External storage for early 08 mac pro for video storage and editing

Early 08 Mac Pro mod 3.1, 2x Intel 2.8 Quad Core Processors. Bus speed 1.6 Ghz. 10 GB DDR2 FB-Dimm 800 MHz. USB2, Firewire 400, 800. ATI Radeon HD 2600 PCIe 256 mbVRAM. Currently running OS 10.6.8.
I use machine for photo and video storage and editing. I tried using 2x 3TB and 2x1TB HDD internally ( 8 TB total). All are Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200. Experienced constant spinning wheel and lockup requiring manual shutdown. I had upgraded to Lion and to Maverick. Did not help so I did a clean install of primary with Snow Leopard and did not install past 10.6.8. Works now if I don’t exceed 3.5 TB internally. I also discovered that my Disk Permissions experienced voluminous corruption that could not be repaired if I installed Java for Mac OS 10.6 Update 17 as suggested each time I check for software updates.
I need to be able to have a total of about six TBs available in my system for storage and editing of video via Imovie. I don’t know the maximum of HDD storage that can be used in the four internal bays without causing lockup and corruption. If 3.5 TB is about the max, then I would like to have some ability to have external storage via firewire 800 if that would facility fast enough transfer for either video edition and or playback. I don’t know if thunderbolt can be installed via PCI card. I could add a SATA PCI card. However, I assume that would cause the same problem as experienced with 8 TBs installed internally in the four bays.
I would appreciate any suggestions.

olderguy1 wrote:
Do you mean 2x2TB and 2x3TB for a total internal capacity of 10TBs? Are you running Snow Leopard or something else? Actually, I took it to an authorized repair facility who ran checks and said nothing is wrong with the hardware.
Yes, I've got a total of to TB and I'm running Snow Leopard. If your hardware checks out, that pretty much makes it a software problem,,, reinstall the OS?
Does the High Point Technologies SATA3 PCIe connect to eternal drive enclosures or does it somehow connect to drives in some of your four internal bays?
Highpoint makes several RocketRAID 2700 series SATA3 controllers for Mac with external mini-SAS connectors, probably the cleanest/least expensive external hook-up. They also offer a combo internal/external board that (for marketing reasons) is listed as not working for internals with Mac Pro. I believe that this is due to pressure from Apple (who apparently does some business with High Point Tech) but to the best of my knowledge it will. Technically, the "not supported" statement is true since all the internal bays are tied to the motherboard SATA 2 controller, but this can be remedied with a special cable. HOWEVER... the boards are not bootable, so your system disk needs to be on the motherboard controller.
In truth, I bought one of their 8-port "internal only" boards designated for PC only and flashed it so the Mac Pro sees it as a 2722 board, so I have 8 internal ports. I'm not recommending you do the same unless you're pretty geeky, but the 2721 would give you half-and-half or the 2722 would give you 8 external with no mods to the board.

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Early 2008 Mac Pro, NVIDIA Quadro 5600, and Adobe CS5 - HELP!!!

Hello, I am currently pulling my hair out over my GPU situation. I'm eagerly awaiting the ship date for CS5, but I'm concerned about one of its system requirements, where it says an OpenGL capable card must be supported for the software to work.
So I went to their handy chart explaining which cards are supported, and mine, the Quadro FX 5600, is not listed on the Mac side. It is however listed on the Windows side.
But when I bought my Mac Pro, the 5600 was being offered by Apple, they're the ones who installed it for me! Haven't had a problem in CS4, but now I'm afraid I won't see the significant boost in power Adobe is promising from CS5.
When I called Adobe about it, I was on the phone for more than 45 minutes, talking to people in India who I even got to admit don't actually use the software, and ultimately told me they simply couldn't answer the question.
So if anyone could advise me wether or not my Early 2008 Mac Pro with Quadro FX 5600 graphics card will support OpenGL in After Effects CS5, I'd be eternally grateful.
Thanks so much!

