Mac Pro 3,1 old IDE in Optical Bay

[honeycombz]

I've got an old Seagate 40GB SGC2A drive I wanted to use for miscellaneous backups. Wondering if this can be installed in second optical bay or no. It's got the old IDE/ATAPI looking port on back not SATA.

 

[Intell]

You should be able to install it and connect it to the internal PATA port.

 

[flowrider]

How about this:

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040701&p_id=327&seq=1&format=2

Lou

 

[honeycombz]

Link didn't work

 

[crjackson2134]

The link works fine for me, try it again. It does load a little slow and have a blank white page for a bit before opening.

 

[adam9c1]

This device is used to connect PATA drive to a SATA port.
You do not need that.

I belive the 3,1 optical drive is PATA.

I would not rely on a 40GB (old) drive for misc backups.
You are better off with a USB 64GB or something like that...
Upgrade to a new(er) SATA drive that is not as old...

 

[honeycombz]

it's a redundant backup, not primary. just figured i'd put it to use.

 

[Ph.D.]

It will work with no adapters, etc., needed.

I've done it. Having PATA available in the DVD bay saved me on an occasion or two when I had to retrieve something from an old drive. About the only issue that might come up is the configuration pins, though I left those alone and didn't experience any problems.

It was fun seeing an old 20 GB drive from (I think) an upgraded Power Mac 7500 show up on my desktop! It was like time travel.

(I do agree, though, that an old drive like that is not optimum for use as a backup, at least due to being power hungry and adding noise.)

 

[flehman]

Also you might get added noise/vibration if the drive isn't secured inside the bay. Many people have left a SSD to sit loose in the optical bay since there are no moving parts but s HDD has moving parts and could be a different story. There are products out there that adapt the optical drive bracket to a 2.5 or 3.5 HDD interface. Just a thought.