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Uncle Skeleton · Feb 16, 2007, 05:02 PM

It's hard! Pulling the casing out was only a little sticky (probably not by design), and putting the second drive in it was downright easy, but sticking it all back together was much harder than your standard PC box. This is because the IDE cable, while long enough to reach both drives with the casing out and in (obviously), is NOT long enough to reach all intermediate positions between out and in. This left me trying to lever the connection between drive and cable together with a screwdriver, holding the casing half-in half-out.

Does that make any sense?

Anyway, has anyone else gone through this and noticed some clever little trick that makes this process bearable? As is I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Also, I've noticed that the precision of how parts fit together seems much lower on the Mac Pro than on my dual G5. Anyone else have opinions on that?

silverflyer · Feb 16, 2007, 11:10 PM

I ordered mine with the second one installed so I did not have to hassle with it.

Uncle Skeleton · Feb 17, 2007, 01:46 AM

I didn't need another drive, I just had an old CD burner going to waste so I thought I'd throw it in there. After upgrading my G5's drive, I thought it would be easy (like the G5's is). Now I'm wondering how the Apple folks even get the 2 drives in there, unless they use longer cables for the BTO machines.

brokenjago · Feb 17, 2007, 05:12 AM

Well, I found it a lot more frustrating than it needed to be, but I didn't find it anywhere near as impossible as you make it out to be.

Uncle Skeleton · Feb 17, 2007, 11:16 AM

Does that mean you could slide the thing in with all cables connected? Did you find a method I didn't? That's really what I'd like to know, for next time.

I don't think I implied impossible, since I was able to get it finally.

wr11 · Feb 17, 2007, 02:12 PM

It was tricky to get it in and out the first time... but after that it's easy.

milhouse · Feb 17, 2007, 06:24 PM

I installed a second drive. I didn't find it very difficult. I found that I needed to insure that I didn't pinch the cable and that it did not obstruct the cage when sliding it back in.

EricTheRed · Feb 20, 2007, 12:22 AM

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton

It's hard! Pulling the casing out was only a little sticky (probably not by design), and putting the second drive in it was downright easy, but sticking it all back together was much harder than your standard PC box. This is because the IDE cable, while long enough to reach both drives with the casing out and in (obviously), is NOT long enough to reach all intermediate positions between out and in. This left me trying to lever the connection between drive and cable together with a screwdriver, holding the casing half-in half-out.

Does that make any sense?

Anyway, has anyone else gone through this and noticed some clever little trick that makes this process bearable? As is I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Also, I've noticed that the precision of how parts fit together seems much lower on the Mac Pro than on my dual G5. Anyone else have opinions on that?

I have 2x drives in my Mac Pro but before I sold my computer dealership in '98 (my company sold into the printing indusry) and began investing I was an auto mechanic. You hold the drive half in half out with the box oriented upright and its all good. BTW, its option-eject to get the second drive to open and close but it will also appear in the menu at the top.

brokenjago · Feb 20, 2007, 01:01 AM

Does that mean you could slide the thing in with all cables connected?

Nope.

macgeek2005 · Feb 20, 2007, 03:46 AM

I had mine shipped with 2 drives, but when I had to get into unreachable parts of the computer to find and screw in a loose screw (yes my computer shipped with a screw loose), I had to take the whole thing out. I had both drives unplugged. Then I plugged them both back in, and slid the thing in until it clicked. No problems.

Leonard · Feb 20, 2007, 04:44 PM

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

when I had to get into unreachable parts of the computer to find and screw in a loose screw (yes my computer shipped with a screw loose)

rofl... your computer had a screw loose...

myramoki · Feb 21, 2007, 10:47 AM

I added a second optical drive the day I got my machine, and I nearly broke my machine in the process! Getting the driive bay out wasn't all that hard, but when I put it back in, it just wouldn't slide in all the way. After a bunch of pulling it out, and checking the cage, pushing harder, etc I broke out the flashlight and began looking around inside the case, while I slid the case in. One of the thin cable wires that was tied up in a bundle and went to the drives had ended up on the bottom by one of the guide screws. When I pushed the cage in, the wire ended up getting wrapped around the screw and my pushing on it nearly severed it in two. A little bit of electrical tape to bandage up the cable, and making sure it didn't get wrapped around anything else, and the cage went in fine.

This is the one glaring exception to the otherwise exceptionally easy user modifications for the MacPro. Like others have pointed out, the cable is really not quite long enough, and like I found, it can be pretty easy to get it tangled on things in the case that would result in some issues. If the entire lenght of the bundled wires had been wrapped in a simple sheeth, versus just being wrapped a couple places, then there would have been no way for an individual wire to have gotten wrapped around the screw.

Waragainstsleep · Feb 22, 2007, 04:41 PM

Doesn't help you much, but this is the sort of thing Apple tend to rectify with later revisions. The early MBP had a screw near the logic board which had a spacer which was easy to miss and fell out of place easily too. It also wasn't mentioned in the service manual. Putting the screw back without it makes a nice dent in the bottom case.
I wouldn't dare to take sole credit for it, but I reported this to Apple (they paid for a new case) and the later ones do not have the spacer. (There is a longer plastic 'tube' for the screw to go through instead).