I just installed a 3TB hard drive on an early 2008 mac pro and the system doesn't recognize the drive. What now?

I just installed a 3TB hard drive on an early 2008 mac pro and it is not recognized/not visible. What now?

If the drive is correctly installed on to the sled, and the mounting screws are snug, not tight, and the sled is inserted properly so that all the roof-tangs catch as the sled is inserted, failure to show up in Disk Utility means the drive is not useable.
A Bug in 10.8.4 and later precludes Disk Utility ERASE-ing large drives in Internal bays. Use PARTITION only, and create one new partition, GUID partition Map, Mac OS Extended (journaled) Volume.

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I have an early 2008 Mac Pro and want to install a 3TB internal hard drive. Is this compatible? The manual indicates 1 TB per bay, but I have already installed two 2 TB hard drives in two other bays, and have had no problems. Any suggestions?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro and want to install a 3TB internal hard drive. Is this compatible? The manual indicates 1 TB per bay, but I have already installed two 2 TB hard drives in two other bays, and have had no problems. Any suggestions?

RE: SATA Bus speed:
Typical Rotating drives available today, whatever their SATA spec, can source data off the spinning platters no faster than about 125MBytes/sec.
SATA 3 is rated at 6G bits/sec, which theoretically is about 750 Mega Bytes/sec
SATA 2 is rated at 3G bits/sec, which is theoretically about 375 Mega Bytes/sec
SATA 1 is rated at 1.5G bits/sec, which is theoretically about 187.5 Meg Bytes/sec
None of the SATA Busses is a bottleneck for consumer Rotating drives you can buy today. Trying to speed up the SATA Bus will not provide any real-world performance increases for Rotating Drives.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/22690384

Early 2008 mac pro won't boot from hdd when ssd is installed

I have Mountain Lion 10.8.3 installed on my 1TB HDD in my early 2008 mac pro. That is the only OS install on my mac. I have an OWC SSD formatted but left as an empty drive that I am trying to use but when it's installed my mac hangs on the blank gray screen.
My mac cold boots fine and runs fine when the SSD is *not* installed. When I shut down and put the SSD into a drive bay the mac does seem to boot ok the first time, but when the computer is off for a while it will not boot. It just hangs on the blank gray screen (no apple logo). As soon as I pull out the SSD, the computer boots fine and runs fine again. I am not trying to boot off the SSD, I am booting off the HDD. The correct drive (1tb hdd) is selected in startup disk.
OWC has been helping me and I have tested 3 SSD's. So it does not appear to be a problem with their drive.
The mac will boot into safe mode with the SSD installed. It will boot if I choose the boot drive with the option key at startup.
Mountain Lion was clean installed.
Could it be some sort of library pref or cache issue?
Any recommendations on what to try?

A HT does not find a lot of errors.
It doesn't look for bad sectors or directory or file problems.
Clone your SSD now that you have a clean OS and has the Apple updates on it. Before you make changes.
Install TRIM Enabler 2.2+ on it and any boot volume, to enable TRIM and so that Disk Utility's Repair Disk will trim cells. Mountain Lion Recovery won't which is a shame, so...
Clone and keep bootable backup clone of your system to use for maintenance.
A really bad directory on a system drive will cause interference from booting.
SSDs really need extra care, and even with TRIM, to be repaired from time to time and couple times a year, to do an erase and restore from a current image.
Of course Mac OS system even iwth apps is small and doesn't need to have any data or media and fits on 120GB usually just fine and still have a good enough amount free so TRIM and Garbage Collection can work properly and not get low on free pages. But 20GB free should be the minimum free, and better to have more, at least whatever total amount is written out in a month.

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my info back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos.I see the photos in my HD. What should I do

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my files back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumbnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos. I see the original photo files in my HD. Is there a way to link the Iphoto thumbnails back to the original files?

Use the Firewire cable and t boot the old Mac's hard drive to the new Mac's desktop and transfer your entire iPhoto folder.
Use Disk Utiliy to erase'format HFS+ Journaled your TimeMachine drive and use the free Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your new boot drive to the external, it's hold option bootable.

I have just installed a new hard drive in my imac intel 20" (2006) and now the hard drive does not show up in the 'select destinations' folder of the install program.

