Upgrading to nMacPro

[Beardy man]

Okay, I'm thinking of getting a nMacPro when they finally arrive.

My current 3,1 has the following kit attached:
Internal 4 drives (750s and a 2Tb TimeMachine disk)
External 4 Firewire 800s (various capacities)
ACD30
Lexar Firewire CF card reader
(plus load of USB attached stuff that's of no concern for this post).

also 2 x spare drives(1 int/1 ext, still boxed, ready in case of drive failure ;-)

Knowing what we do know about the Thunderbolt connectivity and the lack of HD internal bays, what does anyone think of the chances of being able to bring any of this legacy kit to the new machine? Especially the ACD30 to which I'm very attached!

Obviously if its possible to connect the old stuff through expensive converters I might be better off buying new but I'd like to see what my options are.

Thanks

Beardyman

 

[crjackson2134]

Okay, I'm thinking of getting a nMacPro when they finally arrive.

My current 3,1 has the following kit attached:
Internal 4 drives (750s and a 2Tb TimeMachine disk)
External 4 Firewire 800s (various capacities)
ACD30
Lexar Firewire CF card reader
(plus load of USB attached stuff that's of no concern for this post).

also 2 x spare drives(1 int/1 ext, still boxed, ready in case of drive failure ;-)

Knowing what we do know about the Thunderbolt connectivity and the lack of HD internal bays, what does anyone think of the chances of being able to bring any of this legacy kit to the new machine? Especially the ACD30 to which I'm very attached!

Obviously if its possible to connect the old stuff through expensive converters I might be better off buying new but I'd like to see what my options are.

Thanks

Beardyman

I see no reason you can't bring it all over to a nMP. You just need to find the right drive enclosure(s) and/or FW adapter.

 

[Boomhowler]

This: http://www.ssi.com.tw/en/goods.php?act=view&no=33

seems to be a reasonably priced USB3 enclosure for 5 3.5"-drives.

The screen should not be a problem, HDMI->DVI or something should work.

 

[theluggage]

Okay, I'm thinking of getting a nMacPro when they finally arrive.

My current 3,1 has the following kit attached:
Internal 4 drives (750s and a 2Tb TimeMachine disk)
External 4 Firewire 800s (various capacities)
ACD30
Lexar Firewire CF card reader
(plus load of USB attached stuff that's of no concern for this post).

also 2 x spare drives(1 int/1 ext, still boxed, ready in case of drive failure ;-)

Personally, I'd wait until we know the price & model range - if it is $1000 less than a comparably-powered Mac Pro (factoring in the next-gen processor, the SSD and dual 'workstation class' GPUs) then it would somewhat take the sting out of paying for a nice 4,4 or 5 way drive enclosure.

Anyhow... if you have drives < 1TB it probably makes sense to consolidate them onto a smaller number of 1-2 TB drives and lock the originals away as backups.

This - if it ever emerges from development hell at the promised $700 for 6TB - looks perfect to bring the nMP back up to MP standards for storage:

http://www.caldigit.com/T3/

... consolidate your smaller drives onto 2 of the discs, use the 3rd bay for time machine & other backups, swapping drives every so often so you have two backups...

The $30 Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter should run your FW drives.

I think you need this to run the 30" ACD:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB571Z/A/mini-displayport-to-dual-link-dvi-adapter?fnode=51

...the cheaper adapter is only single link and won't hack it.

However, if you seriously want all that storage, I'd give it 6 months and see what the nMP does to the Thunderbolt peripheral scene. Apart from finding out whether all the current vaporware is actually going to materialise, until now, these devices have been for people who want to attach this sort of storage to *laptops* - which is fairly niche. The MP, which really needs these things to be credible, might prompt a bit more competition.

 

[VirtualRain]

Okay, I'm thinking of getting a nMacPro when they finally arrive.

My current 3,1 has the following kit attached:
Internal 4 drives (750s and a 2Tb TimeMachine disk)
External 4 Firewire 800s (various capacities)
ACD30
Lexar Firewire CF card reader
(plus load of USB attached stuff that's of no concern for this post).

also 2 x spare drives(1 int/1 ext, still boxed, ready in case of drive failure ;-)

Knowing what we do know about the Thunderbolt connectivity and the lack of HD internal bays, what does anyone think of the chances of being able to bring any of this legacy kit to the new machine? Especially the ACD30 to which I'm very attached!

Obviously if its possible to connect the old stuff through expensive converters I might be better off buying new but I'd like to see what my options are.

Thanks

Beardyman

You could easily port all of this over with some of the adapters mentioned by other folks above. But if I were you, I would take this opportunity to simplify and consolidate all my storage onto a couple of large 4TB drives if possible and repurpose or sell that collection of drives/enclosures you have.

I would get one of these WD 8TB Duo's with Thunderbolt. And then I would get a 4TB USB 3 external ($150) to use for off-site backups of the important stuff.

You can also get a USB 3.0 CF reader for $15-$30.

 

[AidenShaw]

Okay, I'm thinking of getting a nMacPro when they finally arrive.

My current 3,1 has the following kit attached:
Internal 4 drives (750s and a 2Tb TimeMachine disk)
External 4 Firewire 800s (various capacities)
ACD30
Lexar Firewire CF card reader
(plus load of USB attached stuff that's of no concern for this post).

also 2 x spare drives(1 int/1 ext, still boxed, ready in case of drive failure ;-)

Knowing what we do know about the Thunderbolt connectivity and the lack of HD internal bays, what does anyone think of the chances of being able to bring any of this legacy kit to the new machine? Especially the ACD30 to which I'm very attached!

Obviously if its possible to connect the old stuff through expensive converters I might be better off buying new but I'd like to see what my options are.

Thanks

Beardyman

My advice would be:

• discard every disk that's more than 2 years old
• discard every disk that's more than 2 years old
• ...

Seriously - spinning hard drives will fail, and what's the point of a brand new system if you spend your time trying to recover data from old, failing hard drives? If you have old drives, get rid of them. You'll spend thousands on the new trash can Mac, spend less than a thousand more and get new drives at the same time.

And never, ever, put desktop drives into a hardware or software RAID setup. They're not designed for 24x7, and their error recovery algorithms are completely wrong for RAID. (Both WD and Seagate have "NAS" drives that aren't much more expensive than desktop drives, but have RAID-compatible firmware. I have a dozen of the Seagate 4TB NAS drives and they're great.)

If a new, RAID-compatible 4 TB disk is only $200, why cobble together a mess of ready-to-fail 500GB to 1TB disks?

Buy two, mirror them and have 4TB of storage that you can trust.