remove DVD burner to install SDD or HDD

[vprocessing]

Hi to all,

I own a 3.1 macpro 2x2.8 quad core.
I have a 2x (1to) HDDs in RAID 0 and 1x (1To) HDD for personnal files and 1 SSD (256Go Crucial M4) for boot.
I have :
1 GT120
1 GTX 680
1 blackmagic extrem
1 SATA extender to esata "card"

I'm using this Macpro to work on video stuff Editing, Color Grading, a bit of graphics.

As my sata extender is taking the 2 ports for second optical bay can I remove my DVD burner that doesn't burn anymore to install this ?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MM352A52ST/
In terms of power and Sata connector, is it possible ???
Never found someone that did it so I'm not sure…because of the ATA IDE / SATA conversion…
If I can manage this pluging would it be suitabe for a fusion drive set up ? or maybe 2 SSDs would be better in power speaking ? even if I have less storage…

Also what do you think about that ?
http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pro’s-internal-bays-to-sata-3-0
It remove the booting capacity of the 4 HDDs so it means that I should boot from Optical Bay…

Also have this kind of solutions :
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDPHWE2R240/
But quite expensive ! but boot & eSata !

Video files are more & more big, video rendering always need more power so I try to update my macpro…
I often work on post-production facilities so my personnal mac pro is for low budget movies or personnal projects…I don't have so much bucks to spend in it but I can see that I'm waiting more & more for it !

Do you think it is better upgrading my 2008 or resell it for a 2009 or 2010 ?

 

[vprocessing]

591 views and not even a reply !!!! ?
Did I say ******** ?

 

[ActionableMango]

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me your post was confusing, especially this part:

As my sata extender is taking the 2 ports for second optical bay

Since I couldn't understand what your existing config is, I stayed out of it.

 

[wonderspark]

I tend to not reply to threads about the 3,1 because I have a 4,1 Mac Pro.

Having said that, I edit feature films as well as many other types of video in both Premiere and After Effects (CS6... haven't moved to CC, if ever) and my system works excellent with the following setup:

• 4,1 updated to 5,1 firmware
• 3.33GHz 6-core CPU upgrade
• 32GB of 1333MHz RAM
• 5870 GPU
• Caldigit FASTA-6GU3 2-port eSATA / 2-port USB3 card
• Dual monitors
• Samsung 830 SSD for OS and programs, lower ODD bay
• BD-R burner in upper ODD bay for Blu-ray burns (festival submissions)
• 3x1TB HDDs in RAID 0 for internal scratch space, 330MB/sec read/write
• 4TB HDD in bay #4 for any data not on SSD, such as iTunes and files
• 8x2TB HDDs in 8-bay external box, RAID 6 / 12TB volume connected via Areca 1880ix-12 RAID card by two mini-SAS cables, ~800MB/sec read/write - used for video edit files

I have been considering changing my GPU to a GTX680 or 780, but other than that, it's really fine as is. I can edit and play all my footage raw (4K footage in 1/2 resolution) without rendering or transcoding. It makes me question just how much better off I'd be with a better GPU, as I have been hitting my deadlines with the current setup. It's just so tempting to keep improving the system!

In regards to SSDs, I can say that mine did not make editing any faster... only booting up and opening programs has been faster. It was the last thing I updated on my system. What made the biggest improvement was the very fast RAID 6 array and 32GB of fast RAM, and maybe the 6-core CPU. The direct result of those two upgrades was being able to play multiple layers of raw, unrendered footage from a Canon 5D MkII with color correction effects smoothly, whereas it would be choppy before those changes.

With Adobe Premiere, the key to smooth editing is spreading the files over multiple disks. OS and apps on one disk, scratch on the fastest disk(s), and media on other fast disk(s) will do more than just getting an SSD or two. That and having plenty of RAM to keep page-outs and swap file use away. That's my input.

