Using 2.5" Drives.

Hey guys,


Does anyone know if adapters exist that let you mount 2.5" SATA drives in the Mac Pro bays? I have a couple of extra 250GB laptop drives lying around, and I'd love to be able to put them in my Mac Pro for a little extra disk space.

Thanks,
CJCS

I don't have a Mac Pro so I don't know what the bays look like. If they are like a normal PC, as I would suspect they are, then you can use something simple like this item at MacMall.

There are internal bays that allow you to swap out 2.5" drives or you can get external USB or Firewire enclosures if you have more drives than drive bays.

If you look at the reply I made to the chap buying the Mac pro on this same forum I have explained that if you fit a 2.5" drive into a 3.5" mount the sockets are in the wrong place! You could fit both of them to the two spare SATA sockets on the mother board and leave the 4 drive bays for normal drives. This would involve making some kind of bracket (I would suggest mechano)

However to be perfectly honest I wouldn't bother. You can get a 500Gb drive for £33 (about $65-70) so its not worth it. If the drives are reasonable size I would just buy a couple of external 2.5" drive cases and use the drives as off site backups!

I agree with Cowasaki. Buy the correct size seeing they're so cheap. Do what he said or buy external cases for them. They run like $5 these days, cheaper than a sled adapter.

I know that I'd be cheaper getting enclosures, but for the sake of saving space (and ports), I'd be better with an internal solution. I get 2.5" drives frequently for free, so I'm thinking that a sled adapter would be an easier solution, should I get my hands on larger drives in the future.

Do they exist? And if so does anyone know where I can get them?

CJCS said:

I know that I'd be cheaper getting enclosures, but for the sake of saving space (and ports), I'd be better with an internal solution. I get 2.5" drives frequently for free, so I'm thinking that a sled adapter would be an easier solution, should I get my hands on larger drives in the future.

Do they exist? And if so does anyone know where I can get them?

Click to expand...

There are a couple of companies selling SATA extractor brackets that have the standard port locations to take a 3.5" SATA drive and come with a 2.5" adapter to drop a 2.5" drive into it and slot that into the 3.5" location. If you bought one of these you could fit a 2.5" drive into the 3.5" slot but they are MUCH slower than 3.5" drives (usually) and the biggest 2.5" drives you are likely to come across are 250Gb, anything larger and you would be better selling it and buying a 3.5" unit! The largest 2.5" drive in existance at the moment is a 500Gb but this is taller than a normal 2.5" drive. There are several 320Gb drives.

You only need one port for the external box option. The idea is to plug them in when you need them!

Example of an extractor : (not sure about location of ports on this one but others have them in correct location)

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=766078

Example of something else that might be useful, this could be fitted under the optical drive in the 2nd bay and connected to the two spare SATA ports leaving the 4 main drive bays clear. Again you just need to check connectors etc

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=688554