Internal SATA ports?

I have a 2007 Mac Pro running windows and I know apple did not initialize the two internal SATA ports for adding a Blu-Ray drive, but I am looking at the new Mac Pros and was curious if they turned these ports on in the new machines? It would be nice to not have to run my cable out the back of my computer to plug into an external card.
Any thoughts?
Thanks

If I recall correctly, the 09's have only one free internal Sata port, and it's located in the optical bay. I believe the 08's have two there. I think Maxupgrades has special cabling to allow even more.
I'm not sure this is relevant, but to fit two Sata drives in the optical bay on mine, I took the DVD player out and put it into an esata enclosure from OWC. It works just fine in it.

Similar Messages

Mac Pros extra two internal sata ports broken since Leopard 10.5??

I have a Mac Pro and according to xlr8yourmac.com and the newertech website, there are four sata ports for your hard drives PLUS an additional two more sata ports directly on the motherboard. Through a complicated and difficult disassembly, it is possible to dissect your mac pro and install their cable which they sell for about $30, and get at the rear of your mac pro housing connectors for these two internal sata ports. In short, it's nothing more than an extension cable that fits into a neat housing at the back of the mac pro. You can then plug up to two esata drives into those jacks and they are basically hooked into the macpro motherboard. I ordered this cable and it worked splendidly since 10.4.8 and for 10.4.9 without any issue (that I could tell). I was even able to raid them together etc etc. (edit to be clear I mean I had two Lacie 500Gb drives with esata, firewire 800, 400 and USB 2 on them).
When I installed 10.5 it was all broken!! What a disaster. I can't use these drives on the firewire bus (which by the way they work fine on) because I am already tieing up that with other devices and drives. I need these extra two buses, plus they were **** fast before- I guess it's the same bus as the internal drives get.
I have contacted Lacie - no luck - and also newertech, and did so again today, but so far no luck, and apple, no luck and even submitted a feedback request back when we were on 10.5.1 (just released at that time), and no luck. I hoped 10.5.2 would restore this functionality.
I was told Apple do not normally go out of their way to kill unintended functionality but could this be the case on this occasion?

www.xlr8yourmac.com its over my head but...
A Copy of the April 23rd, 2007 news page post is below (in reply to eSATA Extender cables (w/PCI slot bracket) from Newer Tech for use with the 2 unused ports on the Mac Pro motherboard.)
" this may be of some interest for your readers.
From the Intel 631xESB/632xESB I/O Controller Hub data sheet:
"Hot-Plug Operation
Dynamic Hot-Plug (for example, surprise removal) is not supported by the SATA host controller. However, using the PCS register configuration bits and power management flows, a device can be powered down by software, and the port can then be powered off, allowing removal and insertion of a new device. "
(I asked if he knew of any way to do that in OS X.)
the SATA controller does support AHCI mode, which enables hot plugging (same as with the raid southbridges ICH6R - ICH8R which support hot plugging with raid drivers from Intel without Intel assuring this).
But it does not support AHCI if the PATA port is used as in the Mac Pro. And without AHCI there is no way to do hot plugging.
Using a SATA DVD drive may not mean AHCI is used automatically. The controller has to be switched from IDE to AHCI mode. Maybe the Mac Pro does it on startup or some EFI specialist can finds out how to do that.
BTW Tiger can handle an ICH8R in AHCI mode on all SATA ports without a problem.
Kind regards,
Martin S. "
Info/Tips on using Spare SATA Ports with Windows: (from Jan 15th, 2008 news page) This may have come up in the past and I'd forgotten it (don't own a Mac Pro yet) but in reply to a post yesterday (1/15/2008) on the Pioneer SATA Blu-Ray reader/Superdrive combo drive, a reader mentioned the spare SATA ports are not usable in Windows XP at least with the standard drivers with Bootcamp. (Most readers have used the ports in OS X although I've not searched drive db reports for anyone that mentioned using Bootcamp/Windows also. BTW - The spare ports are bootable for OS X use, as noted in this article - although drives are not shown/usable when booted from Windows with standard drivers.)
(Update) Here's a reader mail w/tips on using the spare ports with Windows via a replacement chipset driver install and grub bootloader edit:
" after finding this thread in the onmac forums I finally was able to get my pioneer sata drive to work under bootcamp. Basically you have to do the following:
- Install Win XP and ubuntu linux with a pata dvd drive in XP, change the ide 2680 driver to the intel ahci driver found here (downloadcenter.intel.com) S5000 Based Server AHCI SATA Storage Driver for Windows.
- Boot into ubuntu and change the stage1 file of the grub bootloader to this:
http://www.olofsson.info/grub/stage1
This keeps the mac pro in ahci mode when booting a foreign OS
Now you can boot windows using the linux partition, this will start grub and keep the mac pro in the correct mode
I also installed Refit to make things a little easier but as far as i know using Alt key when booting should work too.
if anyone tries this and has any questions feel free to ask
-Forrest"

