New Mac Pro Hard Drive Question

So I think I understand this whole external parts thing with the Mac Pro. But I do have one question I want to make sure I am not making a mistake on. I got an external hard drive for my Mac Pro using USB 3.0. My thinking was a mechanical hard drive can only transfer data at a certain speed and it appeared that no matter which I picked Thunderbolt ($200) or USB 3.0 ($100) the transfer rate of the data was the same. If buying a SSD I could understand buying thunderbolt but for your typical external 7200 RPM hard drive isn't 3.0 all you need? Am I missing something here, i.e. why would someone pay an extra $100 for a thunderbolt external hard drive that is mechanical and 7200 RPM?

Linc Davis is quite right.
But be careful not to generalize that too much. The new cylinder Mac Pro has enough USB bandwidth available to run one USB-3 both directions at once, full tilt. So when you get more than a handful of USB drives or intend to use it for production at high throughput, it may start to slow down.

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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.

Mac Pro Hard Drive Questions

Hi there,
i'm a Mac and a SATA newbie since i'm still running a 7 years old Pc :\
I found a topic about HD in this forum http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=723121&start=0&tstart=0 where i can read that the HD WD Caviar® SE16 is a good choice, but the topic it's dated 9-2006 so i was wondering if is still like that :P
Also looking at the mac specs on apple site i can read the Hard Drive Bay are SATA so i guess i can't use a HD SATA2 with the MacPro, is this right?
Are there any diff as i can guess between SATA and SATA2?
Trying to get informed as much as i can but i'm still a bit confused.
Many thx in advance for your help

The simplistic answer is yes, but the question is somewhat confusing. Let's say you wanted to create a RAID 0 array to speed things up for video editing and you were going to join two drives into a RAID 0 array. When you create the RAID array with Disk Utility or SoftRaid, you will end up with your two drives looking like a single drive. There will be one icon. If either crashes the whole thing goes down. If you start with two 500gb drives you end up with a 1TB Raid and you would need another TB drive to back it up. You would normally clone the raid for backup purposes to a single TB drive, or if you are as careful as the Hatter, you would clone it twice. You could, of course create another RAID array from two more 500GB drives and clone it. At least I -think- you could do that but perhaps the Hatter can clarify that point. In general you can think of those two RAID drives as a single drive for most practical purposes. With a RAID one setup, your two drives would end up acting like a single drive and if you start with two 500gb drives you would see a single 500gb drive that is an "instant" backup so if one fails you can keep going.
If you are going with a RAID, get the RE's. That's a no brainer, and for either RAID 0 or RAID 1, you'll want three drives - two for the raid and one (or two!) to backup, with the backup either the same size or double the size depending on which RAID you are doing.
It's your comment/question where you say "pull out a RAID array...and build a new array" that doesn't quite make sense to me. In any case...I think you'll be able to do just about whatever you want once you dive into it. Just keep your world well backed up and you're always safe.

Snow Leopard on Mac Pro Hard Drive - question?

Hi all
Been talking to a reseller who is offering me a reasonable deal on a Mac Pro.
I have asked that he install the Snow Leopard partition on a 2TB 7200rpm drive [Bay 1], but he has said that it can only be installed on a 1TB drive.
As I understand it, you can install Snow Leopard on a drive of this size (this is the same model of drive offered on the Apple store when you get a mac pro made to order.)
I was hoping to get this cleared up, so would appreciate some advice =)
Thanks all!

Good grief the nonesense... you can install it on any drive, any size, there never has been a problem or limit, last time there was, it was PATA (or PITA) 128GB limitation on old G4s and an old OS X.
The reseller is smoking a pipe and seems to have lost his bearings. Stay clear of this uninformed seller.

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.

