Mac Pro and IDE drives

[krye]

I saw in an old post from 2006 that someone added a 400G IDE hard drive under the Superdrive.

Can this still be done? Is the Superdrive in the new Mac Pro an IDE drive and can an IDE hard drive be added in the 2nd optical drive bay as a slave?

 

[bigbossbmb]

Yes, the optical bays have IDE connections.

 

[absolution]

Yes, this can be done. I just did it on my new mac pro. I used this:

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2704&RequestTimeOut=500

You set the jumpers on the drive to Slave (consult the drive manual for jumper settings). Then you mount the 3.5" IDE drive on the caddy and then mount the caddy to the optical drive bay housing. Pretty easy if you've ever installed a hard drive in a comp before.

I booted up after install and the drive popped right up. No worries. 😀

 

[krye]

Sweet. Thanks.

 

[smirk]

This doesn't slow hard drive access down to whatever DMA version the Superdrive uses, does it?