Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

sammyman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
998
66
Can you still install a 5th drive in the optical slot for a mac pro (2010)? I am thinking of installing a 5th drive SSD boot up disk, and then have 4 drives in a RAID array....
 
Yep, there's an unused SATA cable in the lower optical bay. Just plug your SSD in there and you're good to go. I use this config myself. 120GB SSD in the lower optical bay as a boot drive. A 2 disk RAID, a Time Machine disk and a smaller disk for misc stuff and my iTunes library.
 
Yes you can.

But I've a question; are the disks in the HDD bays mechanical or SSD's?

I ask, as the ICH (chip that actually contains the SATA ports) has a throughput limit of ~660MB/s, which can be exceeded exceptionally fast when using SSD's simultaneously, such as in a stripe set (you'd end up throttling if this happens = won't get the performance you may be expecting).

The ICH is much harder to throttle using mechanical disks (i.e. ~110MB/s per port <~660MB/s divided by 6x ports>, which is all the fastest 7200rpm SATA mechanical can do right now).
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.