Comments on: Installing a 5th Hard Drive into a new Mac Pro ‘Nehalem’

By: OWC Michael

OWC Michael — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:17:54 +0000

Actually, since this article was posted, we've come up with several mounting solutions to do just that.. See our blog post on Drive Adapters Galore—Which Is The Right One? for all your options. The solution you're looking for is the OWC Multi Mount.

By: rob

rob — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:07:50 +0000

will this allow one 3.5″ drive and one SSD?

By: OWC Michael

OWC Michael — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:45:46 +0000

No video for the hard drive installation into the optical bay, but the optical drive video should help in how to access the bay itself. Since this post was written, OWC has come up with its own line of products for installing hard drives into Mac Pro optical drive bays called the Multi-Mount.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:32:05 +0000

Do you have a video on this–I need to add a drive–thanks

By: OWC Michael

OWC Michael — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:25:16 +0000

Hi Feldspar,

That isn’t actually anything we’ve tested out. The OWC Multi-Mount is designed to dampen vibrations just like the X-Swing does, while also offering several more drive configurations. So, there is no need to mix product lines.

By: Feldspar

Feldspar — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:24:42 +0000

Would it be possible to use the X-Swing with a 3.5-inch-to-2.5-inch adapter (such as the blue bracket OWC sells) to install a single 2.5 inch SSD along with a single 3.5 inch hard disk, and keep the Mac Pro optical drive? Would you get better vibration dampening with the X-Swing than the current line of OWC brackets?

I have a Mac Pro (early 2008). I’m considering routing my motherboard SATA ports to the optical bay, using an SFF-8087 to SFF-8482 Fanout Cable. My understanding is that the optical bay SATA ports don’t support Boot Camp, but the main SATA ports do. (The main SATA drive bays would be routed to a RAID card.)

By: OWC Michael

OWC Michael — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:04:35 +0000

Hello Joel,

Actually, we have one bundle that has everything you need to install two SSD or 2.5″ HDDs to your 2006-2008 Mac Pro, including the mounting bracket:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MM352A52MP/

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:03:41 +0000

Hi there.

I have an original Mac Pro (2006 model, 2x 2.66 GHz MacPro1,1). Would it be possible for me to install two 2.5″ SSD in my optical drive bay along with my existing SuperDrive?

From reading this blog and looking over the OWC site, I seems like I could do this using:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Micro%20Accessories/SATA18L/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Micro%20Accessories/SATA18S/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Micro%20Accessories/SATAPAY/

Since the SSD have no moving parts, it would seem that mounting brackets wouldn’t be essential.

By: OWC Michael

OWC Michael — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:42:48 +0000

We have a selection of 5.25" SATA Optical Drive enclosures available here to install your optical drive into: http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity%7c1&Ne=5000&N=6773&Ntt=optical+SATA For those people with an previous version of the Mac Pro or G5 that uses an ATAPI connection, we have 5.25" ATAPI Optical Drive enclosures as well: http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity%7c1&Ne=5000&N=6773&Ntt=optical+IDE

By: Ryuji

Ryuji — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:18:15 +0000

If you put two 3.5″ HDD in the optical bays, what would be good options for enclosures to make an external optical drive? Since external drives are only used occasionally, this configuration makes more sense to me.

By: Scott Ratner

Scott Ratner — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:18:43 +0000

Where can I get the x-swing brackets? OWC seems to have been sold out for months…

By: OWC Michael

OWC Michael — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:14:05 +0000

Hello Serge,

Actually that product was not a part of our testing back when we were researching a solution and found the X-Swing by Noiseblocker. From looking over the akasa website, I have no doubt that as a concept the hard drive cooling kit should perform very similarly, but we haven’t done our own testing to back up my speculation.

By: Serge

Serge — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:07:37 +0000

I am wondering if you considered/tested Hard Drive Cooling Kit
Aluminium heat sinks with rubber suspension from
http://www.akasa.com.tw

By: NoManIsland

NoManIsland — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:08:55 +0000

The optical drive cage has an open top, enough to let an HDD peak over, so would it work to place the superdrive in the lower bay and a double drive X-Swing in the top? Does the case have enough clearance to do so?

By: NoManIsland

NoManIsland — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:25:43 +0000

BTW, I have a related question: would the enclosure fit 4 of your OWC SSDs? Am I correct in assuming that they need not be mounted properly since they have no moving parts? Also, the Sonnet Tempo SATA E4i says it is only compatible with the PowerMac G5 – can I use it in a 2008 Mac Pro to add the additional SSDs?

By: NoManIsland

NoManIsland — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:24:41 +0000

By the way, thanks Mike for being so quick and helpful in your responses – you guys are the best!

By: NoManIsland

NoManIsland — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:15:34 +0000

What size is the clearance between the inside base of the optical drive cage and the base of the superdrive? Is it even possible to fit two HDDs in the gap, if a suitable mounting system were fabricated? (I have a metalworker friend)

By: NoManIsland

NoManIsland — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:10:56 +0000

You say that it won’t work on the Nehelem; I have the 2008 Mac Pro, is that any different?