 

[OS6-OSX]

You should list:
1. the OS used
2. the amount of ram in the MP
3. the specific types of footage you use. h.264, R3D, Alexa, P2, AVCHD etc.
4. the apps you use FCP, Avid MC or Symphony, Premiere Pro, BMD Davinci
5. the speed you are getting from the 2hd raid 0.
6. the reason for the installation of the "ssd or hd"
If you are going to transfer editing from the 2hd raid 0 to an ssd placed in the optical bay, compare the speeds to see if it's worth the ssd cost. Based on ssd costs, will the size of said ssd be too small to work with?
If the additional "hd" for the optical bay is for storage, a 4TB will work fine.
I have an ssd and hd in the optical section using a similar OWC mount. There are adapters to make the connections.
http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgra...ys-to-sata-3-0
It is a very informative article. You will be glad you ran across it. Pretty much to bypass 3.0 bottleneck to 6.0
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDPHWE2R240/
You should search this forum and online pertaining to OWC Accelsior v. Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro v. Apricorn Velocity
After you total the amount of the 3,1 upgrade v. 2009 or 2010 you may lean toward the 3,1.


PS. This photo was taken during a MP cleaning. The red cable you see is plugged into the logic board on the other end.

 

[unfragile]

Hi to all,

I own a 3.1 macpro 2x2.8 quad core.
I have a 2x (1to) HDDs in RAID 0 and 1x (1To) HDD for personnal files and 1 SSD (256Go Crucial M4) for boot.
I have :
1 GT120
1 GTX 680
1 blackmagic extrem
1 SATA extender to esata "card"

I'm using this Macpro to work on video stuff Editing, Color Grading, a bit of graphics.

As my sata extender is taking the 2 ports for second optical bay can I remove my DVD burner that doesn't burn anymore to install this ?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MM352A52ST/
In terms of power and Sata connector, is it possible ???

Hi,

I had a Mac Pro 2.8 GHZ (early 2008) and I decide to remove the Superdrive and use those 2 extras sata ports to add 2 more SATA HDDs.

It's kinda complex to pass the SATA cables behind the metal to the upper slot, but with patience you can do it.

My setup was a:

Mac Pro 3.1 early 2008 , 2x 2.8 Ghz . 14GB ram
1slot - OWC 256GB SSD
2slot - 1 TB WD black edition
3slot - 1 TB WD black edition
4slot - 2 TB WD green
5slot - 2 TB WD green
6slot - 1 TB Seagate
ATI 5870
Avid Pro Tools HD3 PCIe
Apple Cinema Display 30"

I've solt it, for $2050 in March of 2013 (without the HD3 cards and the 30" Cinema display)

Hope it helps.

Regards,

UnFraGile

 

[OS6-OSX]

This Photo

 

[vprocessing]

First THX for all your answers !

@ ActionableMango

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me your post was confusing, especially this part:
Since I couldn't understand what your existing config is, I stayed out of it.

It is those type of adapter/cards :
http://macenstein.com/default/2007/...able-the-25-way-to-add-esata-to-your-mac-pro/
@ OS6-OSX
I have X.8.5
12 GBs RAM
I mainly use FCP7, Begining on X
Was an Avid guy so also MC
I should try Premiere Pro for its CUDA Capabilities and I've read somewhere next Update of CC should playback .DNG sequences
I do some small After Effects thing
I use BMD Davinci Lite
You have picture for my Raid0 speed
For me the deal would be adding space for…space and maybe separate directory. I mean having my footage on my RAID and writing renders, exports or any OUT files on another HD or SSD to gain more speed.
For now I do everything that is video on RAID except Project Autosave on my 4th HD that contains my personnal files. Projects are written on my boot SSD.
As personnal gear I mostly use H.264 files to .mov Pro Res 422 but I may received footage from any kind.
The big deal for me would be :
1-to gain time for file conversion.
2-Having the best real time performance for DaVinci Resolve and be able to receive any footage from clients.

