Having just successfully installed an LG Blu-ray drive (LG GGW-H20L) internally in my Mac Pro connected to one of the SATA ports on the logic board, let me offer you the following advice:
don't do it! You will likely avoid significant hassle and be much better served by purchasing an external drive with USB 2.0 connection or, less desirably, by getting a SATA to USB 2.0 enclosure to house your internal drive.
Here is a summary of problems you may encounter by placing a SATA Blu-ray drive inside your Mac Pro:
- Drive bezel removal. As stated, it is necessary to remove the tray bezel from the drive (not the entire faceplate, but just the front of the tray itself). This can be a slightly delicate operation and you risk damaging the drive itself if not careful, since you will placing some strain on the tray while removing the bezel and you will likely need to use the emergency eject to get access to the tray itself which can strain the drive motor assembly. Even with the tray bezel removed, clearance through the Mac Pro front panel may still not be perfect unless you have the drive cage and drive tray perfectly aligned with the cutouts on the case.
- Extra parts for the operation. You will need to purchase a P0 and P1 phillips screwdrivers if you don't have them already, an L-shaped SATA cable of sufficient length (preferably with the L-connector on just one end to connect to the logic board, although I was able to use a double-L), and a 4-pin-to-SATA power adapter if one did not come with your drive.
- Logic board SATA port access. Gaining access to the Mac Pro's SATA ports on the logic board can be a frustrating experience. You will need to remove the front fan assembly to gain access to the ODD SATA ports as shown here. I did not have any particular difficulty removing the fan assembly, but putting it back together required patience, a steady hand, and frequent use of pliers and case rotation to fetch screws that I dropped into the cavernous depths of the Mac Pro case. Additionally, snaking the SATA cable into the drive cage was somewhat difficult since there is little clearance, but this was partially due to my use of a double-L cable.
- OS X Compatibility. This is obviously dependent on your drive model, but I am not able to burn with BD-R or BD-RE media using Toast 8.0.3 or Disk Utility when connected using SATA, however DVD+R, DVD+R DL, CD-R work fine as does read access to BD media. Reportedly, BD write support for my drive is available when connected using USB 2.0.
- Windows Compatibility. The additional onboard SATA ports in the Mac Pro are not available in Boot Camp Windows, and thus your drive will not be detected, unless you enable AHCI in the EFI firmware by using the GRUB bootloader to chain load Windows as described here. Additionally, Parallels Desktop 3.0 does not appear to have the ability to connect a SATA optical drive (although VMWare Fusion does). However, all of these Windows environments should theoretically function fully when using a USB 2.0 connection rather than SATA.
I should be receiving an Addonics ZESU2CS SATA-to-USB/eSATA enclosure tomorrow and I will be removing the LG drive from the Mac Pro to place in the enclosure instead, so I can more fully report on some of my assumptions that an external USB solution will cure my woes. However, at this point I would strongly recommend against attempting an internal install.
Another possible option is to install a separate SATA PCI card instead of dealing with the onboard SATA ports. That may help with some of these problems, although it could also create issues of its own.