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

Switching an old dual 1.8 to a new mac pro 8 core questions

hi
Tomorrow i am getting a new Mac Pro 8 core 2.8, the basic model, 2 gigs ram (for now) and the on 320 gig HD. I am not a great mac person, i used my old one for some final cut express stuff and that was about it. so i was wondering if someone could answer these questions for me
1) will final cut HD load fine on the new one in terms of licenses? in that, will that license or serial number i have used on the old one be ok on the new one?
- same things for aperture, these are really the only 2 programs i have and really need on the new one, till i move up to final cut full
2) i have an older "projects" western digital HD with the projects, pics etc on it, can i swap that HD into one of the new slots till i get another newer drive? its sata, but i am not sure what speed?? its probably 3 years old now
3) what exactly does the new mac pro come with?? in the apple store it really doesn't go into it, i have ilife 05 on my old one, is it worth getting the new one? does it come with things like that?
4) i mainly do home movie's and video editing on my mac, if i end up with final cut studio 2 i think it is, what is the recommended RAM?
5) where is the best place to buy more RAM and HD's for the mac? i will need or want 3 more 500 gig min, 7200 speed drives and probably 2-6gigs more ram.
ok, that should confuse me pretty well for a while
thanks for any help!

1. As long as the software is not installed on more than one CPU you are not in violation of the software license. You will use the same serial number.
2. Any SATA drive can be installed in the computer.
3. New computers come with OS X and iLife pre-installed. Also trial versions of iWork, MS Office, and Quicken's Quick Books.
4. I would recommend at least 4 GBs of RAM.
5. You can buy RAM from any online vendor that has the proper type of RAM with the proper heat sinks. Suitable vendors are Data Mem and MacSales.com. Hard drives are available at any number of online vendors such as:
MacSales.com
Buy.com
NewEgg.com

New Mac Pro and migration question

I will be getting a new Mac Pro in a day or so. I currently have a G4 with all the Adobe suite programs and more. I am wondering if it is best to install those fresh. It sure would help to get all my Dreamweaver settings as I have a ton of sites.
Should I just transfer mail and prefs etc.

There are many pros and cons to doing such a thing. The biggest pro to doing so is expediency. Manual transitions, while more efficient, can be quite a pain even when you know what goes where. When this works it works great.
However, there are downsides to it. Firstly, being a new system the best way to gauge it's performance is to have everything fresh and new. While it's more effort you do get a much better feel for what you system can do and a much better awareness of when things are wrong.
Then there's the migration itself. With a data only migration I can't see much going wrong but there are instances when a migration does affect total system performance.
So I guess I've not really answered your question. There are benefits to opting both ways.

Mac Pro Hard Drive

I installed a new 1 TB hard drive (purchased from the Apple store). When I boot up the computer I get a message "the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer". Any suggestions for fixing the problem?

Hmm, I got two (stupid?) questions about this. First did you initialize the disk. Second, why would you ever buy an over priced hard drive from Apple?

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

New MacBook Pro Hard Drive Slow

On Monday night I was browsing the internet when my mid 2012 MacBook Pro started running slowly. I have never really had an issue with my Mac running slow and, so, after a particularly long spin of the rainbow wheel of death, I manually shut my computer down. When I tried to restart, all I got was the grey screen with the flashing folder-with-a-question-mark. I looked online with my phone to find a solution and I proceeded to try a number of suggestions from the support community, including trying to manually restart in safe mode, but as I didn't take my OS X installation disk to school with me, there wasn't much left for me to do (especially because I'm just over 3months outside the 1year warranty and live over an hour away from the nearest apple store). The next morning I took it to my college's OIT help desk and was later told my hard drive had failed and I would need to replace it. Thank god I utilize google drive for my work. Thank god. Today, after paying the $122.49 (no pitance on my part-time minimum-wage school salary) for the "apple recommended" hard drive, as opposed to the $55 amazon alternative, I find that my computer is running slowly again. Not even internet slow. 10-minutes-to-adjust-my-dock-preferences-slow. Writing-this-post-took-almost-an-hour-slow. Also, in the middle of writing this the spinning wheel of death reappeared for at least 10mins, and not wanting to manually restart given what happened last time I tried simply shutting my laptop and giving it a little nap. When I opened it I got a blue screen and (after a few minutes of silent sobbing) was forced to manually restart, which luckily brought me to the login. Why is my once-beloved Mac doing this to me? Is it the expensive new hard drive to blame? Has the issue from before held over and may soon kill this new drive? Any explanations or advice would be greatly appreciated as I have final exams and papers due next week and cannot afford to get to the apple store before I need to research and write two 15-page papers.

