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SATA optical drive in early '08 Mac Pro?

pastrychef

pastrychef

macrumors 601
Original poster
Sep 15, 2006
4,760
1,465
New York City, NY
Has anyone installed a SATA optical drive in an early '08 Mac Pro? Are there any issues? How can the tray be ejected? Thanks for the info.
 
pastrychef said:
Has anyone installed a SATA optical drive in an early '08 Mac Pro? Are there any issues? How can the tray be ejected? Thanks for the info.
Click to expand...

The included drives are IDE and the spaces are for an IDE cable. I don't think you have additional SATA connectors for an optical. The board only has 4 SATA connectors from what I can see - made for the 4 hard drive sleds.
 
I found this picture. It's from the 1st gen Mac Pros, but it's in the new ones, too.

macensteineSATA_1.jpg
 
Well, since it seemed like no one else around here had done it before, I took the plunge. Installation was a real PITA. I had to remove the front fan assembly to route the SATA cable properly. I used the bottom of the two SATA ports as seen in the picture above.

OS X seems to recognize it fine. Pressing the the eject key on the keyboard ejects the stock PATA optical drive. Pressing Option + eject will open the SATA drive's tray. I don't have time to do more tests at the moment, but will report back once I have done so.
 
I just had a chance to burn a few discs. Here are some findings:

1. Both the stock drive and the new SATA drive works fine with Toast.
2. As far as I can tell, Fusion and Parallels won't work with the SATA drive.
3. Burning two discs at the same time is now realistically doable. Previously, when I tried with two PATA drives, both slowed to crawls... REALLY, REALLY SLOW!

So far, I'm a happy camper!
 
pastrychef said:
I just had a chance to burn a few discs. Here are some findings:

1. Both the stock drive and the new SATA drive works fine with Toast.
2. As far as I can tell, Fusion and Parallels won't work with the SATA drive.
3. Burning two discs at the same time is now realistically doable. Previously, when I tried with two PATA drives, both slowed to crawls... REALLY, REALLY SLOW!

So far, I'm a happy camper!
Click to expand...
Which drive did you get, I want to perform this upgrade as well.
 
Ggc-h20l

I have a LG GGC-H20L installed still no bd support, but I am ready for when there is.

The sata optical drive does work in fusion. The problem I am having is you have to have the disc you want to use already in the drive when you start up fusion. I have opened a support ticket with vmware about this issue.
 
UberD said:
I have a LG GGC-H20L installed still no bd support, but I am ready for when there is.

The sata optical drive does work in fusion. The problem I am having is you have to have the disc you want to use already in the drive when you start up fusion. I have opened a support ticket with vmware about this issue.
Click to expand...

I thought about getting a BD burner, but came to the conclusion that I don't need it yet. I figured, the longer I wait, the cheaper the drives and media will get. But I would definitely get one if/when Apple starts supporting the format.

That's good to know about Fusion. However, I kept the stock drive installed so I will continue to use that until VMware fixes it. Thanks for the info.
 
i've just installed a pioneer sata drive in my 2006 mac pro. i decided to stick the pioneer in the top bay with my stock sony drive in the lower bay. when i hit the eject key the bottom drive ejects. i can eject the top drive by hitting option-eject but would like to switch the key commands around.
anyone have any ideas on how i can do that, preferably without 3rd party software.

thanks
 
I'll wait until Blu Ray drives are realistically priced (aka ~$99) before I think about throwing in another optical drive.
 
Lucas44 said:
i've just installed a pioneer sata drive in my 2006 mac pro. i decided to stick the pioneer in the top bay with my stock sony drive in the lower bay. when i hit the eject key the bottom drive ejects. i can eject the top drive by hitting option-eject but would like to switch the key commands around.
anyone have any ideas on how i can do that, preferably without 3rd party software.

thanks
Click to expand...

None that I am aware of.
 
krye said:
I'll wait until Blu Ray drives are realistically priced (aka ~$99) before I think about throwing in another optical drive.
Click to expand...

I'm waiting for blu-ray burners and media to drop in price a bit before I get one, too. The idea of being able to back up 25GB of data on a single disc is nice. :)
 
Optical SATA Drive in early 2008 Mac Pro

pastrychef said:
Well, since it seemed like no one else around here had done it before, I took the plunge. Installation was a real PITA. I had to remove the front fan assembly to route the SATA cable properly. I used the bottom of the two SATA ports as seen in the picture above.

OS X seems to recognize it fine. Pressing the the eject key on the keyboard ejects the stock PATA optical drive. Pressing Option + eject will open the SATA drive's tray. I don't have time to do more tests at the moment, but will report back once I have done so.
Click to expand...

How did you power the drive? I want to do the same upgrade and just wanted to know how best to power it before I took the plunge. Did you split a power cable or is there room on the logic board to plug in another power cable along with the SATA?
 
You can look at how folks are powering the SATA SSDs they are shoving in the optical bay. Typically there is two molex power cables in the bay to power the standard and optional optical drives. You could use a SATA to Molex power adapter cable, about $2.00 from monoprice.
 
$ingh said:
How did you power the drive? I want to do the same upgrade and just wanted to know how best to power it before I took the plunge. Did you split a power cable or is there room on the logic board to plug in another power cable along with the SATA?
Click to expand...

I used the molex connector on the same chain as what is connected to the built-in optical drive.
 
krye said:
I'll wait until Blu Ray drives are realistically priced (aka ~$99) before I think about throwing in another optical drive.
Click to expand...

I have one of these and it works fantastic! Oh, I paid $99 like you wanted also, and it burns BD in toast just fine. It also ships with Bluray movie player for Mac.

You can get this in either the SATA or PATA configuration. Mine is SATA...

http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=BD12XMPE2009-10&Category_Code=STORBD&Product_Count=0
 
What do I need?

pastrychef said:
Well, since it seemed like no one else around here had done it before, I took the plunge. Installation was a real PITA. I had to remove the front fan assembly to route the SATA cable properly. I used the bottom of the two SATA ports as seen in the picture above.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info!

I purchased a new DVD burner for my Early '08 PowerMac, before I realized I needed IDE, instead of SATA. Here is the drive I purchased: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/LG/GH24NS95MP/

But, I bought in on NewEgg.com: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136259 (Half Price!)

The drive didn't ship with any cables and I'm a bit of a loss on how to hook up the drive. I see the two SATA ports under the fan box, but I don't know which cable to purchase to hook up the drive.

The drive only seems to have one connecter in back (SATA?). How does the drive get power? I read about the Molex SATA Power cable, but that doesn't make sense to me, if I need to connect it to the SATA port behind the fan box.

Can you shed some light on this for me? (Sorry, I'm unfamiliar with SATA drives.) :confused:

Thanks!
 
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