Maxxing out my mac pro hard rive config???

so I've got the 3.0 quad, manufactured late 06 into 07. specs read the possibility of a 750gig per slot HD config. Anyone have any experience with putting in terabyte drives???
can you see any issues with this. is it simply that the processor can't handle searching that much data?
I need the space and want it internally

Yes you can, it should work. Some have run into trouble with 4 x 1TB for some reason, so make sure you aren't overloading your house current, UPS, and that they run cool.
Don't forget you can always add 20 drives off a single 8x PCIe SATA controller, too, and use smaller drives -- or not. Controller and enclosure can run $250 plus $500 per case, so there is over-head.
Do your research of 1TB drives and reviews.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard94.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/reviews.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/intel/macpro-2008/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/
I was using a WD Caviar 750GB and didn't like the temps, so I replaced it with 640GB which runs much much cooler, and faster, and for a lot less. Then I have 10 x 500GB drives in external cases.

Similar Messages

Mac Pro Hard Drive Connectors

I need to replace the two screws that hold the hard drive connectors to the Mac Pro.
Does anyone know where I can begin to find these? They are two small black screws.
The previous owner of my Mac Pro removed them so that he could attach an SSD drive loosely to the Mac Pro.
I'm going to replace the SSD drive, as it failed, and it comes with a 3.5" tray that should attach to the Mac Pro hard drive carrier, but when I push it back in to align up with the hard drive connector, since he removed the screws, it doesn't align up and go in without me manually connecting it. I'd like to get it back to the way it was with the screws.
So...I wonder what part number that is or how I can get those two little screws, the exact ones?
Any advice would be great.
Thanks.

ChrisMc73 wrote:
Yeah there are two models for this Icy Dock SSD Kit...I think I want the screwless version.
MB882SP-1S-2B - uses screws to mount the drive and has more ventilation for a moving parts 2.5" drive
MB882SP-1S-1B - is screwless and is meant more for SSD drives
I use the screwless version.
As for dvwearhouse and others, unless you know the part number, how do you know where to look?

Where can I find Mac Pro Hard Drive Holder?

Where can I find Mac Pro Hard Drive Holder? Only 4 came withe the computer and I need some more.
Anybody knows where I could buy some?
Thanks

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2705

Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow?

Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow? Totally 8 gb speed system but now very slow . Please give some suggestions

Another thing you can do in Lion (and ML) is click on the "Info" button in Disk Utility to get the SMART status of the drive.It's more detailed now than it used to be and it might tell you if something is wrong.
A lot can go wrong with a hard drive which is why I tend to point people to the downloads section of the following web site:
http://scsc-online.com
They have a free hard drive troublleshooting download book there. I reccommend people download that before asking questionis because there are tons of problems that can act like hard drive problems when there's nothing wrong with the system at all. For example, how full is the drive? How many applications are running? What's the status of Spotlight indexing? How many apps are you running? How much memory do you have?
I could probably think up 20 or 30 more if needed.

Help or tips on config new Mac Pro hard drives

Been saving for over a year and just bought a new Mac pro. The day after MacWorld with no upgrade announced ☹.
My configuration is the 2x 2.8Gh quad-core processors, 2 GB of RAM, ATI Graphic card (standard), and a 1TB hard drive in the first hard drive bay.
I am upgrading for the original 1 processor G5 (sounds so slow now). I am planning on taking my 1TB hard drive from that machine which contains my entire iTunes library, and its full! Mostly of legally ripped DVDs and TV shows.
I am planning on configuring my hard drives like so.
Drive Bay 1: 1TB drive, I am considering partition it so there are about 400 gigs on a boot drive for applications and libraries and using the other 400 or so gigs left over as a drop box for things from my over full iTunes hard drive. (TV shows which have ended, so the tags won’t be changed)
Drive Bay 2: 1TB, or 500 gigs depending on the price I get for a hard drive. If it’s a 1TB I will just have it mirror the drive in bay 1. If its 500 gigs, I will have the iTunes “drop box” mirrored in drive 2 and use my time capsule to back up the OS, applications and libraries.
Drive 3 will be my currently full TB hard drive from my current machine and drive 4 will be a TB drive as an exact mirror for back up purposes.
Can I set up these mirrors I want with time machine? Also I have never partitioned a drive, I know you can do it in disk utility, is it a pretty self-explanatory process?
Is this set up of drives a good idea? A RAID seems too costly and just too much since I am not worried about response times of the drives, as long as my media plays properly I am generally happy. I do some work in PS and FCE but not enough to warrant percent scratch disks and RAIDed drives. I also read about a back up program called SuperDuper but it seems like time machine can do anything I would need super duper to do so is it worth the 30 bucks.
Also I have never used migration assistant, is that fairly painless or am I better off just syncing what I can with Mobile Me, and brining the rest of the things I need over VIA external hard drive? (Documents and pictures and such)
I haven’t gotten a new Mac in 5 years so are there any other tips you recommend when setting up my OS? I read somewhere to create an Admin profile that you never use for log in, and than your own profile? Just simple things like that. I have been browsing my old Macworld magazines looking for small tips!
Well thank you for reading my long post! I am super excited about this Mac to ship in 2-4 days I even shelled out for next day shipping so I didn’t have to want any longer than I needed to.
Thanks in advance.

