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Mac Pro - harddrive, superdrive question

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whistler222

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 8, 2007
318
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Currently using a macbook, and hoping to get a mac pro once the update happens. I have 2 questions.

1. Can i buy the stock HD that comes with the Mac Pro, and upgrade other ones myself? (what kind of Harddrive does the bay take?)
or if i want more storage, i HAVE to buy the ones that apple gives me?
I know i can upgrade RAM elsewhere, but what about HD?

further, does the additional HDs show up as separate drives in finder?

2. Superdrive, i see you can get 2 superdrives installed. Can I run Handbrake and burn 2 dvds at one time? How is this done? do i open handbrake up twice? or is this not possible?
If not, what's the point of having 2 superdrives at all?

Thanks!
 
The maximum amount of space you can have in your Mac is 3 TB. As far as I know, the hard drives show up separately. As far as the superdrives, you would have 2 drives to copy a DVD or CD without interfering with your hard drive.
 
whistler222 said:
1. Can i buy the stock HD that comes with the Mac Pro, and upgrade other ones myself? (what kind of Harddrive does the bay take?)
or if i want more storage, i HAVE to buy the ones that apple gives me?
I know i can upgrade RAM elsewhere, but what about HD?

further, does the additional HDs show up as separate drives in finder?

2. Superdrive, i see you can get 2 superdrives installed. Can I run Handbrake and burn 2 dvds at one time?
Click to expand...

You can upgrade all of the HDDs by simply mounting a SATA drive to the rail (screws already included) and sliding it in. That simple. The drive will need to be partitioned and will appear as a separate disk, of course you could set it up in a JBOD software RAID (the software RAID is part of OS X). Or a RAID 1, RAID 0.

I don't know specifically about handbrake, but I do believe you can burn two discs at once. I don't have experience to back this up.
 
Thank you!

anyone with specific Handbrake experience on burning 2 dvds at once?

i suppose you can watch one, and burn one.. but how about burning two at a time.

also, if you can just buy a HD and slide it in, whe the heck is the apple option SO expensive?
(same goes for RAM upgrade>>!??)
 
whistler222 said:
also, if you can just buy a HD and slide it in, whe the heck is the apple option SO expensive?
(same goes for RAM upgrade>>!??)
Click to expand...

Because it's from Apple. It has that brand confidence and AppleCare–if YOUR RAM doesn't work, AppleCare won't do jack.

It's worth saving $1000 and forgoing the applecare in my opinion...
 
whistler222 said:
also, if you can just buy a HD and slide it in, whe the heck is the apple option SO expensive?
(same goes for RAM upgrade>>!??)
Click to expand...

I guess they justify it by them actually installing for you and making sure it works right. Remember, some people are inexperienced or afraid of doing stuff like that themselves.
 
Installing additional hardrives in the mac pro is really easy, there are no wires to attach. You just screw the drive to one of the sleds and slide it in place. It's as easy as installing ram.

Each drive shows up with it's own icon in the finder, just like external drives.
 
termina3 said:
Because it's from Apple. It has that brand confidence and AppleCare–if YOUR RAM doesn't work, AppleCare won't do jack.

It's worth saving $1000 and forgoing the applecare in my opinion...
Click to expand...

In addition its how they make a good portion of their money. For all the complaining that seems to happen the Mac Pro in generally is priced very competitively (less so at the moment with the recent price drop in the Xeons and the upgrade imminent). However the BTO options are often a major rip off, so they certainly make their margin there.
 
I would not get two superdrives stock. They would run on the same bus, which they max out if your using them at the same time. The best option would be buy a after market SATA dvd drive. Then cable it into one of the extra sata ports on the motherboard.
 
To answer the fellow question, i have tried burning 2 discs at once (1 using Toast the other using Disco) and it has performed FLAWLESSLY. Almost every day i use on the top Bay the Pioneer that came stock to rip and encode movies in handbreak, while my second drd drive bay ( hp ) burns in Popcorn. And i even have the stock 1GB.

Just my 2 centavos....

Rob
 
pbkiller said:
To answer the fellow question, i have tried burning 2 discs at once (1 using Toast the other using Disco) and it has performed FLAWLESSLY. Almost every day i use on the top Bay the Pioneer that came stock to rip and encode movies in handbreak, while my second drd drive bay ( hp ) burns in Popcorn. And i even have the stock 1GB.

Just my 2 centavos....

Rob
Click to expand...

Yeah i knew it would run...it will just be slower. If you compare those times to the time to burn a single disk.
 
Well, if you had to rip/burn two discs, it would take less time to rip/burn the at the same time rather than one after the other.
 
gojaromeiginla said:
The maximum amount of space you can have in your Mac is 3 TB. As far as I know, the hard drives show up separately. As far as the superdrives, you would have 2 drives to copy a DVD or CD without interfering with your hard drive.
Click to expand...

Actually it is 4TBs. 4 x 1TB drives. In fact there is a tutorial floating around to get a fifth drive installed so you could have 5TBs.
 
gojaromeiginla said:
Well, the standard maximum is 3 TB. You don't really need any more than that to be completely honest.
Click to expand...

Depends what you do with your computer. And yes if you order from apple the max is 3 TB. But 4 TB is supported without mods apple just doesn't sell it.
 
trainguy77 said:
Depends what you do with your computer. And yes if you order from apple the max is 3 TB. But 4 TB is supported without mods apple just doesn't sell it.
Click to expand...

Even if you do a lot with video, 4 TB won't really make much difference compared to 3 TB. It's still an insane amount of space. However, if you absolutely require 4 TB, by all means, go for it. Still, I'd say it's much easier to just order 3 TB from Mac.
 
You've never worked on a full-length film. I watched about 35TB of raw film being cut up on a system at a friend's for a movie I was helping score...
 
termina3 said:
Because it's from Apple. It has that brand confidence and AppleCare–if YOUR RAM doesn't work, AppleCare won't do jack.

It's worth saving $1000 and forgoing the applecare in my opinion...
Click to expand...

You can still have AppleCare if you upgrade the RAM and hard drives yourself.

It just won't apply to any of the parts you have added, the Mac itself will be fully covered.
 
termina3 said:
Ordering HDDs and RAM from Apple is obnoxiously expensive. Never, never, never, never order hard drives or RAM from Apple unless absolutely necessary.
Click to expand...

Oh, I think you misunderstood me. I meant you should probably order the 3 TB with the computer, so you'll have the 3 TB when you get it. That's probably the best route for most consumers.
 
That's for people who do heavy duty video editing or something like that. But your average person who would need a Mac Pro won't need more than 3 TB, probably less.
 
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