Internal SATA port

I have installed a Pioneer Blu-ray drive in the second optical drive slot and made the data connection directly to the unused SATA port on the motherboard. All Blu-ray things work perfectly, but now I am unable to boot from my system disk in my superdrive. Also just experienced a problem with a Photoshop update DMG file that won't install. Error message simply says update failed.
Has anyone experienced a similar problem?
Thanks in advance!

Look for cuts or nicks in the optical drive flat cable. It is easy for it to get pinched when the drive carrier is pushed back in place. Make sure the DVD drive is using the end connector of the flat cable.

E540 internal SATA port only enters SATA 3Gbs mode

Hi,
I have an E540 and want to use an SSD in the internal harddrive compartment.
The SATA controller is running in AHCI mode and all drivers from the support page are installed.
Now I tried an Kingston V300 120GB 6Gbs an SanDisk 256GB 6Gbs and a Plextor M5S 120GB 6Gbs and
the HDD that came with the notebook. All four of them are running in Sata 3Gbs mode.
Tested it on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 CP on all four drives. HWiNFO 64 and crystaldiskinfo report
that the link is only 3Gbs.
What can I do? Warranty?

Try uninstalling all of the Rapid Storage drivers (keep doing this until Windows installs the generic SATA driver).
Reboot, see if it negotiates a 6GBps link.
If not, try grabbing the latest chipset driver pack and running the setup EXE with the -overall switch.
Sometimes this installs a SATA controller driver.
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X61T: L7500, 3GB RAM, 500GB HDD, XGA screen, Ultrabase
Y3P: 5Y70, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, QHD+ screen

Best Throughput for RAID - Internal SATA vs. PCI RAID Card

Hi, we're upgrading our old server, which has been on an upgraded G4. We put 3 SATA drives in it, connected to a Highpoint 1820a RAID card running RAID 5.
We're moving this to an older G5 1.6 GHz model (2003). It currently has 2 internal SATA drive bays, but I know can be expanded with an adapter kit. It also has just plain PCI slots (not PCI-X or PCIe).
So I'm wondering what would provide better performance (throughput I guess):
• Using the 2 internal bays with a software RAID 1?
• Putting our old Highpoint RAID card in the PCI slot and running RAID 1 or possibly RAID 5 (with another drive)?
I know the RAID card doesn't use the processor for RAID functions, but I think in a RAID 1 it's fairly minimal, correct? I'm mostly wondering if the older basic PCI slot would bet the bottleneck in a fast system compared to the onboard SATA controllers?
THANKS!

Well, we're most concerned with data security and reliability. We're not streaming video or anything else that would demand extreme throughput. The server is mostly serving files to 4-5 users. So I imagine the performance gains would only be noticed when opening/closing files off the server, correct?
And we already own the Highpoint card, which has 8 internal SATA ports, so we'll probably use this. It works fine on PCI bus. So we can run this with 4 drives in either two RAID 1s (boot & files); a RAID 5, or a RAID 10.
We'll probably stick with Western Digital or Seagate 'enterprise' SATA drives, such as the WD RE3.
So, do you think we would see much real-world difference between the different RAID options (RAID 1 software, RAID 1 hardware, RAID 5 hardware, RAID 10 hardware)?
Thanks!

Sata ports

Is there a way to plug in an external hard drive with a SATA port to a MacPro? Looks like MacPros only have usb/firewire/ethernet ports.

