Q: I bought a 2007 Mac Pro with no hard drive, what are my options concerning installation of an OS??

Are you sure that it is a Power Mac from 2007?

It is my understanding that by 2007 Apple had completely switched over to Intel and totally dropped the PowerPC processor.

There are no 2007 Power Macs. Append the last three characters of its serial number to http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords= , load the page, and use the information on it to determine your options.

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If it is a G5 the highest Mac OS X you can use is Leopard, 10.5.8.  Apple no longer sells the disks so you can start by looking on eBay or possibly Amazon...but be sure and get the retail version, those are black with a large X.  The grey disks are machine-dependent.

1. Click here for information.

2. Yes. It works for all Macs, iPods, iOS devices, and some other Apple hardware.

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A G5 PowerMac has one optical drive door; the 2006 through early 2013 Mac Pros have two doors. Also note the different arrangement of the front panel ports.

You can buy the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail install DVD from Apple, cost is about $20.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard

And then update that, once installed, to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 by use of Software Update

from within the running system OS X 10.6.3; the Combo 10.6.8 update is a free download:

Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1

Once the computer is running the full OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, it may be able to go

online and you could buy an upgrade to OS X 10.7 Lion from Apple online. Or stay at

Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and it should be OK to run the older Apple applications.

If you later choose to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7, that also requires an update from Apple

servers, from the App Store. The actual upgrade file would be a download after you buy it

and requires Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to be installed, & up to date, before Lion can be...

•OS X Lion (10.7) - Apple Store (US)

http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion

Given Snow Leopard 10.6.8, your older Intel-based Mac could still run some older PPC

coded applications that otherwise would see no support once past this OS, to 10.7.x

Snow Leopard installer includes a now-discontinued 'Rosetta' utility to help run old apps.

With correct and positive identification of the hardware, the software

items, utilities, and accessories are easier to identify, locate & buy.

Good luck & happy computing!

I have now found out that it is a Mac Pro w/2 - 3 ghz Quad core Xeon cpu, MacPro2,1.

Thank you. I've asked the Hosts to move you to the Mac Pro forums.

2006/2007 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X El Capitan

2006/2007 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X Yosemite

Easy to follow guides for installing OS X beyond Lion.

The best $$ / performance return would be an 250GB $98 EVO 850 SSD or PCIe-SSD (adapter). FBDIMMs have been excellent and affordable in the last two years. The biggest challenge tends to be finding a decent graphic card though but once you have Yosemite it is easier.

Whether it is easy or not to follow it has been made easier today to install and run Yosemite and works well.

You might find this helpful: https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA263/en_US/Mac_Pro_8_core_User_Guide.p df

Go to page 17 where it says to use the media eject button on the keyboard to open the optical drive door.

If you have a mouse, startup the Mac while holding the mouse button, that is a trick for ejecting a disk, also.