I've had my MP just a few months, and like you I've filled the drive bays in no time.
I keep on top of things using two pieces of software;
CarbonCopyCloner - this runs two nightly 'incremental' bootable Clones of my OSX/iTunes/iPhoto 'System' HD, one to an internal drive, one to an external FW800 D2.
ChronoSync - This I use for everything else, work in progress & archives etc - During and towards the end of my jobs (I'm a photographer), I will use ChronoSync to perform perfectly synced Backups to external FW800 D2s and will soon be purchasing a NewerTech Voyager Q to facilitate the use of bare HDs for rotational backups.
Time Machine isn't a program I've looked into and frankly the way I work doesn't really require that 'Archive' backup style.

Inserted my Mac Pro hard drives into a RAID enclosure accidentally... help!

Hi guys,
I am regular member of the Logic Pro forum, but am hoping for some help regarding a fairly large data loss disaster.
I have recently sold my Mac Pro tower, in favour of a new iMac, and prior to selling I removed my two additional audio hard drives from the Mac Pro. Unfortunately these were only backed up a year ago (and now my slackness has come back to bite me!), and since then a fair bit of audio work has been completed in Logic Pro.
My plan was to access the hard drives' content on my iMac using a dual-HD USB3 hard drive enclosure. I purchased the ORICO 3529 NAS series, which, while having RAID functionality, I also understood could be used simply as a dual drive unit for normal access of two drives.
So when I got the ORICO unit, I put my two audio drives into it, and plugged into the iMac. I expected to see my drives, but instead I got the message "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". I had switched the ORICO to JBOD mode, but possibly not prior to initially powering up the unit - which it appears defaults to RAID mode.
I have since tried the HDs in another single enclosure, as well as putting them in a friend's Mac Pro, and in both cases each disk brings up the same error.
It appears I have somehow formatted these drives to be part of a RAID setup, just by putting them in the RAID unit. I am not sure whether this means that all my data is lost, or whether instead it means that the directory or some other part of the file structure or format have been damaged and need to be re-built. While I am a competent computer user in a music context (using Pro Tools and Logic Pro), I am by no means a programmer, and am not really sure where to go from here.
Two of the very helpful regulars on the Logic Pro forum have advised me that potentially a tool like DiskWarrior might help recover the data, although as we went through some additional troubleshooting, they have since suggested that DiskWarrior may not be the solution, and instead I should talk to a RAID specialist about how to recover some of the data on these disks.
So on that note I thought I would put it out here for any Mac users who might be experienced with RAID and willing to make any recommendations. In the meantime I am not going to try to use any tools (like DiskWarrior) in case they cause more harm when in fact I should be seeking out a RAID expert to work on the solution with me.
If you have any thoughts or have had an experience similar (if you are as silly as me!), I would be grateful for any suggestions you might be able to offer.
Cheers and thanks!
Mike

Also, first thing is don't touch change or modify. Disconnect and get them off line.
The first program that can probably help, http://www.SoftRAID.com - their demo (the support they give is probably worth the cost too). Alsoft Disk Warrior support - even remote login - also can be excellent if or when needed.
SoftRAID 'takes over" the Apple RAID and can do wonders.
What you have is an external device with its own built-in bridge and probably a switch (mirror, stripe, JBOD, None).
You need to get them in a case that has no built in bridge or RAID of its own. A Mac Pro would be excellent.
See what OWC has in external cases. http://www.macsales.com/firewire ( a good place to start looking at any type of external interface for storage)

Sound cutting out on Mac Pro (late 2013)

