Max number of hard drives in cMP?

[MarkC426]

I have looked through the user guide, but obviously this was printed back in 2010 when technology was different. But it says install up to 4 hdd and 2 superdrive.
I currently have 2 hdd and 2 ssd in the bays.
Can I put another ssd in the second optical bay, or alternatively off a sonnet card?

 

[carpsafari]

You can mount 2 drives in the Optical Bay, 2 SSD's fit easy
Plus 4x HDD in the bays
+2 PCIe/flashblades or mSATA SSD or standard SSD's

 

[MarkC426]

That's great, thankyou.

 

[kohlson]

I've done the same - mounted 4 HDDs in the regular bays, left in an optical drive, and placed an SSD in the other SSD drive bay. SSDs are somewhat impervious to vibration - I just used duct tape to hold it in place.

 

[666sheep]

Reasonable maximum would be 20.
8x 2,5" in ODD bay connected to 8-port PCIe card in slot 2, 8x mSATA on 2 Quad mSATA cards (slots 3,4) and 4x 3,5/2,5" in regular HDD bays. 1st slot reserved for powerful GPU.
cMP despite its age is still a quite capable box.

 

[ActionableMango]

I have looked through the user guide, but obviously this was printed back in 2010 when technology was different. But it says install up to 4 hdd and 2 superdrive.
I currently have 2 hdd and 2 ssd in the bays.
Can I put another ssd in the second optical bay, or alternatively off a sonnet card?

Yes, in fact you can put in a lot more drives than that.

 

[Draeconis]

Reasonable maximum would be 20.
8x 2,5" in ODD bay connected to 8-port PCIe card in slot 2, 8x mSATA on 2 Quad mSATA cards (slots 3,4) and 4x 3,5/2,5" in regular HDD bays. 1st slot reserved for powerful GPU.
cMP despite its age is still a quite capable box.

Except to get 8 HDDs connected from the ODD bay would require running the Mac Pro with the side off, or some modding.

I'd say the comfortable max without modding would be 18;

2x 3.5" HDDs in ODD bays.
4x 3.5" HDDs in Bays 1-4
3x Amfeltec Quad M.2 PCIe storage adapters with 4 AHCI SM951s/XP941s each.

Possible, but not cheap.

If the Mac Pro can boot without a GPU installed (never tried this) and it's just being used for file server duties, you could add a fourth Amfeltec card and make that max 22.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

you need more drives? some solutions...^^

http://www.transintl.com/mac*************double-decker.html

http://barefeats.com/wst10d2.html

http://icydock.com/goods.php?id=232

http://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/20110625/image/sseve2.jpg

http://in.pcmag.com/storage/23719/news/apricorn-intros-ssd-array-for-creative-professionals

So you get around 20-22 drives inside (only in the PCIe Drive section) if you really need it.