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Help needed with the set up of my new Mac Pro

bigbadneil

bigbadneil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 18, 2009
360
3
Guys
I just ordered the SSD drive and two more 2tb drives that will arrive on Thursday please can someone help me with a link to "how do i transfer my existing hard drive to my new SSD drive" so that the SSD drive is the primary drive and all the other 6tb is for backup.
Also is the new hard drives plug and play or should I take my computer to the Apple store and have them install everything? ???
Thanks in advance
 
M

mcnallym

macrumors 65816
Oct 28, 2008
1,181
911
Use Carbon Copy Cloner to Clone the HDD to the SSD. Or I believe that Super Duper is still Freeware/Shareware. CCC I know has gone commercial.

You install the SSD into the Mac Pro. Easiest Way is to install in the Spare Optical Bay which is what I have done whilst waiting for the Sonnet Tempo Pro to arrive. JUst attached to the spare power/data cable.

Then using the software (CCC or SuperDuper) clone the HDD across to the SSD. Then select in System Preferences the Boot Disk as the SSD.

Shutdown the Mac Pro, remove the HDD from the System, and then reboot. It should then boot up ok off the SSD, with your Apps etc all ready to go.

Once happy then shutdown, re-add the HDD in, and then use Disk Utility to format the Disk, so can be reused.

Just use the screws provided to attach HDD to the Drive Sled. Philips #1 is the screwdriver. Inset Disks, and if they are clean unformatted then OSX will say need to initialize. Basically then just use Disk Utility to Partition the disk etc.

If the disks are already formatted etc then should just appear and be available to use.
 
bigbadneil

bigbadneil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 18, 2009
360
3
mcnallym said:
Use Carbon Copy Cloner to Clone the HDD to the SSD. Or I believe that Super Duper is still Freeware/Shareware. CCC I know has gone commercial.

You install the SSD into the Mac Pro. Easiest Way is to install in the Spare Optical Bay which is what I have done whilst waiting for the Sonnet Tempo Pro to arrive. JUst attached to the spare power/data cable.

Then using the software (CCC or SuperDuper) clone the HDD across to the SSD. Then select in System Preferences the Boot Disk as the SSD.

Shutdown the Mac Pro, remove the HDD from the System, and then reboot. It should then boot up ok off the SSD, with your Apps etc all ready to go.

Once happy then shutdown, re-add the HDD in, and then use Disk Utility to format the Disk, so can be reused.

Just use the screws provided to attach HDD to the Drive Sled. Philips #1 is the screwdriver. Inset Disks, and if they are clean unformatted then OSX will say need to initialize. Basically then just use Disk Utility to Partition the disk etc.

If the disks are already formatted etc then should just appear and be available to use.
Click to expand...
**** I just noticed that I cant find the CD's that came with the MP...........by using the carbon copy cloner (that I already have) will I still need to get the Cd's that came with the MP??????
 
Macsonic

Macsonic

macrumors 68000
Sep 6, 2009
1,706
97
bigbadneil said:
**** I just noticed that I cant find the CD's that came with the MP...........by using the carbon copy cloner (that I already have) will I still need to get the Cd's that came with the MP??????
Click to expand...

Hi If you will clone you HDD to your SSD, no need for the install DVDs. From your screenshot, you're using Mountain Lion 10.8.4. Apple never made an Install DVD for Mountain Lion as far as I know. You may place your SSD to your Optical drive bay just as mcnallym mentioned in his post. To secure the SSD, OWC sells a SSD mount that fits your Mac Pro's Optical bay. http://eshop.macsales.com/owcpages/multimount/
 
bigbadneil

bigbadneil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 18, 2009
360
3
bigbadneil said:
I live in Malaysia so no time to wait for the SSD mount so I will just put the SSD in one of the empty bays.........the hard drives should arrive today
Click to expand...
I have just noticed that my current hard drive has 801 GB of data and my new SSD drive is 512gb what do I do now as my new SSD drive isn't big enough???
 