Bit of a long one and I'm not sure if this is the right place so sorry in advance.
For the past 2/3 weeks the sound on my new Mac Pro has been cutting out completely. It doesn't matter if headphones, external speakers or nothing is plugged into the back the sound just cuts out. It only comes back if I reboot the mac or kill 'audiocored' (as suggested by some people over on the Apple Support Forums.
The sound would cut out when I'm using CC products and when I'm not. It would range from 3 hours of not cutting out to every 15 seconds. If it occurred when I watching a sequence or clip in Premiere it would make the playback slow to a crawl and if I was watching a video on YouTube and it would occur the video would then stop and no longer load. The cut outs are to my knowledge completely random and I'm not doing anything that I haven't done a million times before when it occurs.
I've been contacting Apple for a while now and gone through a number of different troubleshoots (booting in safe mode, resetting the PRAM, logging in as another user) and the issue occurs on everything. The only fix I did find was if I created a new partition on the hard drive and boot into that then the sound issues don't occur.
Which leads me to why I'm posting this... That partition didn't have any Adobe software. I then uninstalled all Adobe CC programs on the main partition and the sound issues then stopped completely. Only when it's all installed (even when they're not even open) do the sound problems occur, which leads me to believe the sound cuts are due to Adobe CC software.
All Adobe and Apple software is up to date. I've trashed the preferences on all my Adobe software as well as clearing the cache.
I realise this is a bit of a weird one and maybe in the wrong support forum but I'm getting to my wits end. I've got huge projects dropping very soon (with tight deadlines) that I need to work on and can't be rebooting the mac every 5 mins.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this I would be greatly appreciated.
I'm currently toying with the idea of doing a factory reset of the computer but I worry as I know that will take some time re-downloading / installing all my software and documents.

I have had a bit more luck it would seem.
Turns out it wasn't and Adobe software that was causing the problem rather some faulty RAM. I took all the RAM out and then put it back in again a few seconds later (doing exactly what Apple support told me to do) and voila the sound issues were gone. Although one of the cards decided not to work any more and I was left with 12gb rather than 16gb. Have since replaced all the default RAM with a more powerful third set from a party provider and haven't had any trouble since.
It's very strange that this problem is persisting for you even after the RAM being replaced. All I can suggest is that you keep calling Apple as their support services seem to be pretty good (for me at least).
Sorry if this is no help at all.

How can I back up a MacBook Air on a Mac Pro Hard Drive using Time Machine?

Want to back up a MacBook Air on a Mac Pro with a spare hard drive. Sharing allows Time Machine to find the hard drive, but get a drive busy message when time machine tries to back up onto the drive.
Any suggestions?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to a failed backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

MAC PRO HARD DRIVE won't boot

HARD DRIVE won't boot past APPLE ICON, grey spinning wheel on grey screen. Tried using install discs, no go past the icon.
Replace small battery inside? replace chips? Logic board replace as last resort. Can't take it away from work at this point to an apple tech.
Had just installed updates to snow leopard and was successful...but went to restart it...and this crap happened.
Thanks for any help.
MT1111
< Edited by Host >

I'll try that tomorrow. Thinking it could also be:
1) The PRAMM battery. found info on that they can wear out close to 5 years. This MAC PRO is close to that now. And I use a lot of power on it.
2) MAC PRO is plugged into a SURGE PROTECTOR, instead of right into the wall outlet.
3) Been doing a lot of FORCE QUITS and HARD BOOT -- unplugging it directly when it wouldn't shut down soon enough -- lately this past year.
I just assumed that this MAC PRO with the XEON QUAD CORE etc., was a heavy duty enough NLE,
that i wouldn't have these problems. It's not fully loaded with all the chips it can carry...and I don't have near enough external terabyte hard drives for storing video and audio files to edit. I've been storing wayyy too much
on the internal hard dives and just have to stop that.
I noticed these past few days that much of the LETTERING for hard drive icons and folders' titles
were starting to look in OVERLAPPING of the lettering. That was my first hint that something was up.