I have just installed a new hard drive in my imac intel 20" (2006) and upgraded the memory and now the hard drive does not show up in the 'select destinations' folder of the install program. I can see the hard drive in the disk utilities window however it wont let me do anything.
It is a seagate 1TB SATA II drive however it is displaying it as a 7.3 TB.
If anyone has any suggestions I would be happy to hear them.
I have tried to erase and partition and get the same error message each time, 'Input/Output error'.
I have tried starting the thing with the install disk which is Mac OS X (Tiger?) which came with the computer. No good.
Anyone?

Thats correct. I can see it in the list however when I attempt to erase it or partition it it's like it's not being found or recognised and it throws up the input/output error message. I am pretty sure that the sensor it attached correctly and it is a SATA drive. I can see all the infor regarding the drive when disk utility is open and it all looks good but I cant access it or do anything with it. It's taunting me!
The install disk is in the drive and the install program runs right up to the point where you have to select the location for the install and there is just nothing in the box where you have to select the hard drive icon.
I have my suspiscions about the drive but any help would be appreciated.

I have a pavillion g42. just installed a new hard drive and the first cd. now my screenis

Have a pavilion g42 . I just installed a new hard drive. After installing the first CD the screen is just black. What next?

thats2odd wrote:
I have about 300 songs missing anyway to update the folder to add the missing songs?
If you know the location and you have all the songs in there, you could try the below:
For iTunes 9:
Choose File > Library > Organize Library
For iTunes 8:
Choose File > Library > Consolidate Library
For iTunes 7 or earlier:
Choose Advanced > Consolidate Library.
A message will pop up.
For iTunes 9:
Place a check next to "Consolidate files" and click OK.
For iTunes 8 and earlier:
Click Consolidate.
This action copies all of your music and other media files to the new location.

How do I fix my early 2008 mac pro boot hard disk. Lost everything when it crashed hard, can not reinstal via cd/dvd drive... are there any fix get it boot from dvd drive?

I have an early 2008 MAC PRO Quad Core 3.0ghz processor. 8 Gig of rams, with a 1 Gig memory Radeon 5770 HD Graphic Card running the latest Version of Snow Leopard OS. Last week lighting struck the house take out all of my hard drives (4) thank god the surge protector mitigated the mother board from damaged, use the Parted Magic to check out the motherboard and it intact with no damage. I can boot with the Parted-magic and be able surf and post this question to this forums. I replaced a newly formatted hard drive and trying to installed OS X Mountain Lions to the new drive, but unable to have it boot in my MAC PRO DVD, I get the usual chimes during the booting processed but the screen remain blackout, but able to boot with Parted-Magic to surf the web and access Apple sites/forums.
I am not well verse in using the Parted_Magic to repair or get my-mac to boot normally so I can reinstall OS X. Any help would appreciated.
Thank you
Disabled Veteran.

Go to System Profile and look, does it say "MacPro3,1"?
That is 2008.
FBDIMM would be 800MHz. Did you use older slower 667MHz in yours?
You can but take a hit in performance.
Sounds like MacPro1,1.
Mac Pro (3.0GHz quad core (dual CPUs) 8GB 667 RAM)
In 2007 March an 8-core 3GHz did come out 2,1.
So just to be clear.
===========
It was all working fine a couple of days ago. At the time it randomly shut down I was trying to use Boot Camp to create a Windows 7 area,
Whenever you want to install Windows, remove all the drives other than the one Windows goes to. And if you use a dedicated drive YOU DO NOT NEED Boot Camp Assist, unless you use XP, which really is limited and crippled (one processor, 1.9GB RAM support).
And when it freezes, your only choice is to nuke (reformat) and restore or get out that backup CLONE you made before (ie, Step #1 in the Boot Camp Guide).
Sure that whole NTFS / MBR / GUID could be an issue, but you should just have a blank drive or clone.
No don't bother Apple, they seem to not have a good sense about Windows on Mac Pro anyway.
Other than zap pram from cold boot / tried booting with NO drives inside and just 10.6. DVD - should be fine.
You should be fine iwth Windows 7 DVD and one drive, or even XP.
Make sure you take your time and reconnect cards etc properly and any cables.
Booting from OS X DVDs may not work if there is a drive with a totally shot directory or partition table. Put them in FW case and turn on AFTER OS X is booted.
Why aren't people Cloning as a Backup Strategy
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.2
How To clone

