Installed a sata optical drive in my Mac Pro

[hal]

In case you didn't know, there are a couple of unused sata ports on the original mac pro motherboards.

I picked up this UPS destroyed mac pro long ago (handles are bent out of shape) - it had 4GB of ram, 2 ATI x1900 video cards, and dual dvd burners for $1200 - a screaming deal at the time (assuming that it functions - and it does)

BUT the burners are WAY too loud to use. Even just reading data, the spinning make a huge screeching noise. Both of them. I picked up a very nice Lacie external a while ago that is my main dvd drive. It's VERY quiet and really fast.

While I had the case open to upgrade hard drives, I thought I finally take care of these noisy dvd drives. I opened the lacie case and found an sata drive - oh - surprise...

To properly install a SATA cable that runs up to the dvd drive, you have to take much of the machine apart - I was working off of an Apple service source guide. You have to remove the fan, the memory trays, slide the memory cage over a bit and remove the processor cover. Pretty simple, but rather involved.

The only hitch is that one sould really use right angle connectors to connect to the motherboard. I didn't have any and used regular cables. The fan needed about 3mm more clearance, but I forced it down a bit - didn't quite screw the fan all the way down - perhaps 2 of the 3mm, but it all seems just fine.

I ran the sata cable through to the dvd drive and ran a second one out the back of the machine for external connection.

anyway... for those interested in doing such a thing - it's not that hard...

[hal]

ps - As I've read - these sata ports are NOT hot-swapable - the machine has to be started up with the devices connected

[rz]

must be the first gen Pro, because it's much easier on the 2ng gen. Just have to pop out the fan.

At first, I used the two ports and ran them to be external SATA ports with a $5 card (OWC sell the same card for $25, but I found it elsewhere much cheaper). I think the thing about being non-hot swappable was what caused me to give up on that. I had to have the external case on at startup in order for the drives to mount. So instead, I mounted a regular hard drive into a 3.5-to-5.25" adapter and mounted it in the unused optical drive bay. So now I have 5 internal HD's.

I had tried mounting a second optical drive that I had into the unused bay, but the door didn't line up properly. Even with taking the bezel off (or whatever you call the plastic piece on the door), and it just barely didn't work.