I'm wondering what exactly I would need to accomplish this. Do I need to buy a cable? Do I need some sort of enclosure?
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Installing an HDD in the second superdrive slot?
- Thread starter Ravich
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ActionableMango
macrumors G3
Hum... I didnt know that Mac Pros had been redesigned much since they were dubbed "Mac Pros"
Anyway, I have a 2009 8 core, and I'd probably be wanting to add a caviar black 3.5'' drive.
Anyway, I have a 2009 8 core, and I'd probably be wanting to add a caviar black 3.5'' drive.
JesterJJZ
macrumors 68030
Because earlier MacPros had a couple IDE cables leading up to the optical bay, if you needed SATA, you had to get an extra cable and run it from the logic board yourself.
ActionableMango
macrumors G3
2009 has a SATA cable there, and that's a SATA drive, so no problems. Get a 3.5" to 5.25" adapter so the drive can be physically secured in the bay, and use the existing SATA data/power cabling.
Wonderful. Sounds simple enough. Any advice for adapters?
As cheap as possible? Something like this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811993004
As cheap as possible? Something like this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811993004
How easy/hard is it to access the SuperDrive slot to install the HDD? Doesn't look that accessible...
ActionableMango
macrumors G3
I have no specific recommendation. Any cheap adapter should do. I've used whatever the local stores carry at the time.
JesterJJZ
macrumors 68030
The cable to each ODD bay in your machine contains both Data + Power (aka backplane connector), so you only need to plug it in, and you're good to go in terms of hooking it up. 🙂
As per mounting, you can use a simple metal adapter if you wish (the one you linked would do the trick), or you could even use Zip ties or velcro if you wanted. Up to you. Given it's going to be a mechanical disk however, I don't recommend leaving it loose as you can do with an SSD due to no moving parts.