The Mac Pro has two unused internal SATA ports. You can use them for external drives with an extender kit
<http://www.newertech.com/products/esata_cable.php>
They do not support hot-swapping, so the drives should be on when booting.
You can also add PCI-Express cards to use external drives.

Raid or internal sata card for my mac?

Hi People,
I have some problems with my internal sata ports and therefore I'm thinking about buying either a raid card (I want to run my two internal harddrives in raid0 so doing it hardware would not be a bad idea) or just a simple internal sata card. But I can't seam to find any products like that except for the raid card apple wants like 1400$ for which is way overkill for this little hack. This can be done for something like 80$ on PC, isen't it possible to get something for my powermac g5 quad that will work?
Thank you in advance.

Hi-
Replied to your other post. Check out the Firmtek line (PCI Express) at OWC (will ship worldwide):
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Criteria=SATA%20High%2DSpeed%20Contr oller%20Mac%20Cards&sort=a
For RAID, this Highpoint would set you up right:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoint%20Technologies/RRAID2310/

Macintosh 1.1 internal 2 SATA Ports and Windows

Hi, I have a SATA DVD burner conncted to one of the two SATA ports behind the front fans. It wors good on MacOSX but it seen not to work on Windows. Is there any driver or other solution for that Problem?

Sry. I'm not sure if it is clear. Because of the headline. Its a Mac Pro 1.1.

Mac Pro 2008 Install Blu-Ray Internal ODD Port?

Hello everything together I has the LG GGW h 20 L Blu Ray and would like the burner to internal port to attach, but that unfortunately cannot be done. Toast detects the burner however it can only CDs and DVDs burning and no Blu-Ray, I have myself an PCI x Card bought with the SIL 3132 chip record, but
this does not want to function so correctly. What can I make? Greeting
from Frankfurt
My System Mac Pro 2008 2x2,8 2 TB HD end 16 GB Ram

The PCI card might be causing your issues. There are 2 SATA ports on the Mac Pro's motherboard that you can attach the drive to, but it can be tricky trying to reach them. Also, make sure you have the latest version of Toast. The minimum requirement is version 8, but version 9 is recommended.

Which of my sata ports should I use?

I have this harddrive [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00471G8CC/] but I want to make sure I'm using the best sata port for it. My desktop is the CQ5720F, here's the link to the motherboard specs [http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02552467&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en...]
It says I have sata 1 and 2 under "internal connectors" but I have 4 sata ports. So that's the problem, I don't know which one to use. Right now I have it plugged into the one labeled "Sata 3". What should I do?
Thanks, Travis
This question was solved.
View Solution.

The specs are incorrect. All 4 SATA ports are the same and are SATA2.0 ports. I doesn't really matter what port you use, however I would put the main hard drive on #1, secondary HDDs on #2 and #3, and the CD/DVD on #4.
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
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SATA Port Multiplication?

Hey there,
I've got an XServe G5 cluster node that's not being used and I was thinking about making it our new file server. Naturally, there's only room for the single ADM.
Having a look inside, though, I noticed that there's still three SATA connectors on the motherboard, just like the mainstream XServe G5. So I started thinking: wouldn't it be neat if I could connect an eSATA box with a port multiplier to these ports?
I know, I know, I could do the same thing only better (ie: less hax0ry) if I just bought an XServe RAID. But I work at a small business with a small budget.
So the million dollar question is: do the internal SATA controllers on a G5 XServe support port multiplication?

So the million dollar question is: do the internal SATA controllers on a G5 XServe support port multiplication?
I have no idea whether the internal ports support port multiplication, but if all you want to do is add a couple of drives, why not just look at either an external FireWire enclosure or an eSATA card and a SATA enclosure.
Both options would be cheaper than an XServe RAID and avoid the issue of hacking the hardware.

