Installing 2.5" SSD in Mac Pro HD tray?

http://www.macsales.com has the best SSD and guide along with performance review.

If you search online, you will see commercial attachments available made of bent sheet metal, and photos from users who have used bent wire, velcro, electrical tape, and other hacks to attach to the Mac Pro sled.

I noticed mine was not hermetically sealed, so I decided to drill some new holes in the top plate to accommodate the mounting screws on the Mac Pro sled. When I took the cover off to drill it, I found a Huge push-in plastic connector attached to a tiny SSD circuit board. I completely discarded the stamped metal housing, ignored the Mac Pro sled and just pushed the connector-with-SSD_card onto the backplane connector. Works great.

Hi Navarro,

Instead of installing the SSD in one of the hard drive bays, why not put it in the lower optical drive bay?

It is a doddle installing one there in a Nehalem (2009) Mac Pro:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-InstallingSSD.html

Then you will still have the other hard drive bays free for additional storage in the future,or for a RAID set up.

One piece of advice based upon my own experience - buy a Mac friendly SSD like the Mercury Extreme range from OWC:
http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld.html

Although I have been, and still am, very pleased with my OCZ Vertex EX SSD, the drawback is that it is impossible to update the firmware when it is installed in a Nehalem Mac Pro.

Unfortunately, I bought my OCZ a couple of months before the release of the Mercury Extreme range, otherwise I would have imported one from the USA.

Initially there were "Sleep" problems with the Mercury Extreme SSDs, but they were resolved by a firmware update, and their performance is exceptional.

Regards,

Bill

Just to name some solutions:

* Icy Dock MB882SP
* Maxupgrades Mac Pro sleds
* ... (start googling for 'Mac Pro SSD sled'

You should find enough information using google and or Apple Discussion search (I remember quite a few threads about mounting an SSD).

I'm personally using the Maxupgrades sled and it fits perfectly. Both solutions are more pricey than just putting them into the optical bay - this is were the disk was before, even without duct tape or any other fixation.

It's not posible to upgrade the firmware of the Mercury either, unless you have Windows installed. I'm having a problem with one at the moment that requires a firmware upgrade, and I have to either (a) send it back to them (b) install Windows, or (c) wait until mid-August, when they say they'll be able to upgrade the firmware in OSX.

.

It doesn't seem like any of the SSD with the Sandforce controller can be updated without running Windows.

Lets hope when OSX finally supports TRIM. There will not be problem with them.