I have always assumed there would be no problem. You can download from
http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/download.html
the OpenGL Extensions Viewer, which, when launched DIRECTLY TESTS with which versions of the OpenGL standard your card is compatible. (Right now there appear to be download problems with the URL above (a 421 FTP error: server is limiting available connections.)
I'm also hoping this indicates no problems with CS5!
Hope this helps.
DMW

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Hi, I am wondering if someone knows if I can open/(how I see) the files I have saved in Lightroom on my Mac laptop, on my new desktop?

You want to transfer the catalog file to the new desktop using your operating system, and open that by double-clicking on it. Then reconnect the photos to Lightroom (if necessary) by these instructions: Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders

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.

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.

What upgrade graphic card do i need for a early 2008 mac pro

I have a early 2008 Mac Pro. ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB is what i have now. What is a good upgrade graphic card to get.

The GTX 780 6GB runs fine on the dual PCIe internal power cables -- as does the GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7950. The same can't be said of the GTX TITAN or GTX 780 Ti or Radeon R9 280X -- all of which require an auxiliary power feed to avoid a nasty power down of your tower at the worst moment when too much wattage is demanded of the Mac Pro's factory power supply.
Did I mention that the GTX 780 with 6GB of GDDR5 matches the 6GB of GDDR5 in the TITAN?
The one fallacy to my 'sweet spot' award has to do with OpenCL. In case you hadn't noticed, the AMD Radeon GPUs smoked the NVIDIA GeForce GPUs running Photoshop's OpenCL accelerated Iris Blur filter and rendering LuxMark's OpenCL accelerated Room scene.
- http://www.barefeats.com
So depends on budget, whether you want a PC card for less but no "early EFI boot screen" prior to drivers loading, and what apps and needs you have.
The one thing for sure is that 2600XT should have been retired ages ago and even more so with 10.8.3 and above, it could be trouble or just... PITA/POS.

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

Early 2008 Mac Pro for home use

Hello guys,
I've been using usual Windows PCs at home (watching movies through HDMI, playing a few games - Counter Strike and random racing games), browsing internet, working in PS and Light room etc, but mostly for watching HD movies. But I was able to get myself Early 2008 Mac Pro - 10gb memory, two dual core intel xeon processors, 256 Ati Radeon graphics cards and 1tb ssd hard drive. Now I wanted to know how good is Mac Pro for home use? As I said I don't do many things with my windows based PC and wanted to switch to faster, quieter mac pro. Any opinions? How good it is as a home entertainment center?
P.S. Counter strike is available now for Mac, so I don't really care about other games.

dump the 2600XT and there I would pay for a Mac Edition AMD 7950, else PC card
1TB SSD is unusual gift
even though 8 cores it is 6 yrs old and most things don't use 8 cores that much, it predates the i7-920,
USB3 has to be added if you want it or put USB3 on your LAN router is what I do.
It does not get the official nod of support from Apple for Windows 8/8.1 but it does if you want run 7 or 7 Pro (dual cpu support)
FBDIMMs have gotten better and cheaper if you want or need to, many do, often due to early death.

Early 2008 Mac Pro - Can't load Boot Camp drivers for Win 7 64

Trying to install Win 7 64 bit on my early 2008 Mac Pro. I downloaded the Boot Camp drivers 4.0.4033 and installed them on a USB drive but, for some reason, when I try the install them during the process, I get a message that my hardware is not recognized. Skipping the driver loading process, I am able to install Win 7 but when the system trys to restart to continue the install, I get a message "disk error, press any key to restart". Pressing any key does not get me anywhere. I went through the Win 7 repair process and again tried to load the drivers with no luck.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you,

