[action]

hi gang,


does anyone know if the the second hard drive bay is on a separate channel or will it be slaved to the first optical drive?

can i put a ide drive in the second optical drive slot. if it's in a separate channel can i put two ide drives in the second optical bay slot?

also, does anyone know if there is a sata pcie controller card for the mac pro?

i have a sonnet 4+4 card in my g5 now and works great. i have two additional sata drives internally in my g5 powermac via mounting brackets in front of the large fans for the processors.

i need more drive space then optical drives.

thanks for everyone's help.

chung lee

[Senbei]

Originally Posted by action

does anyone know if the the second hard drive bay is on a separate channel or will it be slaved to the first optical drive?

Developer tech note shows it is a single Ultra ATA/100 bus (devices set to cable select)

An alternative is to use the spare SATA interfaces (two of them) on the motherboard and route your own cable(s) to the optical bay plus an adapter for the power connector.

[chefpastry]

Yes, you can put an IDE drive in the second optical drive bay. Someone has already done it. It will be a slave on the same channel as the optical drive.

[action]

thanks for the clarification. this will give me some options to explore.


chung lee

[zerostar]

Originally Posted by action

i need more drive space then optical drives.

You need more drive space than the 2 TB the G5 supports internally? Or do you just want to use PATA drives?

[brokenjago]

The G5 actually supports 3 TB if you put 4 750 GB HDs in it.

I imagine that number will increase to 4 TB soon enough.

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally Posted by brokenjago

The G5 actually supports 3 TB if you put 4 750 GB HDs in it.

I imagine that number will increase to 4 TB soon enough.

By the end of the year...

I'm hoping the SATA connectors in the drive bays can somehow be re-routed to a PCIe controller card. A 4-drive RAID 5 setup in there would be sweet. I'm not holding my breath, though... It doesn't look like that'll be possible.

[action]

hello,

yes i have a lot of media for video plus i clone every hard drive. not necessarily as an archive but to restore a drive from optical media takes too long.

i looked at the mp today and was looking for the internal sata connectors but could not find them.

the system profiler definitely has 6 sata channels so they are some where.

i have a powermac g5 with a sonnet 4+4 sata controller card with a 4 bay macgurus drive box.

i want to migrate to the mp but i am exploring my options in regards of what to do with my data.

all my current drives are 250gb drives and i will be upgrading to 500gb drives but that will only help me temporary. i am trying to plan for future storage as well.

thanks for everyone's input.

chung

[zerostar]

there are 4 internal drive spaces, in the middle of the case there should be 4 "doors" to have access to 3 extra drive slots (one is full from your boot disk) you can pop in 3 750GB drives and have 2.25TB of storage + your boot disk, although read this first...

http://www.barefeats.com/quad07.html

Perhaps figure out how much storage you will need and what config (2 sets of 1TB each, etc. etc.) then we can figure out the best solution...

Have you looked into an external raid setup instead?

[action]

zerostar,

thanks for the link. it was interesting reading.

my problem would be solved as soon as there is a pce 4 external port card that i can hook my current box to.

just thinking out loud and seeing what my possible options would be when i switch boxes.

i don't need a raid i just need jbod's. i also clone each drive.

i would put the backup time machine drive in the second optical drive port via ide or via the extra sata connectors depending on logistics of the wiring.

chung lee