Remove the Symantec security software > Remove Symantec software for Mac OS using RemoveSymantecMacFiles
About Norton / Symantec > Viruses, Trojans, Malware - and other aspects of Internet Security: Apple Support Communities

New MacBook Pro hard drive is full - but Nearly All Files on DropBox. Please Help!

I recently bought a new MacBook Pro and I am no longer able to download files from my email because it is out of space. I store everything on DropBox and nearly no files on the hard drive. I am looking for assistance to reduce the 72.68GB of "other" on my hard drive. Many Thanks!
about my Mac:
Storage Space:
<Image Edited by Host to Remove Personal Information>

You have a very small hard drive, and not enough free space for your computer to function well. You need an external hard drive. If you anticipate adding a lot more files, you can clone your existing system to the external, and then boot from it. Or you can shift some of the stuff that you currently store in Dropbox to a backup area on your external drive, and then cut down what you keep in Dropbox to contain ONLY the files that you need to be able to access when not at home. You can also change the location of your Dropbox folder, with the caveats noted at the bottom of the help article I have copied below:
From Dropbox Help:
How do I move my Dropbox folder to a new location?
You can move your Dropbox folder to any location on your hard drive using the Dropbox desktop application. If you decide to move the folder, we strongly recommend choosing a location on the same hard drive as your operating system. Dropbox won't work correctly should the Dropbox folder ever become inaccessible.
You can select the new location from the Dropbox desktop application preferences.
Using the Dropbox desktop application on Mac OS X
Click on the Dropbox icon from your menu bar.
The Dropbox icon
Click on the gear icon and select Preferences... from the menu.
Click the Account tab.
Move the Dropbox folder location by selecting your folder from the drop-down menu labeled Dropbox location.
Let Dropbox move your folder and its contents to its new location.
Important: Your Dropbox folder will keep the same name as before and can't be changed by using the move feature. Dropbox will not sync your Dropbox folder if it has been manually renamed or moved through your operating system. If Dropbox loses track of your Dropbox folder, it will attempt to re-sync the folder in its entirety using its last known location.
Dropbox for Business users: If you've connected a personal and a work Dropbox, you'll see both of your Dropboxes listed here. Select the correct toggle before moving the Dropbox folder location.
For our advanced users
If you want to put your Dropbox folder on an external drive, proceed with caution:
The Dropbox folder must be available when your computer boots and before the Dropbox desktop application starts. Some USB drives, for example, take some time to mount before your computer recognizes them. The Dropbox desktop application could start before such a drive is ready and get confused. You'll receive an error and Dropbox will give you the opportunity to relink your Dropbox account or exit if it is unable to find your Dropbox folder.
If the external drive is disconnected from the computer while Dropbox is running, there's a small chance that the application will start deleting files before realizing that the entire drive has been removed. Again: When it comes to using an external drive for your Dropbox folder, tread carefully.

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)

Erasing and reinstalling my mac pro hard drive

I have an older Mac Pro (2006 I think).
I want to erase and reinstall the hard drive. Once the disk is clean, is there a way to install OS directly to mountain lion? Or will I have to install from an ealier complete set of physical disks?

If it shipped with 10.4 and is a 2007 or earlier Mountain Lion is not supported, only up to Lion.
You download and save the Lion installer first and would need to have 10.6.8 to access the App Store.
Leave what you have as is, and just install a new system to another of the drive bays.

New Mac Pro Hard Drive Question

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