That article was also my starting point and I have followed those steps again and again and again. I haven't slept, I haven't done anything other then try to make it work for more hours than I can count. I came here for help because that solution is not working for me.
The region and keyboard type settings simply don't have the Apple keyboard layout listed. As I said, someone on the Fusion forum tried to follow the article's instructions too and he managed to get it working because he COULD run setup.exe (Boot Camp Drivers) on his machine, and I CAN'T. Yes, it is all explained in that article... but the drivers WON'T INSTALL, I get an error message saying "This version of Boot Camp is not intended for this computer model".
First you said it wasn't physically possible for me to install the drivers, then you said I should just follow the article. Well, the article clearly says "Install the Boot Camp Windows device drivers in the virtual machine" which you just said couldn't be done! I want to cry. I should have just bought a second laptop, this is too painful.

Need help with graphics card options for an early 2008 mac pro

Hello,
   I have an early 2008 mac pro with 2 x 3.2 GHz quad core Intel Xeon and 6Gigs of ram, currently running with an Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT with 512mb.
    It is also running 10.7.2.
   I would like to either add a video card on top of the one I am currently running or replace it completely if necessary.
   I do video editing on the Mac, no gaming and only a small amount of photoshop, and as the resolutions get larger I would like to have my machine keep up.
   My questions are,
     1. What cards would you the community suggest?
     2. Can I add a whole other card to my system or do I have to replace the current one?
     3. If I can hold two cards what special accomidations would be needed in regards to final cut performance if any?
    Thank you for any help you would like to give.
Rob

The two main cards for mac pros are the apple versions of the ATI Radeon 5770 and 5870.
The 5770 requires one aux power adaptor and the 5870 requires two. So generally you could only have one 5780 or two 5770's.
Video cards which don't require aux power should be able to coexist with these cards so log as it's all within the power supply maximums of course.

Compatible graphics cards for the early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 with the 2.66Ghz Quad core processor that is running Lion. I had an ATI Radeon Card in there that didn't last very long (I've read not great reviews about them recently) and now I need a replacement that will be compatible with my system and that will last me longer than my previous card did. The problem is I don't know what my options are. Can anyone reccomend me a viable replacement? I do video/audio production so something high end would be nice.
Thanks,
-RH

There are some good ideas, comments and tests just how much difference and in what applications.
The differences between 2.5GT and others are less than you might think.
There is no-compromise performance for some areas of CS6 and CUDA with ML and GTX 570 or above. The new EVGA GTX 660-Ti FTW w/ 3GB $330 looks to be very popular and that is the "mid-range" today, compared to $400-500 where GTX 680 sits or ATI 79xx series.
If you have to use 10.6.8 that is a bigger factor and some cards require 10.7.4 or later.
The 5x70 were average cards when they came out. There is no reason to have a system where early boot is totally dependent upon firmware and couldn't do basic video. Anyway some people are willing to swap out the 5770 and keep it just for debugging.
As to the original question: can't tell if you were interested in asking if a MacBook Pro Retina or something else... kind of hard to argue. A 12-core 3.33GHz with 48GB and 5 internal hard drives - it is hard not to do whateer you throw at it esp. if cost is not the primary concern but work is and it is suppose to pay for itself.

What USB 3.0 card should I get for early 2009 Mac Pro so I can connect the Drobo 5D? They say get CalDigit or Sonnet. Anyone have preference or experience with reliability. Trying to find which is better.

What USB 3.0 card should I get for early 2009 Mac Pro so I can connect the Drobo 5D? They say get CalDigit or Sonnet. Anyone have preference or experience with reliability with this. I am running Lion and Trying to find which is better as I know from experience not all cards are created equal. Thanks in advance for your help!