 

[vprocessing]

Now "Mac Tuning" speaking…
How many HD or SSD can I put in the 2 optical bays ?
The SATA ports taken by my extender are 2 so I can plug 2 things from here right ? I'm quite sure I've already used 2 e-sata ext drive at the same time.
But in terms of power I must use from the free cord from the first bay, with an adapter. The one for 2nd burner…
But what I really wonder about is the IDE/ATA (or PATA?) connection & power of the 1st DVD Burner can also be used, with adapter , for both SATA & Power…
Sorry I feel my english limits for those kind of discussion !

As said by Unfragile it looks possible to put 2 HD using the 2 sata ports on the mother board, made for 2nd optical bay
This, looks more or less like his setting:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-InstallingSSD.html

Is it possible to go beyond that, using an IDE/PATA to SATA and put let's say
2 HDDs in the free 2nd optical bay
and one more in place of the burner using such kind of thing.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/StarTech....A-Converter-Adapter/13214968?findingMethod=rr
Do you think I can find one that should work on a mac ?
This one should :
http://www.delock.de/produkte/F_659_IDE_61635/merkmale/1.html
So with power cord and esata cable should be good !?

OR Am I Dreaming ?

 

[OS6-OSX]

Lots of things written in only 9 posts!

Here is your best bet in a nutshell
1. Watch this video pertaining to Premiere Pro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLxsL5RU6k
2. If there is still a 30 day demo, download Premiere
3. You have the GTX 680 with 1536 CUDA cores
4. See how h.264 fairs with your current raid speed
5. Put the optical bays drives on pause
6. Read online about BMD Davinci and 2 Quadro 4000's. 1 for monitoring 1 for rendering
7. Get more ram after the "test"
8. #'s 1-5 should remedy your h.264 issues "for free"!

Put any additional hardware on pause until after "the test"
Read about the Adobe Mercury Engine!

 

[westrock2000]

Is it possible to go beyond that, using an IDE/PATA to SATA and put let's say
2 HDDs in the free 2nd optical bay
and one more in place of the burner using such kind of thing.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/StarTech....A-Converter-Adapter/13214968?findingMethod=rr
Do you think I can find one that should work on a mac ?

Just be aware that the move from IDE was not solely for skinny little SATA cables.

IDE had some limitations that became apparent as more and more people started having multiple drives in their computer.

With IDE you are limited to 133MB/s PER CABLE. Two drives (Master/Slave)can exist on a standard IDE cable. Also that 133MB/s includes all data transactions, including the chatter between the devices that is outside of user "data". So in reality you would be looking at closer to 100MB/s.

IDE also had trouble with multiple devices talking at the same time. So while one device is talking, the other has to wait. This was most apparent in the early days of CD-ROM where you could watch the HDD light and CD-ROM access light. When copying from CD to HDD you would see the lights take turns flashing. SCSI did not suffer from problem and was one of the reasons it performed so well in real life.

You loose Native Command Queuing (NCQ) on the SATA drive. Where the drive can determine how to get data from the platters rather then following orders from the computer. This is a smaller problem.

You can break out the power connector up there though. Modern drives use about 5-10 watts at most. You can get molex adaptors that breakout to 4 SATA power plugs no problem.

You can also get IDE/PATA drives for fairly cheap now that no one wants them. Keep in mind that 750GB was the biggest capacity ever made in PATA. 1TB drives came with the advent of SATA.

 

[vprocessing]

Hi all there !
I'm giving a little boost to this thread !

As OS6-OSX advised me I tested the CUDA / Premier solution and…It is PERFECT…Now when I'm editing on my own computer I work with Premiere…No Transcoding, No rendering… Absolute Joy and Fun !

But now I want more !
As I'll still be using for a few month/year FCP 7 and also because some softwares don't use CUDA I'll be glad to make the last upgrade for my 2008 mac pro.

So I'm still looking around this :
http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pro’s-internal-bays-to-sata-3-0

But I have a few questions :
Do you think it is valuable with SATA Hdd's… I may not swith to SSD in a first time…for a budget consideration…
Do all drives are Sata 3.0 ?
I'm using 2x 1 To Seagate Baracuda drives in RAID 0, model ST1000DM003
I think they are SATA 3, 6gb/sec

Then for booting volume…I assume using the Sata port designed for the 2nd burner should work properly…
the 2 sata ports can handle 2 drives ? But for Power ?