Installing Windows on drive attached to extra SATA port

I posted this incorrectly into the MacBook Pro so I have reposted here:
I have a Mac Pro with 4x500GB drives in RAID 10. Since bootcamp can't be installed on this RAID setup I took the stock apple 250GB drive and put it into an external SATA enclosure.
I have since booted to that external sata disk (by holding down the option key during boot) installed bootcamp and partitioned that drive for windows XP. So the drive now has both OSX and a partition for XP that I made via bootcamp. After that was finished I clicked the key to "install Windows now" or whatever.
The plan here is to just turn on that external drive whenever I need to run windows or install firmware updates for the Mac since apple can't seem how to do either with a software RAID set in place on the existing 4 internal drives.
After doing the above steps I now have 2 problems:
1. When booting from a XP SP2 disk to install XP the only drives seen are the 4 internal ones and not the extra sata port that is connected. This leads me to believe that I need to slipstream drivers for the extra two unused sata ports into the install disk but am not sure, I am hoping for some input.
2. Now when I power off the external SATA drive the only way I can boot back into my normal OSX RAID10 setup is by holding down the 'option' key and choosing one of the 4 RAID10 disks that are listed. After I do this it boots fine but I have to do this every time I boot my system which get really old.
If I don't hold the option key down down the system will just boot to a black screen asking me to "insert boot media". It seems like it is stuck in the bootcamp mode so I need to figure out how to get out of it.
I wonder if I can just uninstall bootcamp from the external SATA drive to fix this so that my system will boot normally? I will give this a shot tomorrow b/c I don't have time tonight but I appreciate any helpful advice.
If anyone has any ideas on how to get XP installed while running RAID please share. I know I can use an IDE drive but I have 2 optical drives installed so that is out for the moment but I may need to do that if I can't get the SATA option working.

The enclosure is usb and eSATA (external SATA) the drive is connected via a SATA cable to a SATA 3.5" adapter plate on the back of the mac pro that is connected to one of the unused extra 2 SATA ports that are tucked away behind the heatsinks on the Mac Pro's motherboard. So it is SATA all the way to the motherboard, I am not using USB at all.
As noted above, yes you can install XP on an IDE hard drive and put it into the optical bay area but I have two DVD burners installed there and would like to use the setup I have now if possible.
I was able to fix my 2nd issue listed above thanks to a suggestion in another forum of going into my startup disk options and choosing my RAID 10 setup. Now my system boots fine.
So back to the issue of installing XP on one of those extra unused SATA ports, if we can find out what brand controller those 2 ports are (intel, siig, silicon image, etc.) we could slipstream the drivers into the XP CD and then the windows install should work. Coming from a PC backgrounds and having installed various versions of windows literally at least 500+ times I have had to use the 'F6' optoin to install SATA/RAID/SCSI drivers from a floppy hundreds of times. The problem here is that we don't know what brand hardware it is or if it is possibly an issue with EFI not enabling those ports or something unless OSX boots, because booting to OSX connected to one of those extra ports works fine.
I guess I should also just ask again to be clear: You CAN'T install bootcamp on a RAID setup correct? Because I get an error everytime I try to run the bootcamp setup assistant. Geez, I wish apple would just enable the native RAID support built into the intel southbridge, that would solve the bootcamp problem, the RAID 10 setup problem where you can't setup RAID 10 via the GUI, and also the fact that you can't install any firmware updates to the box.
MB Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8) Mac Pro 2.66, 4x500GB RAID 10, 1GBx4, X1900XT MB Pro 2Ghz Dual Boot w/MCE 2005

How diagnose the extra SATA ports on the Mac Pro (early 2008) logic board?

I have had two SSDs in an OWC multi-mount in the second optical bay, one for Lion and one for Photoshop scratch. However, I recently began having intermittent boot problems. Sometimes there wouldn't be an Apple symbol upon boot/reboot, yet sometimes there would and the computer would boot. I have not experienced any crashes, kernel panics or such.
I thought the Lion SSD was faulty so installed Mountain Lion on the scratch drive, a Mercury Electra 3G which I have recently received as a replacement from OWC due to a previously faulty SSD. However, immediately there were boot problems from that SSD.
I have a feeling there is something wrong with the two extra SATA ports on the logic board. I am now booted off the Lion SSD placed in an external USB enclosure, which works but is a bit slower (I will get a bracket to install that SSD in the ordinary internal bays).
My question is how I can diagnose the logic board generally and specifically the extra SATA ports. I have Tech Tool Pro 6. I also thought I had AHT but on the Leopard DVD 1, which came with the Mac Pro (10.5.2) and on which AHT is supposed to be there is no trace of AHT. Odd. Booting from that DVD will only bring up the Leopard installer.
Btw I do think the Electra is broken because I am unable to boot ML from it in the USB enclosure.
Grateful for any ideas how to check my logic board.
Cheers
/p

