New Mac Pro user has some pre-delivery questions

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Diego_Knyte's picture
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Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
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New Mac Pro user has some pre-delivery questions

Heyo,

Going from a 1.5Ghz G4 Digital Audio to a new 3Ghz Mac Pro. Delivery is about Mar 11th and I've got a few pre-delivery questions if I may. I'm kinda Mac savvy but have been out of the loop for some time. I've been holding off for a looong time for a new system that'll really give a bang for my buck, the time right for me.

Here's what I'm gettin'...

Mac Pro 3.0Ghz (dual quad-core), 2Gigs RAM, Single super drive, 320GB in HD bay 1 and two 500GB's in HD bays 2 & 3, NVIDIA 8800 GT 512MB video card and a wireless thingee (which i'll probably hardly use).

How I'd prefer to have it set up is the two 500GB's be raid mirrored and have MacOS installed on it for my Mac needs (primary usage and file safety in mind). The smaller 320gigger would have Vista installed.

My questions are these...

Q1: Single Superdrive. What is the connector for it on the Mac Pro? ATA style like the older G4's or serial like the newer HD's? I've got another superdrive from my DA mac and wondered if it'll plug in as a 2nd optical drive.

Q2: Transferring current HD contents. I vaguly remember (never had to try it) that a new mac could connect to the older mac thru the built in firewire ports and transfer contents over to the new machine (like the old mac acted like an HD or something). Am I off base or correct to presume this'll work? I think I'm driving half blind on this part. Or should I just buy an HD enclosure and transfer this way?

Q3: Raiding two 500GB HD's. If I mirror raid (thru Disc Utility) the HD with the OS on it, does it have to reformat (thus deleting the orig installed contents) to set the raid up? I've never used a raid before. I'm going to venture a quess that the Mac OS will be installed on the smaller drive so setting that up might not be so painfull but we'll see.

Any suggestions and/or prep tips would be sweet. Thanks in advance.

-Dk

TheUltimateMacUser's picture
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Joined: Jan 28 2004 - 12:14
Posts: 615
Answers

Re: Q2: your G4 can act as an external FW hard drive. Turn it off... plug the machines together via a FW cable, then boot the G4 holding down the T key. The G4 will then mount on the Pro, and appear as any FW HD would.

Re: Q3: Yes, if you want to raid the drives they will, IIRC, have to be formatted as part of the RAID procedure.

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