04-28-2009, 11:18 AM

Hi

I want to purchase this Blue Ray Burner

Pioneer 8x BDRW black bulk SATA + s/w

Is my mac SATA?. My hard drives says

Serial - ATA. Does this = SATA

My Super Drive is just ATA

Will I have to connect the drive via a hard drive port. Or will it just fit into the spare cable for the second drive.

Any info would be greatly appreciated. Hardware overview is below.

Many thanks
Mike

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version: 1.7f10
Serial Number: CK6360DBUPZ

05-02-2009, 01:55 PM

Everything I've read on the subject states that while the blue ray drive will work BUT Apple hasn't provided software support for blue ray. So while it will be recognized don't expect the OS X dvd player to be able to play blue ray or to burn blue ray discs natively, you would require 3rd party software.
We can only hope that Apple releases blue ray support in Snow Leopard.

05-03-2009, 11:58 AM

Hi mikeymac,

I purchased a Sony BD-ROM drive (SATA) and connected it to one of the ODD_SATA ports (just left of the GPU power connections, under the fans).

Now, Mac OS X can see the drive and read from it (not tried CD burning from OS X yet). Problems begin when looking at 3rd party software. Parallels/Fusion both can't see the drive, Toast 10 Titanium can't see it etc.

It does not show up in System Profiler as a cd/dvd writer, just under the SATA HDDs.

In an attempt to get it to work properly, I have purchased a SATA>PATA converter from eBay to connect it to the secondary PATA connector.

I will post back as to whether or not it worked, but I've read it will.

FINAL NOTE: The drive will not be recognized AT ALL under Boot Camp as the ODD_SATA ports use AHCI which Apple disabled when running a different/'legacy' OS.

So, the above adapter will allow me to watch BD movies within Boot Camp/Parallels - hopefully.