If you could move the drives easily to another location then you could test the drives and also - make backup images! just to be safe. SSDs and their firmware and problems are almost all too common, even this last June a large issue with SandForce which OWC uses in some/most of theirs, and I get the feeling they are usually behind in testing and sending out firmware updates.
Corsair, Crucial and Intel have all had issues since it surfaced in May.
Diagnosing a motherboard with Apple Service Diagnostic CD is one thing. Swapping out SATA cables though no. WD Lifeguard does check communication to an SATA device drive and can - but you need to see the device in Windows or their boot CD (linux I imagine). Quite good utility though maybe not for an SSD.

Lenovo G510 Inaccessible Boot Device and Internal Empty Port 5

Hi! I´ve got a lenovo G510 Laptop and I´ve been having several issues lately with it. First, it sometimes does not boot (a blue screen saying Inaccessible Boot Device appears on the screen). On the other hand, there are moments when the DVD recorder is not recognized either on windows or BIOS. (On Intel Rapid Storage there´s a SATA disk for the OS and instead of recognizing the DVD recorder it says Internal empty port 5); but this is not always, just sometimes. Is it possible for the two problems to be conected?Best,

To me that sounds like a harddrive is getting ready to, or has, totally failed. If this is a new laptop or the warranty is still good, I would contact customer support and see if you can get it fixed.
Hoov
Microsoft MVP - Consumer Security
SpywareHammer.com

Best internal SATA expansion card?

Two quick questions:
1. What is a good (and simple) PCI(e) expansion card to add 4 internal SATA connectors to the mother board? I had been using an Adaptec 1405 SAS-SATA card that doesn't want to work after my recent clean installation. During boot up, the Adaptec BIOS discovers the connected devices (that had been formatted and used with the same card till last Thursday, before the recent OS reinstallation) but the computer can't see them. BTW, I do not have a driver, but according to Adaptec, I do not need it if I do not want to connect boot disks to this card (that I never wanted to do anyway). Any advice?
2.(Not) completely unrelated: Windows 7 64-bit Pro fails restore operations (Error message: 0x80070005 - that's one reason why I had to do a complete reinstallation). My suspicion is BitDefender AV Pro 2011. There are several comments about this problem on the Internet, and not only with BD AV 2011 but with other AV software, also. Windows error message after the failed restore operation also mentions anti virus programs (even if they are disabled during the operation) as possible culprits. Any insight/advice?
Thanks for any comment, Laci.

Hi Bill (and others who could help...),
By the suggestions of this thread, I installed the Areca ARC-1300-4i storage controller a few weeks ago. Easily installed the driver, and everything showed up in the Device Manager, the Disk Management and in (My) Computer. (2x 2 TB HDDs and 2x LG optical drives are connected to it.) No problem with the HDDs, and no problem with reading from the optical drives (or playing movies, etc.).
However, I run into a big problem when I wanted to write (burn) on the optical drives! I was trying out some burner software but nothing seemed to work: Windows Explorer froze and I had to hard reboot the system a few times. I have used "Nero micro" before without any problem to read and write with the Adaptec expansion card (which went bad and I replaced with this Areca card).
I removed all the third party burner software (Revo is an excellent tool!), and tried Windows 7's native burning application: it also messed up Windows Explorer (hard reboot again...). When I connected one of the LG optical drives directly to the mother board's SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (see attachment): voil'a, everything works just fine.
I am contacting the Areca technical support tomorrow, and will report their input. Still, since it might be some deeper problem with the whole system, I would greatly appreciate if anybody would give me any idea what to try - short of reinstalling the operating system (again...) - which might be necessary after the many restore/restart operations during the Adaptec card replacement with the Areca card a few weeks ago.
Thank you,
Laci
P.S.
Adaptec is exchanging the bad Adaptec card with a brand new card (Adaptec 1405 SAS/SATA Controller), may be I will use that card after all...
The attached Intel Matrix Storage Consol shows the situation when one of the optical drive is directly connected to port 5 on the mother board.

Internal SATA ports?

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