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LevinPhotoVideo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Greetings.

Still thinking about which machine to order. There seems to be a bunch of folks that are now just receiving both the 6 and 8 core and the info from them and all of you is just terrific.

I plan on adding at least one additional HD in bay two and three.

I'm looking at the WD Caviar Black, 2 TB, about $200.00US per drive.

So my question is when I install this myself (I'm pretty good at this) is it just a straight forward attach one or two connectors to the drive itself?

There used to be (and maybe still are) those little jumper thingies that had to be set, or not set. Can anyone tell me how they did their install?

Thanks again.

Jonathan
 
It's been a while since I've seen much use of hard drive jumpers. About the only use I can think of now is using Advance Format drives on older machines with Windows XP or WHS.
 
I remember those jumpers 🙂))

Anyway, as far as I remember with my 2 extra HDD I think there is no need for anything. Just slide in and thats it
 
You take the drive out of it's packaging, open up your MacPro, (take the hard drive cage out? install rails on the drive?), attach one data and one power cable, close the MacPro and fire it up.
 
Man you guys are quick!!!

I just got my fingers off the key board, and two replies!!!

I'm looking at a Seagate 3.5 internal SATA drive that I'm using for semi-archiving. It looks like I have jumper pins that look like this: : : : :

There is nothing connecting anything, but I do remember the drive included those in the box. I can't remember who or how I learned to not put anything to connect those.

So when I get the drive(s), if there are any jumper(s) attached, I should remove them/it, right?

Thanks.

Jonathan
 
There won't be any jumpers attached.

Either way there is usually a little picture on the drive that depicts what the jumpers do.
 
You take the drive out of it's packaging, open up your MacPro, (take the hard drive cage out? install rails on the drive?), attach one data and one power cable, close the MacPro and fire it up.


Do you even own a current Mac Pro??

There are no cables or rails to connect for hard drives in the hard drive bays.
 
OP - I would suggest you go to the Apple site and download the MP user manual and learn about the machine you may be acquiring. The SATA drives are mounted into the Apple supplied carrier and that carrier simply slides into the hard drive bay - power and data connectors line up with the corresponding connectors on the drive you slide in.
 
Do you even own a current Mac Pro??

There are no cables or rails to connect for hard drives in the hard drive bays.
The hard drive replace manual says "Take the cage out, install the drive, slide the cage back in". So what? Omit the manual plugging in of the cables then. The question was whether he has to deal with jumpers. I can generalize my previous post as the following:

"Install the drive in the machine and make a connection to the data and power lines, start it up and it works".
Better? You're welcome.
 
Just be sure with whatever drive you buy that it works with a backplane connector.

I'm pretty sure there aren't many drives with that issue, but I do know that the first revision WD VelociRaptors are not compatible.
 
Just be sure with whatever drive you buy that it works with a backplane connector.

I'm pretty sure there aren't many drives with that issue, but I do know that the first revision WD VelociRaptors are not compatible.
The new ones have their connector according to the 3.5" SATA-standard.
 
Ahh dreaded memories of Jumpers and IDE drives. It's funny because when I made the "jump" to SATA, it was from IDE home assembled computer to The Mac Pro as well.
 
The hard drive replace manual says "Take the cage out, install the drive, slide the cage back in". So what? Omit the manual plugging in of the cables then. The question was whether he has to deal with jumpers. I can generalize my previous post as the following:

"Install the drive in the machine and make a connection to the data and power lines, start it up and it works".
Better? You're welcome.


Your "generalized" info was simply wrong - not at all helpful to the OP who, based on the questions, has very limited knowledge on MPs. Your info would have him looking for rails and connectors for heaven's sake. If you are going to respond try to give correct / helpful info.
 
Apple Corps.

I understood exactly what Giuly and all helpful responses prior to yours. My questions(s) were answered at message #8

My knowledge about MP is probably no where near the expert level you have demonstrated here.

I just don't put in HD's everyday in my current machine (1.8 SP G5). But when I did, the box for the SATA drive contained jumpers, one of which was already attached to the drive itself. I do remember with my mac 8100 that there were some jumpers that needed to be set if I recall correctly.

Thanks everyone. I think this answers it for me.

Jonathan
 
No jumpers needed for any type of SATA drive, only IDE.
They're there, but usually never used on SATA models. The most common requirement, is forcing the disk to 1.5Gb/s for compatability reasons (usefull if you don't have access to the firmware settings in the systems, but as most do <PC's>, it's usually skipped and set there instead; same goes for RAID).

But the jumpers are convenient if multiple arrays are running on a card, and you don't want the 1.5Gb/s setting to be applied to the entire card, which would affect all disks.
 
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