A few hardware questions

[suecompass]

I've just order my first Mac, the Mac Pro and i have a question while i'm waiting on delivery. I want to use boot camp to run Vista, i have a spare 80 gig ide drive, can this be used with the Mac pro?

 

[mad jew]

Maybe in an external case... The Mac Pro won't natively let you install an IDE drive though, since it uses SATA. You'll either need a case or an adaptor.

 

[suecompass]

oh, ok, that's what i was thinking. I do have it in an external case right now, probably not a good idea to install vista to an external ide drive then. Guess i'll just make a partition on my main SATA drive.

Thanks.

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, I don't know if Boot Camp allows you to install Windows on anything but the boot drive, yet.

 

[suneohair]

Maybe in an external case... The Mac Pro won't natively let you install an IDE drive though, since it uses SATA. You'll either need a case or an adaptor.

Yes and no. You can stick it in the extra 5.25" bay. I did that for a little while. Works just fine.

 

[mad jew]

Ahh, good tip. Thanks suneohair.

 

[4JNA]

a company makes a kit to install the drive in permanent fashion, but can't seem to find the link right now...

helped a friend do this very thing by gutting an old dead cdrom, removed the front/guts/back and just had a steel shell. used rubber grommets and mounted the ide drive inside, then just mounted the shell like any other cdrom. cables and close. all good, quiet, and cost close to nothing. best of luck.

 

[suneohair]

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2704

Theres that, although SATA. They are charging $30 for an adapter. Bit much really.

EDIT: NVM, it comes with the IDE and you pay for the SATA I think. That is pretty reasonable...

 

[suecompass]

Thanks for all the help. I think i'll just use the SATA drive for now, i'll keep the ide in the external case and use for backups.

 

[suecompass]

One other thing i meant to add, my version of Vista is 64 bit. Will this work with boot camp?