Installing OS and Apps on SSD boot drive on early 2008 Mac Pro while keeping all other data from old iMac on hdd

So I've just got myself a early 2008 Mac Pro with a OCZ RevoDrive 80GB PCIe SSD to replace my old iMac which is slowly but surely giving up on me. I want to put my OS (mavericks) and some/all (whichever is possible/easier) apps, both apple and 3rd party, from my old iMac, onto the SSD but keep all my other data on the 2TB HDD, also from my old iMac, in the mac pro. Can anyone tell me how to do this/if its possible? (not massively tech savvy so simpleish language and steps would be handy!) Thanks!

How to use an SSD with your HDD
If you are going to use an SSD as a boot drive together with your existing HDD as the "data" drive, here's what you can do.
After installing the SSD you will need to partition and format the SSD using Disk Utility. Then, install OS X on the SSD. After OS X has been installed boot from the SSD. Use Startup Disk preferences to set the SSD as the startup volume.
Open Users & Groups preferences. Click on the lock icon and authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on your user account listing in the sidebar and select Advanced Options from the context menu. You will see a field labeled "Home dir:" At the right end you will see a Change button. Click on it. In the file dialog locate the Home folder now located on the HDD (HDD/Users/account_name/.) Select the folder, click on Open button. Restart the computer as directed.
When the computer boots up it will now be using the Home folder located on the HDD.
Another more technical method involving the Terminal and aliases is discussed in depth here: Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup - Matt Gemmell. This is my preferred approach because I can select which of the Home's folders I want on the HDD and which I don't want. For example, I like to keep the Documents and Library folders on the SSD because I access their content frequently.
Be sure you retain the fully bootable system on your HDD in case you ever need it.

Early 2008 Mac Pro: Add larger internal hard drive?

ref: Early 2008 Mac Pro
The original tech specs specify the use 4 1T internal hard drives.
Can I use a 2T hard drive in the internal bays instead?

Hi himacdallas1,
There is no problem replacing one or more of your 1 TB HDDs with a 2TB HDD, or just adding 2TB drives in empty bays, unless you have a raid configuration, in which case all the drives in the set-up should be identical.
The Western Digital Caviar Black is an excellent choice:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-Drive-WesternDigital-CaviarBlack-2TB.html
The above link is a bit out of date, and this is the manufacturer's current website page for its Caviar Black Range:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=100
Regards,
Bill

External desktop drives for early 2008 Mac Pro: USB 2.0 or 3.0 question

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 (OS 10.6.8).
I currently have a 1 TB Fantom Drive with USB 2.0 that I use for the Time Machine. I want to get the second external drive to use as a boot drive so I can install & boot from Mountain Lion to use Maya 2014 3D application software that requires the Mountain Lion OS. For all other applications, I want to stick with Snow Leopard (10.6.8), which works well for me.
Most of the searches I've done for external drives have USB 3.0. Some have USB 3.0/2.0.
Questions:
1. Will one of the USB 3.0-only external drives work with my early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1, which is only equipped for USB 2.0? If so, would I need some sort of adapter? (I realize that the speed would still be USB 2.0 speed.)
2. Or do I need to get the USB 3.0/2.0 external drive (which is more expensive)? I am assuming this would not require any adapter.
3. Will I be able to boot from the external drive with Mountain Lion?
Thanks for any help with this.
S

First, many thanks to both Grant Bennet-Alder and The hatter for their fast responses to my questions. I really appreciate this information. Based on your suggestions I did some research in order to better understand the proposed solutions.
Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
You can add a PCIe card to get these interfaces:
eSATA
USB-3
1. Does one need to get a separate PCIe card for each interface, or is there one PCIe card for multiple interfaces?
The hatter wrote:
Installing or cloning OS X should be done on SATA II drive bay or external and then moved to the PCIe - depends what card you buy, and some issues are with arrays (no need for system on one).
2. I went to http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/, which says, "By default, a single 3 Gb/s Serial ATA -- sometimes referred to as SATA 2.0 or SATA II -- hard drive is installed in the first of four bays for all models." I interpret that to mean that SATA II is a in the first bay located on my internal hard drive. Can I create a partition here and install Mountain Lion as a separate system, and then move it to a PCIe SSD?
3. Or, can I install it on my external Falcon Drive (which has a Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table, and which, I believe means it is not a bootable drive). Following that installation could I then move it to the PCIe SSD and boot Mountain Lion from there?
4. Or, if partitioning is an option, can I just clone it to the Falcon Drive for backup?
My apologies for my ignorance. This is not my forte. Thanks for any help you can give.

