Installing a sata optical drive in a Mac Pro – Part 2:
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5. Optical drive carrier – Remove the optical drive carrier by pulling it straight out. It will also be very snug. Be careful as there are cables attached inside. You’ll need to unplug the cables from the optical drive, making note of how they were plugged in. There will be an Ultra-ATA connector and a power connector. Again, you will notice in some of the photos below that the fan kit is still installed. This is because as I said, I originally attempted to install mine without removing the fan.
6. Sata connectors – Identify the open sata connectors on the mother board. They should be labeled as ODD_SATA.
7. Feed the sata cable – You will need to feed the sata cable from the top bay that holds the optical drives down to where the sata connectors are. If your cable has one 90 degree end and one regular end like mine you’ll need the 90 degree end to be fed down. Again, ignore that the fan kit is in this picture. Â See, it’s much easier to do without the fan kit installed.
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8. Connect to the motherboard – First you’ll want to plug the 90 degree end of the sata cable to one of the ports on the motherboard. Either one will work.
Pull the extra slack up through the top and tidy up the sata cable making sure to keep access to all other plugs free. Notice the arrow in the picture below is pointing to a power connector on the mother board that the fan kit plug into. Avoid covering this plug so you’ll be able to reinsert the fan kit.Â
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9. Install the optical drive – The new optical drive will slide into the carrier.
There are extra screws on the back of the carrier to use to screw the drive in. Seen here I’m removing one of them. Thanks Apple for providing screws!
11. Connecting the optical drive – Sata uses a different power connector than Ultra-ATA. My drive came with a power to sata-power adaptor cable, but you can also buy them at a place like Fry’s:
Plug everything in. Sata and sata power on the new drive. And reattach the Ultra-ATA and power to the original drive.
You’ll have to get the optical drive carrier close to it’s bay in order to make these connections:
Ok.. there is a trick that must be done here before pushing in the drive carrier, but I cover that on the next page…