yakov536 wrote:
High Point RocketU Quad USB 3.0 for Mac is working great for me. Had an issue with CD/DVD Drive which was resolved with most current driver downloaded from the support site.
Running Moutain Lion on Early 2009, mirroring two Seagate Go Flex 2TB USB 3.0 Drives. Installed in Slot 4.
Using it primarily with VMWare Fusion for Virtual Drives. Windows, Unbuntu and other OS running really well.
HPT Support was responsive and very helpfull using the WEB Portal under the product page.
I have some comments and a suggestion:
Have you tried your setup with a SD/CF combo card reader (like the Lexar or Kingston FCR-H63)? Does the card appear on the desktop when first plugged in?
Did you need to fool around with any kind of power issues in installing this card in the x4 PCIe slot of the MacPro?
Suggestion. Have you tried one of the fixed in this article to cure the BT issues in MacPro 3,1?
Good luck.
Henry

I need an "Open CL compatible graphics card for an early 2008 Mac Pro with 1 gig of V-Ram", any recommendations? Thanks.

I need an "Open CL compatible graphics card for an early 2008 Mac Pro with 1 gig of V-Ram", any recommendations?
Thanks.

BlackList:
Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Compressor 4: Graphics card compatibility
WhiteList:
Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Compressor 4: Using OpenCL-enabled graphics cards
OpenCL graphics cards available now, for any Mac Pro model, for a reasonable cost:
Apple 5770 US$250 Avail: in stock
Apple 5870 US$450 Avail: 2-3 weeks

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, 8 gb ram with a Dell 27" display and a 42" LG TV. I am thinking about upgrading the stock ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card for better resolution, preferring 2 dvi outputs. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best card?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, 8 gb ram with a Dell 27” display and a 42” LG TV. I am thinking about upgrading the stock ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card for better resolution, preferring 2 dvi outputs or 1 dvi and 1 vga vs 1 dvi and a mini. I don't do a lot of Final Cut Pro, gaming, etc. I am interested in best value for the graphics card.
Does anyone have any suggestions on the best graphics card for these larger displays for the best value?
Thanks,
Kevin

I recommend you install nothing older than the Apple-firware 5770, about US$250.
RE: Mac Pro Replacement Graphics cards
1) Apple brand cards,
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards, and
3) "Mac Edition" cards ...
... show all the screens, including Boot up screens, Safe Mode, Installer, Recovery, debug screens, and Alt/Option boot screens. At this writing, these choices include:
1) Apple brand cards:
• Apple-firmware 5770, about US$250** works near full speed in every model Mac Pro, Drivers in 10.6.5
• Apple-firmware 5870, about US$450
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards
• NVIDIA Quadro 4000, about US$1200
• NVIDIA Quadro 5000, about US$2500
3) "Mac Edition" cards -- REQUIRE 10.8.3 or later:
• SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 MAC Edition, about US$480** Vendor recommends Mac Pro 4,1
• EVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, about US$600
The cards above require no more than the provided two 6-pin aux power connectors provided in the Mac Pro through 2012 model. Aux cables may not be provided for third-party cards, but are readily available.
If you are Meet ALL of these:
• running 10.8.3 or later AND
• don't care about "no boot screens" etc AND
• can re-wire or otherwise "work out" the power cabling, THEN:
You can use many more cards, even most "PC-only cards"

Blue Ray Burner for Early 2009 Mac Pro

Hello Folks I don't know if I am in the right area of the forum to ask this question. Here it is. Can any one tell me whats a good Blue Ray Burner for the Early 2009 8 Core Mac Tower. I do own Toast 10 with the Blue Ray Plug-in.
Whats the difference USB 3.0 to USB 2.0
Thanks
Steve

videoguy4u,
I bought the LG/WH10LS30KMPT from OWC and installed it on my early 2008 Mac Pro.
Very tedious installation on the 2008 MP,but it works fine.
With Toast10 it works burning Blu ray and DVD,perhaps the original DvD drive can be removed.
Alt key needs to be pressed to open this second drive.
Go for it.
If you are in the UK carriage and customs payment will double the cost.
But it arrived within seven days.
The shipping company in the UK will send you an email asking you to pay the duty by email.
It was delivered the next day after payment.
Michael.
Michael

External storage for early 08 mac pro for video storage and editing

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