Hi everyone,I am new to this so please forgive me any mistakes I may make.Early 2008 Mac Pro desktop installed ML ok but next day nothing, reinstall ok restart same problem ML installer remains on my snow leopard disk. Any help appreciated.Kind regards

There I go first mistake straight off. I was wondering how to fit my big long problem in. My fault I am sure but if anyone can help please.
Early 2008 Mac Pro Desk Top, 2 hard drives 1)snow leopard, 2)lion.
I have downloaded Mountain Lion usuing disk 1,selected no.2 as my destination, installed ok everything fine, set my startup as no.2 in preferences, switch off. Next day start up - nothing, my only way to get moving was physcally remove disk 2, and let snow leopard restart.
Reinstalled, everything fine, then same problem on restart next day, remove disk,and so on.
The mountain Lion installer remains in the snow leopard dock.
I know the problem is me, so if anyone is kind enough to be able to offer a solution it needs to be in easy speak (press button a, press button b) because I am not that savvy.
my best regards to all, and thank you.

Where did you get Mountain Lion? Did you download the 4+ GB file from the App Store? If so, then I would try doing the following:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your second drive on which Lion is installed (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Install Mountain Lion
Double-click on the Mountain Lion Installer application in your Applications folder. Follow instructions to install Mountain Lion on your old Lion drive - Drive 2. When the installer finally finishes it will restart the computer automatically from Drive 2. At this point there is no need to change the Startup Disk unless you want to boot from your Snow Leopard drive.
You will startup to the Setup Assistant in which you will configure your own admin account. You can, if you want, omit that part and instead choose to migrate your Home folder and other data from the Snow Leopard drive. I would recommend you do that unless you wish to do it manually at a later time. In this case create your new admin account using the exact same username and password that you now use on your Snow Leopard system.

2nd Optical-Drive for Early 2008 Mac Pro: Suggestions Required

I am hoping to add a second optical-drive to my Early 2008 Mac Pro. I notice that there are various SATA ones available for Early 2009 Mac Pro's onwards (e.g. the LG GH24NS90) but according to OWC (Other World Computing) these ones are apparently unsuitable for earlier Mac Pro's.
The current optical-drive in my Mac Pro is a Sony AD-7170A.
Can anyone suggest a suitable optical-drive that is still available as new (preferably available in the UK).
Thanks,
Yan Lee

The SATA optical drives will work fine in a 2008 Mac Pro. I just installed this model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136259
I already have a Blu-Ray SATA drive in my other tray, so I've done this a couple of times now.
You have to run a SATA data cable through to one of the two ports on the motherboard - it involves removing the first two drive trays and the front fan. The cable goes up behind the top left corner of the compartment, together with the black cables feeding the optical ATA connectors. You CAN use an L-shaped (90 or 270 degree) SATA cable, but I've found that a regular straight cable works OK too - it is a tight fit behind the fan, but it should fit. The trouble with the L-shape is that it blocks the other SATA port. You can also look for low-profile SATA cables, which have slightly smaller heads.
You'll also need a molex-to-SATA power adaptor. Don't forget to remove the front bezel from the drive - I do this by attaching everything to power, don't slide the optical enclosure back into the space yet, power up the computer, eject the drive using its eject button, and then slide the bezel up and off. You can then slide the enclosure into the space. Turn the computer off to put the fan and drives back in.
Matt

With Boot Camp, should I install the 64 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium edition) OR the 32 bit version when installing onto an early 2008 Mac Pro operating OSX Lion with a 1 TByte internal HDD?

With an early 2008 Mac Pro I'm about to add a second internal drive (1 TByte SATA) and initially install OSX Lion onto the new drive. Then to partition this new HDD via Boot camp. But my question is whether I am best advised to purchase the 64 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium) or the 32 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium) for the Windows sector of the disk What are the differences, and will I notice a difference in performance?

