Adding 1TB or 1.5TB SATA drives to Mac Pro?

Yes, they will work just fine. There's no current limit to drive size (and the "real" limits are multiple TBs.)

The "real" limits are those created by the largest binary number to which the OS can count. That represents the maximum number of blocks that the hard drive could have. That would be around 2^64 blocks.

Yep, that would be correct. But it wouldn't be 6 TBs because each drive would be only 1.5 TBs.

hey philip,

just to clarify on the G4 MDD... I had a Dual 867 G4 MDD with 4 internal harddrives: 2 250's 1 300 and 1 400... all worked great... I now have a mac pro...just to let you know that you could have had more than just 120 gig drives

Actually to get the most storage in your Mac Pro, you could use WD 2TB drives.

I'm trying to install a 1TB drive into my Mac Pro but the Mac is not "seeing" it do know why any ideas?

Launch Disk Utility.

Doesn't show up? return it, else,

Select drive (WDC....)

Click Partition Tab.

Have at it and insure it has GUID Partition Table in "status" after applying partitions and formatting.

Thanks for the input. We have 3 identical Mac Pros and I put this HDD into one of the others and it came up right away, so theirs something up with machine. any more thoughts?

I just added a 1.5TB SATA drive to my Mac Pro this morning and was disturbed to see the same problem - it didn't show up. HOWEVER, I looked in the Disk Utility program and it found it. Looking on the left side I found out that it wasn't "formatted" so I'm doing that right now. My best guess is that once it's formatted, the OS will find it and put it on my desktop. In these discussions, I found out how best to format the disk too - step by step. Great source!

When I bought my Mac Pro the largest drive I could order was 750G. I've swapped them out and now use 2TB WD Caviar Green SATA 3Gb s Internal Hard Drives. I've had no problems whatsoever and have never had a problem with an internal drive. OTOH, I won't buy Lacie external drives for they've proven to be just bad hardware and stay away from MyBook hard drives. For external hard drives then, BAM, go with the Drobo External Hard Drive Bundle (an external enclosure). It offer four drive bays just like the Mac Pro. Drobo utilizes a revolutionary storage technology that makes it simple for anyone to use, yet is powerful enough for business. Once you experience the power of Drobo, the idea of keeping multiple external drives or a RAID 5 array will seem as antiquated as that 28.8Kbps modem in the back of your closet.

You can load it up with 8 - 2TB WD Caviar Green SATA 3Gb s Internal Hard Drives for a total of 16TB ( 8 internal, 8 external) and not have to worry about backups or space for a few years. The Drobo monitors the external drives and should anyone begin to show a problem or signs of failure, will quickly warn you and shift the data to empty space on any of the other drives allowing you to replace the failed drive.