[starman]

Hi all,
A few months ago, the video card on my 2006 Mac Pro died. I wasn't too upset except I was hoping it would last until new Mac Pros w/Thunderbolt ports came out. Regardless, I had to settle for a new iMac. The Mac Pro works fine in target disk mode over FW 800, but the speed of an external Thunderbolt drive is definitely faster. Rather than spend more money on an external drive solution (the Seagate one I bought heated up and died), I was wondering if there was anything I could do with the Mac Pro to use it for external storage that has better data transfer rates than FW800. Any ideas?

[mduell]

I'd sell the Mac Pro for what you can and get a DAS or NAS box. Lower power, lower noise, better volume management tools, etc.

[starman]

I thought of that. The MacPro on eBay only gets like $40. It's probably better to sell it in pieces.

[reader50]

RAID 3-6 spare drives in the MacPro, and share the volume over Gig ethernet. You get your TM volume back, with (slightly) better-than-FW800 speeds.

[SierraDragon]

2006 MP with a dead video card is worth hella more than $40. That is a good box.

I like either 50's idea or target disk mode. FW800 works fine for most locally attached storage and with 6 total bays available you can have two RAID0 arrays, one for on site backup.

[starman]

When the MP died in August, I looked at completed auctions on eBay for the same unit, and they were going for $40 or $50. Yes, they were full units and working, not just cases. Just checked again and they're going for like $500. So, I think I'll try to fix it up, and it'll cover the cost of the WD Thunderbolt replacement I just bought.

[starman]

Now that the hurricane's over and the power's back, I'm looking at this issue again.

Back when I had my Mac Pro as my main computer, it was easy to handle the four bays. One for Time Machine, one for Media, one for Podcasts, and one for the OS. Now that I'm on an iMac I don't have that luxury. The Mac Pro doesn't have Thunderbolt and FW800 is dog slow compared to it.

So, I'm trying to connect something to this iMac that's fast and has separately mounted drives so that I can have the same device setup as the Mac Pro.

I bought a WD Thunderbolt Duo which works as RAID 0, RAID 1, or JBOD. Originally I was going to just run my Media off there, but it seems expensive for just one thing. I haven't opened it yet. After thinking about it, RAID won't work with partitioned drives so I just bought an expensive enclosure for two 5400 RPM drives when I already have a Mac Pro, but the Mac Pro doesn't have Thunderbolt.

Then I got to thinking about other issues like Time Machine. The Mac Pro currently shares its drives over Gigabit ethernet (it still boots even though you can't see video). In Target Disk Mode you can see the drives individually, but FW800 is dog slow compared to Gigabit Ethernet. However, when the Mac Pro is shared under Gigabit Ethernet, it's shared as one device with the drives under it, unlike TDM. It makes fixing my iTunes library messy.

eg:

Target disk mode:
/Volumes/Media
/Volumes/TARDIS
/Volumes/Podcasts

Gigabit ethernet:
/Volumes/Mac Pro/Media
...etc...

Bottom line: Can you allow the Mac Pro to share its drives individually over Gigiabit ethernet? That might be good enough. I can't try it because booting into Safe Mode gives me video but no network. New video card should be here Thursday.

[Waragainstsleep]

Standard AFP usually lets you pick and choose which volumes you mount when you connect to it.

Have you considered trying to find a fibre care for the Pro? I suspect TB to fibre is not cheap for the iMac end however.

[starman]

Yeah. $600 for the card and $700 for the thunderbolt adapter.

[pottymouth]

I used to use a tower for media serving until I realized how much juice it was drawing. Sure, it'll work, but there are far better alternatives.

And why are you so worried about speed for those tasks? I've got a Mini hooked to my TV that connects wirelessly to my network and will play HD video just fine from the NAS in my office. Yeah, moving media TO the NAS can be a bit slow, but if you're watching a movie it's basically got 2 hours to transfer just a few GB of data. That's certainly not a problem...unless you're playing straight BR rips, I suppose.

[starman]

That's actually what part of it is for - feeding AppleTV with BR rips (yes, just my own). The speed matters a lot.