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new mac pro and esata

R

rockos

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 27, 2007
91
1
i know the older mac pros had two sata ports that were not used making a total of 6. u could use the adapter and use these in all actuality as esata drives but could not boot from them etc.


well what about the new mac pro. octo core. does it still have only 6 sata ports...also wonder if u are now able to boot into them.
 
would be great if they did make it so you could boot if need be from these ports.

just hope they didnt kill the two extra ports.
 
Annoying that they're essentially already shipping these things and we still no so little information.
 
cmaier said:
Annoying that they're essentially already shipping these things and we still no so little information.
Click to expand...

Until people have them in their hands, many details will be hard to come by. I expect by sometime next week, lots of questions will be answered.
 
We'll see tomorrow for sure... but I strongly suspect the way it works.

The ICH10 used on the X58 chipset still has 6 SATA ports.

Since the RAID card offered is the same, the 4 hot swap bays must still connect to the motherboard via a 4-lane SFF-8087 iSAS connector. That accounts for 4 of the ports.

On the Jan08 Mac Pro, the remaining 2 ports were present but unused and could be wired to an eSATA bracket. They were unused because the optical drives were IDE. At that time, IDE optical drives were still cheaper than SATA.

I would be very surprised if the new Mac Pro did not use SATA optical drives. So that's where the remaining 2 ports will go. If you wanted to use only 1 optical drive, you could wire the other port to an eSATA bracket. Otherwise it's time for a PCI-e eSATA card.
 
Oh, and if they continue using Sony/NEC Optiarc drives (the Jan08 used an Optiarc AD-7170A) the new drives will probably be AD-7220S.
 
WonderSausage said:
We'll see tomorrow for sure... but I strongly suspect the way it works.

The ICH10 used on the X58 chipset still has 6 SATA ports.

Since the RAID card offered is the same, the 4 hot swap bays must still connect to the motherboard via a 4-lane SFF-8087 iSAS connector. That accounts for 4 of the ports.

On the Jan08 Mac Pro, the remaining 2 ports were present but unused and could be wired to an eSATA bracket. They were unused because the optical drives were IDE. At that time, IDE optical drives were still cheaper than SATA.

I would be very surprised if the new Mac Pro did not use SATA optical drives. So that's where the remaining 2 ports will go. If you wanted to use only 1 optical drive, you could wire the other port to an eSATA bracket. Otherwise it's time for a PCI-e eSATA card.
Click to expand...


u would hope that they are now having 8 sata drives just like almost any intel motherboard out there. that will still free up the two extra sata for esata and two for optical drives.
 
rockos said:
u would hope that they are now having 8 sata drives just like almost any intel motherboard out there. that will still free up the two extra sata for esata and two for optical drives.
Click to expand...

If they are using the X58, then there are likely to be just 6 (http://www.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Chipsets/X58/X58-overview.htm). Doubtful they added an extra chip for 2 more ports that they don't advertise.
 
As I said, the ICH10 has only 6 SATA ports. Those boards you are seeing with 8+ ports are using a secondary, extra-cost, third-party controller for the additional ports (usually by JMicron or Marvell). Not only is it extra cost, but it's another driver to support.
 
I don't know why people are saying the 2008 Mac Pro could not boot from the other SATA ports on the logic board. I'm using it right now, drive 1 and an extra one of the SATA ports (routed to a drive in the 2nd optical drive bay) in a RAID0 config. Before I just used that drive as my boot, works just fine for me.
 
sboerup said:
I don't know why people are saying the 2008 Mac Pro could not boot from the other SATA ports on the logic board. I'm using it right now, drive 1 and an extra one of the SATA ports (routed to a drive in the 2nd optical drive bay) in a RAID0 config. Before I just used that drive as my boot, works just fine for me.
Click to expand...

I think they mean booting in Windows. It requires some weird hack to make it work.
 
so it sounds like if still only 6 sata ports....and if the dual optical drives use two othem...only left for the four onboard hd.


your right sounds like pci-e card coming
 
JesterJJZ said:
I think they mean booting in Windows. It requires some weird hack to make it work.
Click to expand...

I used mine for Windows boot . . . oh well, maybe i was lucky?

Also I think that the 2009 Mac Pro's using SATA optical drives stinks. I don't see the need to go SATA vs IDE, I didn't think IDE was the bottleneck for optical drives. I'd rather have the extra 2 SATA for other uses than use them for the superdrives.
 
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