Getting 6G SATA into the Mac Pro 2010 drive trays

The Mac Pro 2012 model is identical to my 2010 model so the solution will be the same. You need the same SATA PCIe card as you got for your 2008 model but you need a different cable and new drive sleds.

See https://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_ ID=189&ParentCat=351

The above should be a kit consisting of four drive sleds, screws to attach the hard disks, and a special fan-out cable.

I got mine off eBay.

The way it works is these special drive sleds still let you fit the hard drives in to the four drive bays, you still get power from the four drive bays, but the special sleds bypass the standard SATA II connection and let you use the fan-out cable to connect to your SATA III PCIe card.

Since it is the same PCIe card it will like that support booting in to OS X, and if you install the StarTech drive in to Windows Boot Camp can be booted as well.

Hi John,

Thanks for your posts so far. I had a 2008 Mac Pro and successfully upgraded to SATA III via the StarTech PCIe card. The 4 drive bays connected to the backplane via mini-SAS so simply getting a mini-SAS extension and plugging the bays into the StarTech worked perfectly.

Now I have a mid-2012 Mac Pro and I want to do the same thing. I haven't looked at the backplane board yet to confirm, but I've heard there is no longer a mini-SAS connection to the 4 drive bays on the 2012 model. Is that true? And if so, how did you connect the 4 drive bays to the StarTech card? Is there another type of extension cable or converter I need?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Awesome! Thanks John. This is the information I was missing. I didn't realize that the MaxUpgrade drive sleds you had originally posted are essentially an adapter sled using the power of the drive bay, but not the data connection, which now requires the fan-out cable to connect each hard drive directly to the PCIe card. It's hard to tell on the MaxUpgrades site that the kit comes with the fan-out cable you mentioned. It all makes sense now. Thanks again.

Your message says MacBook Pro 15" but this discussion is with regards to the classic Mac Pro desktop computers. The MacBook Pro 15" should already have SATA III support as standard but obviously only for 2.5" hard disks.

If you actually mean a Mac Pro then the first thing is to verify the model, if it is a 2010 model then you have a MacPro5,1 like me. This means that in order to upgrade the internal drive bays to SATAIII i.e. 6Gbps SATA you need to get the special drive sleds and a suitable PCIe controller card.

The drive sleds needed are only available from https://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_ ID=189&ParentCat=351 although I got mine secondhand via eBay.

There are multiple choices for a suitable PCIe card but the two I have successfully tested are the StarTech and ATTO ones I listed in my previous messages here Re: Getting 6G SATA into the Mac Pro 2010 drive trays

The above will allow using either 2.5" SATA III drives e.g. a SATA SSD or a 3.5" hard drive. Whilst you will get a speed improvement with an SSD over the standard SATA II speed you will not notice any improvement for a traditional hard drive as these simply are not fast enough. For Mac use you can simply remove the existing drives from the original drive sleds and fit them to the new sleds, no reformatting is needed nor any special drivers. If you want to use a drive with Windows via Boot Camp you must first install the Windows driver for whichever PCIe card you end up getting. Install the driver before transferring the drive to the new SATA III connection. I can confirm both the above PCIe card work for booting both OS X and Windows - if you first install the Windows driver.

If you are referring to upgrading the drive in a MacBook Pro 15" then most of the comments in this thread are not relevant - as I said this was discussing MacPro desktops. However you can replace the original 2.5" hard drive with a 2.5" SSD drive. If you can go to the Apple Menu on your MacBook Pro, then select About this Macintosh, then select System Report, it should list which model e.g. MacBookPro6,2

If as I suspect it is a MacBookPro6,2 the details will be as per http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i5-2.4- aluminum-15-mid-2010-unibody-specs.html

The following should provide details on how to dismantle your model and how to swap the hard drive, it also lists what tools are needed.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2010+Hard+Drive+Rep lacement/3030

You need it seems to buy a suitable 2.5" SATA SSD drive, a Samsung 850 Evo is a common choice.

You can optionally buy an external USB SATA enclosure like this one https://www.amazon.com/Upgraded-Sabrent-2-5-Inch-Enclosure-EC-UK30/dp/B00LS31KQG /

You can use the above enclosure to make use of the old hard drive. This will allow you also to have both drives connected at the same time. You can then boot from the old drive, format the new drive using Disk Utility, and then use either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner to 'clone' everything from the old drive to the new drive. Once you have the new drive working you can if you chose erase the old drive and either use it for backups or as extra storage space.

Let me know if you need any additional information.

Hi John, I've got a mid2010MacBook Pro 15" and would love to upgrade it in the expert manner you have. Please could you supply links to all the necessary components so I can buy them.

I'm new to this stuff. Have ordered torx screwdriver but am still deciding on the hardware. Basically the machine's original HDD 500 is unable to be repaired in disk utilities. So I'm taking this juncture as an opportunity to upgrade, as I can't afford a new Mac. Please advise. Many thanks

Why not simply purchase a special tray in which you mount the SSD and it connects to your SATA bus using one of the four internal trays. However, that bus only supports 3G in that model, but a 6G SSD will work, just not as fast.

Even at half speed it will be a lot faster than an HDD. However, I can't help you. I'm not familiar with your model. I have a 2006 model which is different, apparently, as you've stated. You might ask about the matter at OWC. Their techs are pretty knowledgeable. They also may have a card just suited for your use.

I have a Mac Pro 2010 model and I have fitted a PCIe miniSAS card and the maxupgrades drive bay adapter sleds. I did this more because I could then having a real need and got the parts cheap off eBay. (I have upgraded practically everything in my Mac Pro so I now have 802.3ac WiFi & Bluetooth 4.0 LE with Continuity support, USB 3.0, a new video card, faster CPU chips with more cores and of course SATA III.)

It all works fine and does give a genuine SATA III speed. For traditional hard disks you are not going to notice the improvement but for SATA SSD drives you can easily spot the improvement. Obviously a PCIe direct connect SSD is even faster these days.

I have tried two different miniSAS cards both successfully for booting in to OS X, and both successfully for booting via Boot Camp in to Windows. There is however an issue with Boot Camp you need to be aware of to get that to work successfully. Read on…

While Windows can boot directly from the standard internal drive bay connections because the drivers are built-in, it will not boot from a PCIe miniSAS card initially. I got round this by first having the drive connected using the original drive bay connection, then booting via Boot Camp in to Windows, then installing the Windows driver for the PCIe miniSAS card, and then shutting down, swapping the connection for the drive bay to the miniSAS and then I was able to boot Windows via the PCIe miniSAS card.

I have successfully done this with both a StarTech PCIe card, and an Attotech ExpressSAS card. Both these cards have Windows drivers, neither needs any Mac software but the Attotech one does have Mac software. The Areca card seems huge overkill, the StarTech card is the cheapest and lowest end option, the Attotech is available as both a RAID and non-RAID version and would be in the middle ground. I believe Highpoint do a suitable card as well but I would avoid them as their Mac driver situation is a mess.

PS. For 2.5" SATA SSD drives you normally could get drive sleds specifically for 2.5" drives but these then do not work with the miniSAS. Instead you need to fit a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter to the maxupgrades drive sleds. The following or similar will do the job. See http://www.newertech.com/products/adaptadrive.php I have again done this myself.

I would suspect the Icydock kits are more expensive than the Newertech (or similar) adapter. The Newertech as it simply is a pass-thru adapter is not tied to a specific SATA speed.

And yes the maxupgrades sleds are like the standard sleds and designed for just 3.5" drives so yes you do need some form of adapter.