In chart from wiki, (scroll down to "Comparison chart") check the maximum CPUs supported.
You don't see this on MSoft's 1st searched for chart hit. This is one reason you will regret not paying for Professional+ if you get Home Premium 64 as I did for Mac Pro early 2008.
Home Prem Task Mgr sees 4 processors vs. the 8 that are seen by Pro+.
Costs more than a Mac upgrade to Lion if you make that mistake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

Where and what type of solid state drive should I buy for my early 2008 Mac Pro Desktop??

where can I buy and what type of solid state drive should I use to upgrade my early 2008 Mac Pro Desktop??

Rick,
When you get a chance.... DSLReports is off line: their SQL server decided to take its indexes and access to data. Power. Not enough of the right kind of UPS. Same happened to StorageReview's "Drive Reliability Database" about 8-9 yrs ago.
dslreports.com is offline
Fri Apr 20 09:05:55 EDT 2012
SSD: Loading CS5 plus other little monsters might matter.
Lots of small I/Os
latency of 1/100th where nanoseconds replace those "long" milliseconds
System: Small and fast.
DLLoyd even goes for short-stroking drives to get and maintain highest I/O
The new 10k VRs hit 200MB/sec - I still use them and still find them useful, long lasting, feel responsive with whatever I ask of them. I know they get criticized and "cost too much"
Just bought a new WD Black and yes it is better than the 2008 model I was using.
600GB 10K $200 vs $150-220 for WD Black. your choice
I can destroy a 7.2k drive, I have brought ever 10K drive back after a simple WD Extended Test in Lifeguard.
I don't really care about $$/GB or I wouldn't have just bought Intel 128GB $149
Database: the pros put the index in memory and page fix (virtual volumes in memory; cache; hold disk drive index in memory). Caching storage has been around for almost 40 yrs.
Today you can use SSDs as front end cache to hold DB indexes and frequent data for web servers and such adn use slower secondary storage.
SSD + SAS + 4TB storage
Separating the system from data: #1 must
Having data on array: been what I use
I put a large photo library on 2 x 10K VRs vs SSD and couldn't tell much difference (SSD is soundless of course) But my WD Blacks make as much noise and run 15*C hotter than those 10K (not what you expect?)
While 10K and 7.2K are in the 140-180MB/sec range, they are in 3.0 to 12.0 ms seeks, not 0.01 ms.
People wonnder why shrink a drive to 2.5" (or why not go down to 1.8".
How long does it take to reposition a disk head? how often? the 10K VR travels on outer tracks at 70 MPH. Really trying to fly off into space.
It uses one step to find the "zip code" and then another DSP to find the "house."
True of any high density perpendicular recording mechanism.
And of course while the Raptor-X tried to find a home with famers, Cheetah buyers, the WD 10K line has more of a home where servers and small form factor drives - and 100s of them - can fit in a rackmount server I imagine.
Anyway.... if SR and DSLReports can drop out of site due to power and hardware failure and loss... we can learn some and hope to protect our own data and investments.

Purchased a early 2008 Mac Pro in 2010. Yesterday I updated my mac to System 10.9 and now I have a dialogue box in system preferences saying I need to update the NVIDIA CUDA drivers but the servers are unavailable. I download a driver from the site but th

Purchased a early 2008 Mac Pro in 2010. Yesterday I updated my mac to System 10.9 and now I have a dialogue box in system preferences saying I need to update the NVIDIA CUDA drivers but the servers are unavailable. I download a driver from the site but the Mac would not open it. This system has an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB graphics card. What do I need to do. Do I need a new Card?
David Rosenblatt
<Email Edited By Host>

Vista Ultimate 64-bit recognizes 8 cores. 32-bit recognizes one physical cpu.
I've had very little trouble in two years. And now I do like Windows 7 but also eager for the RC.
I've been using the latest Nvidia. There is a method to the madness of how to uninstall/delete and install graphics drivers, or madness in the method. The W7 drivers are easier.
Nope. Something else. More sensitive to disk errors. You aren't running a program to boost fans. Something.
And some AV software is more prone to causing trouble. But all you need is a good AV/malware program, and even Norton AV 2009 is acceptable, or Avast or one of the others.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1866970&tstart=0

I just installed a 3TB hard drive on an early 2008 mac pro and the system doesn't recognize the drive. What now?

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