it from its product line, and you can easily get by with only an external drive for occasional use.
2. Yes there's a limit on the number of write cycles on an SSD but it is mitigated by the firmware on newer drives which have complex "wear levelling" algorithms (basically evenly distributing writes across the disk to reduce wear) and most (though not all, check the drive specs) manufacturers ship drives with about 10% "hidden" reserve space that gets put into operation as bad blocks fail (so called over-provisioning.) Further more there are some measures you can take yourself to limit writes to disk, such as the mounting your drive with the noatime option (see"Optimizing MacOS X Lion for SSD") which will tell the OS not to update (write) the accessed time every time you read a file.
3. Yes OWS sells an enclosure that will take a mac Superdrive. I'm sure others can be found also.
4. You will get the most performance gain putting everything on SSD, obviously. However, this is not always practical. You may have large files (e.g. VMWare images) or large collection of files (e.g. iTunes folder) that take up an inordinate amount of space on the SSD. Personally I put everything on the SSD and then create links for those directories (Movies, Pictures, Music) to the internal HDD. Applications I recommend keeping on the SSD no matter how large because of the performance boost.

One more recommendation: when choosing an SSD do a thorough search on the internet regarding OSX compatibility. Some SSD drives do not support SATA-III speeds on OSX and yet others require a firmware update to do so. I've seen even hardcore tech nerds get bitten by that one.