Mac Pro Hard Drive Setup Question

Mr. FedEx brought me my Mac Pro today and I'm getting ready to set it up. I'm migrating from a PowerBook G4 17 inch and got the Mac Pro 3.0 GHz, 8 GB RAM, and four 500 GB hard drives. I figure I should do a freash install of Aperture instead of using the Migration Wizard. The question for the night is, how should I handle the four hard drives? Out of the box I see four seperate hard drives labled Macintosh HD. For Aperture, should I use software raid across all four drives or only three leaving the OS drive by itselft for applications?
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Sure you can... I got a Raid 0 on two 300Gb drives on my boot drive... They host the OS and my apps.
The trick is that its got to be a fresh install. You boot with your hardware giag disk and in the menu you have the disk utility. Create the RAID setup and then quit. You can now boot the disk with the OS install and it will recognize it as such.
Now - a few things to consider. Next version of OS X has Time Machine that that expects a volume (a disk, the whole disk) for it to work. So it would be cool if you find out about it and sort of prepare for it.
Having said that I would Raid0 two pairs and Raid1 the two. This is called Raid 1+0 or Raid 10. Its a good compromise but if drive 1 AND 3 fail then there is no backup. I would also get an external firewire disk (say 300Gb or 500Gb) and use it as a vault. But that is because I can't think of running the machine with a full backup of what I got, still not a perfect solution.
The way I got it is using Raid 0 on my OS and Apps (600Gb) with an external Firewire disk for backup. (no Raid 0 - so there is no statistical odds to beat)
Apeture has two drives. Two Firewire 800 (1Tb) drives, one the library and the other is the vault. The vault also stores the deleted images, so you will have to clean every now and then or it will grow faster than your library.
http://www.terraoptica.com

Mac Pro Hard Shutdowns

Hi,
I have a simple question.
I recently have had problems with my Mac Pro and have performed dozens of shutdowns by pressing and holding the power button or pulling out the cable from the back. I know this is not the right thing to do, but there is no other way to turn it off.
Besides the issue I'm having, how exactly is the system affected when I do this? In other words, when I shutdown by pressing and holding the power button or pulling the cable from the back, is the Hard Drive affected? Memory? Logic Board? Graphics Card?
Can doing this damage all these pieces of hardware? Does it burn or affect any wiring or chips inside?
Thanks in advance.

DW does excellent directory repairs but does not make clones. You would not want a clone of a problematic drive anyway as it will do exactly the same thing as your present drive.....it's an exact mirror copy.
When you are sure everything is kosher with the main drive, DW has done it's job and you test drove it for weeks, read on.....
I like the free demo of SuperDuper to make clones. It's free, Tiger and Leopard ready and is easy to use. If you buy the full version you can do incremental backups.
I then partition my external disk, in Disk Utility, with a partition that is the same size , actually a tad bigger, as my system disk. I then use SuperDuper to clone my system disk over to that partition.
With a clone on an external FireWire drive (USB drives are not bootable on Macs) you can bootup on it to do your repairs or just run your Mac anytime you have trouble with your main drive. Be careful, there are a few external FireWire drives out there that are not bootable on Macs. Check the drive's manual to be sure.
You can also do a clone on an internal drive, which I also do, but I like an external FW drive in case both drives get damaged somehow. I keep the external disconnected till I need it.
I bought OWC's FW hard drive encloser. You can put in your own drive(s) (I bought Seagate drives from OWC) depending on whether you want a single drive backup, dual or RAID. I bought the OWC Mercury Elite...great enclosure rated top in all my Mac magazines. What's nice about these is, if the drive goes bad you can replace it yourself and not have to get rid of the whole unit (like what happened to my Western Digital FW Ext. drive last time!). OWC's enclosures have Oxford chipsets which are totally Mac friendly. They also work for Windows machines. OWC also backs up their products...no arguing involved.
DALE
DALE

Mac Pro hard drive mess

My Mac Pro (2008) would not start up - it would show the apple but hang after that. I started it up in verbose mode and got the error message "Invalid Node Structure" which I discovered after perusing these discussions is a dreaded error meesage.
After doing research into my options, it seemed I could either shell out $100 for Disk Warrior or reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. I decided to opt for reformatting as I have everything backed up and wanted to fix it quickly. I launched off my Snow Leopard installation disk and reformatted to zero
data.
When I try to reinstall snow leopard (off the installation disk)it now stalls when "checking extended attribute". I tried to reformat another time and the hard drive shows up and I can chooce it to install but it wont go past that point.
Is my hard drive failing? Is there anyway to check from the Snow Leopard installation disk? I dont wnat to shell out $100 for disk Warrior just to have to pay another $300 for a new hard drive.
Message was edited by: anagirone
Message was edited by: anagirone

Can't afford downtime solution:
3 x WD Black $70/640GB
SuperDuper $29
Isolate system and data
But don't tell me your time is valuable and $100 for Disk Warrior isn't worth it, or that living with one backup and one drive is productive.
Backups = redundancy, reliable, disaster recovery plan has been tested a couple times to insure it works and you know how.
The next step up: $149 for SoftRAID 4.0 which provides more robust error reporting and HFS+ support, even if used in non-RAID, but also has excellent mirror RAID
Anyone that things it is good enough for backups, it is not, you still need backups, and don't stop at 2-drive, 3 means you can work and rebuild and still be protected.
Highly irregular though if you use good maintenance tools and procedures to have problems. Ounce of prevention though always works.
I'd test your memory to rule that out, too.