What is the mac certified solution for using the IDE/Sata of the first optical bay…I think, according to westrock2000 explanations about data speed, I would be using it for personnal datas as downloads, music, text-file… anything that does'nt need speed…

I will have a work next, next week so I'd like to order it soon if it's worth it…

For now I'm on X.8
PCI Slot 1 GTX 670
PCI Slot 2 BlackMagic DeckLink Extreme
PCI Sot 3 empty but back is used by my esata extender cables
PCI Slot 4 GT 120
RAM 14GB

I'll Be glad to read from you !
THX
.V

 

[vprocessing]

So I've made it…

I set up my 3.1 Macpro runnin X.8.5 with :
MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i
One port external & one port internal mini-SAS 6Gb/s RAID controller card.

I've put my Boot Crucial M4 in the opticalbay, with another 1To HDD, and 1 ATA HDD removing my broken DVD burner.
For this part I'm very happy…More storage…Installation was easy (I unscrewed the sata connector on the more left/front side to pass the 2 sata cables more easily…and then rescrewed it)

I've connected my 4HDD bay to the Newertech RAID card.
I'm less happy with that… no gain of speed compared to RAID 0 with Apple disk utility AND WITHOUT the RAID SAS Card…
I'm using Seagate Barracudas the 2To are brand new and are SATA III. The 1To are model ST1000DM003 and they should be SATA III.
The cable to connect the 4HDDs bays to the RAID SAS card is quite big and with the MacPro Fan it is just the rite size…you have to make it clean to be able to put the fan back.

I've initalized the HDDs with newertech webrowser tool to be able to make Arrays of RAID 0.
I made:
1 array of RAID 0 with 2x1to
1 array of RAID 0 with 2x2to
Block size 256k / Sector size 512b

Then when the RAID are done with newertech tool, OSX says the volumes are unreadable, OSX/Disk utility sees the volumes as 1, so I have 1x2To volume and 1x4To Volume.
I initialised the volumes with disk utility and it seems to work.
I'm not very sure of this set up that uses newertech tool + Apple disk utillity as in the the newertech manual it is not said that I should use Apple Disk Utility … but for now it is the only way to have the volumes mounted…

I had a few unmounting issues…the 2To RAID unmount 2 or 3 times…
I've been able to export with FCP7 a 20min movie. Reading from 2To RAID, exporting on 4To RAID
I've been able to export with DaVince Resolve Lite for 2 hours without probs. Reading from 2To RAID, exporting on 4To RAID

Using ext HDDs with the SAS to Esata cable is working but takes a long time to mount…

Some copy benchmark :
From 2To RAID0 to 4To RAID0 copy 700Gb = 1Hour
From esata ext HDD (brand new) to 2To RAID copy 505Gb = 40min

Do you think the 7200RPM SATA III HDD can't do better ?
There should be a gain of speed anyway no ?
You can see in my previous post that I had the same speed with RAID 0 made with Apple's disk utility and with no

Other thing I've set the ATA drive in slave mode do think it is the good way ?

THX for reading

 

[vprocessing]

Hi ! All There…

I'm still here speaking…alone…

Please someone help me to get this working or confirm me I've put my bills on a crappy thing

I've tried to use the Newer tech Raid PCIe card with SSD…
I borrowed from a friend a brand new Crucial M500 240GB…

I've plugged the M500 :
1- in the optical bay in SATA:
I get 252 MB/sec Write // 262MB/sec Read
2- on one of the 4 HDDs slot DISCONNECTED from motherboard and CONNECTED to the Newer Tech RAID card…
I get 263 MB/sec Write // 334MB/sec Read
3- on one of the 4 HDDs slot DISCONNECTED from motherboard and CONNECTED to the Newer Tech RAID card…And I initialized the SSD with Newer tech software
I get 264 MB/sec Write // 334MB/sec Read
4- on a FW800 Dock
I get 81 MB/sec Write // 80MB/sec Read

