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fredr500

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 12, 2007
227
19
I have a 5,1 and just bought a 2 port SATA III PCI adapter. My SSD flies when connected to it (360 MB/s vs 230 reads).

But how do I get power to this? I assumed I could just plug it in to the power in the optical bay until I saw it was a 1 piece molded plastic connector with both power and SATA.

I don't see anywhere else to grab the power for it. For the time being I'm using an external 12V supply for it. I'm almost embarrassed as I disassembled a PATA to SATA plug, ran the 4 wires through 4 holes in the grill and plugged in the external power. It works, but it's not pretty.

I'm thinking my best option is a SATA power splitter in the optical bay and just lose the data connector on that plug.

Please tell me there is a hidden connector somewhere.
Thanks.
 
I have a 5,1 and just bought a 2 port SATA III PCI adapter. My SSD flies when connected to it (360 MB/s vs 230 reads).

But how do I get power to this? I assumed I could just plug it in to the power in the optical bay until I saw it was a 1 piece molded plastic connector with both power and SATA.

I don't see anywhere else to grab the power for it. For the time being I'm using an external 12V supply for it. I'm almost embarrassed as I disassembled a PATA to SATA plug, ran the 4 wires through 4 holes in the grill and plugged in the external power. It works, but it's not pretty.

I'm thinking my best option is a SATA power splitter in the optical bay and just lose the data connector on that plug.

Please tell me there is a hidden connector somewhere.
Thanks.

Why the optical bay? Here you go: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=18855446#post18855446
 
Last edited:
Thanks but no

Thanks but I forgot to mention I already have all 4 drive bays full so that won't work. They are full use g 3.5" drives so this won't work.

If I ever get a couple 4TB drives instead of the 2TB that I have installed that would work, but for now no.

Any other options?
 
Thanks but I forgot to mention I already have all 4 drive bays full so that won't work. They are full use g 3.5" drives so this won't work.

If I ever get a couple 4TB drives instead of the 2TB that I have installed that would work, but for now no.

Any other options?
I bought a kit from Trans International that contains a simple cable harness and drive mounting hardware. Not cheap, but it is really clean:

http://www.transintl.com/dx4-for-mac-pro-2009-2010-no-drives.html

Not sure, whether they sell the harness as a separate item.
 
I just use these in the optical bay.

I had to snip a bit off the big end with a razor blade to make room for both the power cable and a data cable, but it works great. In this way, I have my Blu-ray burner in the top slot, and two SSDs in the bottom slot of the ODD bays. The disk burner goes on the first wide connector, and this y-splitter goes on the second sata/data connector, side by side with a separate data cable to my boot SSD. I then have a second SSD powered by the second split off the Y, and the data for *that* SSD goes to an Areca RAID card I have installed in the PCI slots.

No extra power supplies. I ran the data cables from the PCI slots to the ODD bay by taking the ODD bay apart a bit and slipping the cables behind things, so it all looks clean and stock until you pull out the ODD tray and see the y-splitter. The SSDs take so little power that I don't worry about splitting it up, given how much power it was intended for (two disk burners).

If you only want power, just get sata power connectors like the ones used on this y-splitter, and some colored wire to make your own custom power cable.

51841.jpg
 
Thanks, just ordered from mono price. If I ever need to put another optical in, or a third drive, I'll separate the data/power connectors with a blade.
 
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