The best way to get 5.1 sound out of Mac Pro

Hello. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but could someone recommend me the best way to get 5.1 sound of a Mac Pro. Since I don't require hi-fi -level sound, just simple directional audio for gaming and such, I wouldn't like to pour a lot of money to this. As I see it, I'd need an external sound card, internal PCI-E soundcard or speakers that have an optical input. I would like for the cost to be in two digits, euro or dollar.
Any suggestions about hardware?

Once again, the issue of 5.1 w/Apple comes up.
Here is the bottom line.
You will only get 5.1 audio if the following conditions are true:
- You are using the OPTICAL output on your Mac
- You are playing a DVD with a 5.1 soundtrack
That's it. The simple truth is, that even if you have a Z-5500 setup (like I do), you still will not get 5.1 surround in ///any/// applications other then while playing a DVD.
There is no way to get 5.1 out of a game on a Mac Pro. No matter how much money you throw at it. The support simply is not there. It is not a software issue, it is not a driver issue. It is the game developer's issue (sort of), and it is a //lack of hardware// issue.
The complex truth, and I will attempt to explain, isn't that simple.
Your Mac Pro or Macbook only has a single line-out, that supports 2 channels at the maximum. Optical audio will only handle 2 channels as well- it's the same signal (in two channels) on a different medium, basically.
All PC soundcards that support proper 5.1 (save for a select few) have //multiple// line-out jacks for Front Left/Right, Center/Sub, and Rear Left/Right (3 plugs total for 5.1). Since your Mac/Mac Pro doesn't have this, you can't hook up a 5.1 speaker set and expect true 5.1.
You do have optical audio, however, this only works in 5.1 when a Dolby Digital signal is piped through the optical cable.
Dolby Digital works by encoding a 5.1 signal as a data stream, sending it to a receiver, where it is decoded and played back as 5.1 stereo. DVD's have this audio pre-encoded on the disk.
If you wanted 5.1 output from your games, they'd need to ether have the sound/audio data encoded as Dolby 5.1, or support encoding on the fly to take a 5.1 signal, encode it, and pipe it out the optical audio plug. Xbox360 does this, because they've licensed the technology from Dolby- as have the game developers.
Unfortunately, none of the developers for Macintosh gaming have yet to include live Dolby 5.1 encoding (I think Doom 3 had a beta patch that did- I could be wrong).
If the game doesn't support the above feature, then you only get basic 2 channel audio.
*Do not buy a Fireface 800.*
This is a professional audio interface (like an external soundcard). While it supports 5.1 output via 6 individual outputs, you need SPEAKERS that have +built in amplifiers+ (called a Studio Monitor). Not just one amplifier- all the speakers have it built in and take a balanced stereo input.
You're looking at $1300 for the Fireface 800, and another $200 per speaker. This is not cheap, is not meant for gaming, and is not consumer grade equipment. It's pro audio, designed for Logic 8 and similar.
Even if you did spend the money, trust me, I'd know... I have a 5.1 setup running through an Apogee Ensemble (a $2000 "soundcard"), and I do not get 5.1 support from Quake 4, C&C 3, or any other game. I only get 5.1 surround from my audio production in Logic 8.
To recap, since this has been asked many times- and I don't want you wasting your money here (just trying to be helpful!)...
*There is no simple or cost-efficient way to get 5.1 from your Mac, other then while playing a DVD movie.*
I would highly recommend that you buy a very good pair of 2.1 speakers with a Sub woofer. Maybe even a pair that takes an optical input for audio. If you really want to spend the money to *watch a DVD in surround sound,* then you can... And it'll work wonderfully, but gaming will not give you surround sound at all.
*Again- There are no games out that support 5.1. Just because you technically support Dolby 5.1, doesn't mean the applications are aware of it and can utilize the 5.1 surround.*
Edit: I may have neglected to also mention that the Firewave unit will support 5.1 properly through 3 separate plugs (much like a PC soundcard does), however the only game I am aware of that supports this is Unreal Tournament 2003 for Mac (or was it 04?), with an experimental patch for 5.1 via OpenAL. Last I heard, it worked okay, but crashed occasionally.
Most of the other games out there just don't support 5.1, period (probably due to the lack of hardware on the Mac computers from the factory).
-SC
Message was edited by: ScottishCaptain

Optical audio out from Mac Pro to preamp

I want to use the optical audio out to a preamp. I am finding only very high end components. Is there anything affordable?

