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Mac Pro and 2,5" SSD

HDD sled --> zip tie.
ODD bay --> adhesive tape.

No need to spend more than a few cents.
 
You have a lovely Mac Pro so don't junk it using string, tape or anything else. The sleds for OWC or Icey Docks are the go for mounting the 2.5" SSD. And cost about the $20 mark.

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You have a lovely Mac Pro so don't junk it using string, tape or anything else. The sleds for OWC or Icy Docks are the go for mounting the 2.5" SSD. And cost about the $20 mark.
 
As far as i understood, ssd has no moving parts, so it's position doesn't affect drives performance, so you can just place it in second superdrive bay, and leave it laying out there. Correct me if i'm wrong.
But still, that owc mount pro looks great, i kinda like it's blue tint, and how it matches the rest of the mp's insides.
 
maxmaut said:
As far as i understood, ssd has no moving parts, so it's position doesn't affect drives performance, so you can just place it in second superdrive bay, and leave it laying out there. Correct me if i'm wrong.
But still, that owc mount pro looks great, i kinda like it's blue tint, and how it matches the rest of the mp's insides.
Click to expand...

Who cares how often is your case open and your face starring at it?
 
Or build one if you have the means.

its dead simple and requires very little material

normal_IMG_3687.JPG


normal_IMG_3689.JPG
 
Finally I've got a couple of hours when my Mac Pro was out of production to install system on new SSD (Kingston Hyper-X SSD 240GB) and... failed. It was almost 3 hours installing Mac OS X 10.6.3 and stuck at "3 minutes left".

What may be wrong? I tried Trim enabler, but result is the same. Should I set any jumpers to force SSD to SATA II? Then which one?
 
What type of disc is the OS X.6.3 ~ a full retail install and not a silver/grey disc from another machine?

Just today sent back a failed Kingston SSD, three months old. Hope you have better luck. Going to sell the replacement and purchase a Mercury Extreme from OWC.
 
i installed the icy dock in my system and it looks and works great.

i ghetto rigged it at first with an old CD, some painters tape and zip ties and that worked too. if i wasn't so vain i'd have just left it that way.
 
Anyone know why the OWC adapter only works in the 2009-up MP's? Looking to put an SSD as boot in a 1.1 MP. Thanks.
 
Ccrew said:
Anyone know why the OWC adapter only works in the 2009-up MP's? Looking to put an SSD as boot in a 1.1 MP. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Apple changed the size of various parts of the internals of the case between the 3,1 and 4,1 Mac Pros. Doing so required repositioning how the drives actually sit in those metal cartridges that slide into the case.

OWC has another adapter available that does work with the older Pros as I have one. You just have to poke around their site for it.

jas
 
I'm thinking of buying a Crucial M4 SSD for my Mac Pro, as the boot drive. I currently have the four internal bays full of regular HDDs and both optical bays full... Stock Superdrive in top slot, and an LG Blu-Ray burner in the bottom slot. In the PCI section, I have the 5870 and an Areca 1880ix-12 with the BBU sitting beside the GPU. (I was thinking of having the SSD sit there, or use that DX4 caddy thing to hold them, but I don't think there's room there with the BBU sitting there.)

I was thinking of hanging the SSD off the internal bay 2, 3 or 4, since I don't have anything in the top PCI slot. I have an eSATA card in PCI slot 3, so there should be room to hand the SSD somewhere in there. Then I just need to figure out how to connect it after I find a home for it. My Areca has an open internal connector, so I can get the SFF-8087 --> 4x eSATA breakout cable and connect up to four SSDs in there, provided I have room and power.

I'm wondering if I should make life simple and just pull the original Superdrive from the optical bay and leave just the BD-R for everything. That would give me the room. Then I'll have TWO stock superdrives in boxes, as mine came with two, haha!

Suggestions?

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I even toyed around with the idea of suspending it way down in the space by the heatsink on the CPU tray, since it's a single processor model, and that's a big, unused space. Cables would probably fit in the space between the side door and the shelf that the GPU sits on.
 
wonderspark said:
Suggestions?
Click to expand...

Back when I had multiple SSDs, I stacked them one a top of the other and used double-sided foam tape to keep them together. Now when they're stacked, you'll see that the side edge is very large and sturdy (since it's the thickness of a couple SSDs, plus space due to foam tape). Use some more double-sided foam tape and just tape it some where in your case. I have my SSD just standing against the intake fan (right under the drives). If using foam tape sounds annoying, try the 3M Command tape which removes very easily.

If you don't know what I'm saying, I'll try to take some pictures when I get home in a couple days.

I would say they look like this when standing up [SSD]=, where [SSD] represent the SSD in the horizontal position (thinking of the rectangular shape the [SSD] creates), and the = represents the SATA power and data cables.

~~~

Now speaking of the BBU for your Areca card, you can unscrew the PCI bracket and again use double-sided foam tape to secure it elsewhere (again 3M Command tape works)

~~~

Finally for power, I bought a splitter that splits the combined power/data cable Apple uses into a separate power and data cable; then wired the power through the gap behind the backplane motherboard and the optical drive part of the computer.
 
I think I'm going to make my life simple here. One of my internal HDDs is just a backup of one portion of my external RAID box, and I can just pull that and use it via my Voyager Q dock instead of leaving it inside. That frees a slot for the SSD internally. Further, I can pull the current boot HDD (original 640GB from Apple) and use that as a clone via the Voyager Q. So really, I could pull two internals and not hassle with splitting power and finding parking spaces.
 
wonderspark said:
I'm wondering if I should make life simple and just pull the original Superdrive from the optical bay and leave just the BD-R for everything. That would give me the room. Then I'll have TWO stock superdrives in boxes, as mine came with two, haha!
Click to expand...

For what little it may be worth, this is what I did. My Blu-Ray drive is in the top bay and my SSD is in the bottom one. I was using the OWC 2.5->3.5 adapter for my Mac Pro 3,1. To that I added a 3.5->5.25 adapter, and then just bolted the concoction into the bay.

jas
 
I just let my SSD hang in the ODD bay.

The MP doesn't move and the SSD weighs next to nothing so it's been fine for over a year now!
 
I went ahead and ordered a Crucial M4 256GB SSD, and it should be here and installed on Friday. I have been prepping for the switch ahead of time, since I've not used an SSD before. Got my firmware #309 update boot CD burned in case it's not done already, and once it's updated and formatted HFS+, I'll use SuperDuper! to clone my current boot drive over to it.

I hope it's as amazing as I have heard about, without any of the headaches I've also heard about! :p
 
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