So the thing is, SSD's speed IS THE SAME than Raid 0, 7200 RPM HDD based…
The speed is the same on the SATA ports of the Optical Bay,that is SATA II 3GB, THAN the speed of the 4HDD lines that is supposed to be SATA III 6GB with the Newer tech card…
Does the SATA III 6 GB is only reachable using NewerTechRAID ? don't think so…

On this page :
http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pro’s-internal-bays-to-sata-3-0
They say they have about 600MB/S with SSDs in Raid 0 WITH the card but WITHOUT using newertech software that is twice the speed I have with only 1 volumes…so it seems to be logical…

Now about HDDs set up (my 2To and 4To stripes with 7200RPM Seagate SATA III 6GB)…
I've tried to use Apple Disk Utility to manage RAID and not the newertech software…
I have the same results in RAID 0 with a 32ko block size than with the RAID 0 managed by Newer Tech Software.
I have slower results in RAID 0 with a 256ko block size than with the RAID 0 managed by Newer Tech Software.
I have the same results in RAID 0 with a 32 ko block size than RAID 0 with a 256 ko block size WITHOUT the RAID 0 managed by Newer Tech Software.

I still have unmounting issues now that the RAID is made with Apple Disk Utility…
I also had with the SSD…
It is not physical because each time I reboot the volumes are back…

I 'm going to ask for a return…so much time lost…
If please someone can say something…

THX
.V

 

[unfragile]

Hi ! All There…

I'm still here speaking…alone…

Please someone help me to get this working or confirm me I've put my bills on a crappy thing

I've tried to use the Newer tech Raid PCIe card with SSD…
I borrowed from a friend a brand new Crucial M500 240GB…

I've plugged the M500 :
1- in the optical bay in SATA:
I get 252 MB/sec Write // 262MB/sec Read
2- on one of the 4 HDDs slot DISCONNECTED from motherboard and CONNECTED to the Newer Tech RAID card…
I get 263 MB/sec Write // 334MB/sec Read
3- on one of the 4 HDDs slot DISCONNECTED from motherboard and CONNECTED to the Newer Tech RAID card…And I initialized the SSD with Newer tech software
I get 264 MB/sec Write // 334MB/sec Read
4- on a FW800 Dock
I get 81 MB/sec Write // 80MB/sec Read

So the thing is, SSD's speed IS THE SAME than Raid 0, 7200 RPM HDD based…
The speed is the same on the SATA ports of the Optical Bay,that is SATA II 3GB, THAN the speed of the 4HDD lines that is supposed to be SATA III 6GB with the Newer tech card…
Does the SATA III 6 GB is only reachable using NewerTechRAID ? don't think so…

On this page :
http://blog.macsales.com/12247-upgrade-your-06-08-mac-pro’s-internal-bays-to-sata-3-0
They say they have about 600MB/S with SSDs in Raid 0 WITH the card but WITHOUT using newertech software that is twice the speed I have with only 1 volumes…so it seems to be logical…

Now about HDDs set up (my 2To and 4To stripes with 7200RPM Seagate SATA III 6GB)…
I've tried to use Apple Disk Utility to manage RAID and not the newertech software…
I have the same results in RAID 0 with a 32ko block size than with the RAID 0 managed by Newer Tech Software.
I have slower results in RAID 0 with a 256ko block size than with the RAID 0 managed by Newer Tech Software.
I have the same results in RAID 0 with a 32 ko block size than RAID 0 with a 256 ko block size WITHOUT the RAID 0 managed by Newer Tech Software.

I still have unmounting issues now that the RAID is made with Apple Disk Utility…
I also had with the SSD…
It is not physical because each time I reboot the volumes are back…

I 'm going to ask for a return…so much time lost…
If please someone can say something…

THX
.V

I can help you, I never used that Newer tech Raid PCIe card.