Do you already own the Mac Pro and preamp? All you need is an S/PDIF cable. Easily attainable for ~$20 or so. If it's not that simple, what are you referring to as "very high end components" being all you can find?

Help! Mac Pro hard drive set-up

Hello Gang,
I just made the switch from PC to Mac. After following the forum for a few months I decided to get a Mac Pro instead of the iMac24. According to Apple it should be delivered by 3/12. Anyhow, being an absolute newbie to both Mac,CS3,and Lightroom I'm not sure how to go about setting up my HD's for optimum performance such as RAID configurations, as well as allocating partitions, and RAM use. I'm coming from a dinosaur of a PC that ran everything from one small HD, so this is all very new to me. Here's what I've ordered:
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
2GB (2 x 1GB)
320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
In addition I ordered the following from OWC and others:
8GB Ram (2GBx4)
2 500GB Western Digital RE SATA RAID Edition (WDGWD5000ABYS)
1 Western Digital 1 TB My Book Pro Edition II external HD
NEC MultiSync 2490WUXi monitor (won't be available for 2 more weeks!)
I'm not a professional, so I'm not dealing with the huge files most of you probably deal with. My images are all RAW format from my Canon 30D. Any help or suggestions you can give me in this regard would be GREATLY appreciated!
Mike

I never had good luck with RAID on Windows, so when I switched a few years ago, I set up my 1st gen MacPro like this:
Four internal 400GB drives, 1 in each bay. Drive 1 is my "working" drive; it has my OS installed and all of the programs I use on it -- email, office, creative suite 2 and 3, Aperture, iView Media Pro (now MS Expressions Media), etc. Drive 2 is an exact copy of Drive 1 that I back up daily with SuperDuper. Drive 3 has all of my RAW files and works in progress on it, and Drive 4 is an exact copy of Drive 3, except for a 40 GB partition that is used for scratch disk only. I also have three 500 GB external drives hooked up for extra store. External drive 1 is an exact copy of internal drive one, external drive 2 is an exact copy of internal drive 3 with my RAW and works in progress on it, and external drive 3 is for completed projects.
I also have a few externals that I backup to once a week and keep offsite at a friend's house. My really, really important stuff is also backed up to my Amazon S3 account.
This system works for me because I am extremely lazy when it comes to backing up or any other maintenance tasks that have to do with my computer. All those years of being on Windows and having to waste hours every week diagnosing/troubleshooting obscure little problems really burned me out, so when I finally switched, I wanted only the most reliable, easy to use programs on my new system. SuperDuper is a godsend and I don't even bother with TimeMachine anymore. After the first month, the novelty wore off and I went back to uperDuper (which does incremental backups, too, once you've back up the entire drive).
The MacPro is a dream machine and you're going to be in awe of how quiet and truly competent it is, especially compared to Windows. A couple of things I should warn you about though: when you're running multiple drives and lots of RAM, things can get pretty warm inside the case. Make sure you're keeping an eye on the temps with a program like Temperature Monitor (freeware):
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19994
Disk Warrior is another program I recommend highly ($99.00):
http://www.alsoft.com/
Although Apple and OSX are truly wonderful, no OS is perfect, so pay attention to the warnings and reviews of others before mucking around with your system. This is especially true when it comes to Apple's firmware updates. My logicboard was screwed up by firmware update 1.1, which caused my fans to constantly run at high speeds:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/30862
Luckily, I was under Applecare when it happened and they replaced the entire board for me (for free) as well as the fans. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the bill (these aren't cheapy pc parts that you can pick up at Fry's). I decided then and there to never firmware update my MacPro again unless something was noticeably wrong. If it ain't broke, don't fix it is really true when it comes to this puppy.
Two other things you might want to invest in: 1) a good calibrating system (I bought mine from www.chromix.com) and 2) if you plan on going online at all, definitely get 1password:
http://1password.com/
Enjoy your new system!

Maxxing out my mac pro hard rive config???

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