Studio K

Studio K

macrumors 6502
Feb 17, 2013
361
7
United States
bigbadneil said:
I have just noticed that my current hard drive has 801 GB of data and my new SSD drive is 512gb what do I do now as my new SSD drive isn't big enough???
Click to expand...

Do you need all of that 800GB of data on your SSD?

Can you put some of it onto one of your mechanical drives? All the data will be instantly accessible in OS X (which I presume will be on the SSd).
 
Macsonic

Macsonic

macrumors 68000
Sep 6, 2009
1,706
97
bigbadneil said:
I have just noticed that my current hard drive has 801 GB of data and my new SSD drive is 512gb what do I do now as my new SSD drive isn't big enough???
Click to expand...

Normally peopel use the SSD for their apps but save and store the files, including Lightroom files to another mechanical Hard drive. There has to be adequate free space on your SSD for it to be optimised. Maybe what you can do is before you clone, transfer your files first to the HD. Then clone your boot drive to your SSD.
 
bigbadneil

bigbadneil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 18, 2009
360
3
All installed and all working great............the new SSD is faaaaaaaaaaast
Thanks for all the help
 
willgreene99

willgreene99

macrumors regular
Dec 16, 2010
217
16
DFW
Macsonic said:
Hi Willgreene Nope. The Caldigit did not require a power connector. It just came with the CD driver containing drivers for OS 10.6 and 10.8 and some Windows drivers. The model I bought had 2 ports USB 3.0 and 2 ports eSATA so you can also connect eSATA ext Hard drives or maybe SSD. After installing the card, I just installed the driver.

The card works fine as it's stable, as in no disconnection specially transferring large files. Tested this Card on 4.1 2009 Mac Pro, 5.1 Mac Pro and also on 2008 Mac Pro and all worked well.

The Orico is also a good card but you will need a power cable and the price is cheaper. Caldigit's price is higher so there's a trade off. Hope this helps :)
Click to expand...

Hello Macsonic,

What are some sample speeds when using the Caldigit card? I could not get the one with the extra two e-sata ports since they were out of stock but I purchased the one with just two USB3 ports.

I have it hooked up to a Drobo 5D with four 2TB WD RED drives. Black Magic is reporting avg speeds of ~135 for both read and write.

I can live with that as its faster than USB2 and Firewire 800. Performance for running my iTunes media server along with several VM's is good.

TIA!
 
Macsonic

Macsonic

macrumors 68000
Sep 6, 2009
1,706
97
willgreene99 said:
Hello Macsonic,

What are some sample speeds when using the Caldigit card? I could not get the one with the extra two e-sata ports since they were out of stock but I purchased the one with just two USB3 ports.

I have it hooked up to a Drobo 5D with four 2TB WD RED drives. Black Magic is reporting avg speeds of ~135 for both read and write.

I can live with that as its faster than USB2 and Firewire 800. Performance for running my iTunes media server along with several VM's is good.

TIA!
Click to expand...
Hi Willgreene99. For USB 3.0 the read/write speeds I get is around 150mb/s average. I think your speed is good because you have 4 hard drives in your Drobo while my test was based on a single 2TB Hitachi GDrive. I am also fine with the speed improvement and not really looking for the maximum speed as long as its substantially faster than USB 2.0 or FW800. I think Orico USB 3.0 yields a higher speed test at around 175 mb/s to 185 mbs. I don't have the speed test for eSATA as my GDrive does not have eSATA port. Thanks and enjoy your Caldigit with Drobo. :)

urYc2Eg.jpg
 
willgreene99

willgreene99

macrumors regular
Dec 16, 2010
217
16
DFW
Do you know if the CalDigit will support a USB3 Hub to add more USB3 drives? I have one Drobo 5D and need to get another but was thinking future growth and wondered if I could add a hub, then I could add several later down the line. I sometimes have to attach a portable USb3 drive and if I already have both ports utilized, then I would have to shut down one and all of the apps and vm's running on it to power it down.

The alternative would be purchase another CalDigit card and attach them to the second card.
 
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