cMP and working Large TB SATA Drives List

Both WD Red 6TB and WD Red 8TB work flawlessly on my cMP (2009, flashed to 5,1). Bootable (from itself, other HDD / SDD on native SATA ports, or SSD / HDD on Sonnet Tempo SSD PCIe SATA III card), no mount issue. However, only the 6TB has the standard physical mount point which fit the HDD tray. The 8TB only has 2 mount points fit, it's ok to put that in bay one, and let it lie on the PCIe fan (to play safe, I put some soft material in between to absorb the vibration).

Stock Apple HD4870, Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition, slef flashed R9 280, non flashed R9 380. All bootable, so it seems GPU / EFI wont affect the bootability / operation of the HDD.

For the benefit of everyone OWC sell replacement drive sleds for the 2009, 2010, and 2012 Mac Pro models. These claim to support the new screw hole locations for newer bigger drives.

See OWC Hard Drive Sled / Bracket for Mac Pro... in stock at MacSales.com

Note: The built-in drive bays will still only be SATA II. For the above Mac Pro models it is possible to get a PCIe SATA III card and another different type of drive sled which gives SATA III. However I do not know for sure if these have all the new screw holes. For a suitable PCIe SATA card see PCI Express 2.0 SATA III RAID Card | Mini-SAS SFF-8087 Connector | StarTech.com United Kingdom for the drive sleds and special fan-out cable see http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_I D=189&ParentCat=414 This may not be available anymore I got mine via eBay. The StarTech card supports booting - even for Boot Camp and Windows.

The Toshiba 6TB works in my 2010 Mac Pro.

Toshiba HDWE160XZSTA 6.0TB X300 3.5-inch... in stock at MacSales.com

Do you boot from the Toshiba or an SSD?

The OWC sled is what I used to install the Toshiba 6 TB internally.

David Talaga wrote:

Do you boot from the Toshiba or an SSD?

No SSD installed. I boot from the Toshiba some of the time.