Fluxbox UK

Apple OS X

If your running Leopard or Tiger, then adding any SATA optical drive is easy.

Removing the fan inlet unit from the front of the system will reveal two additional standard SATA ports which can be used to add either additional HDD’s (with the use of a SATA Backplate, creating the ability to have two external SATA drives connected to the system). Or an Optical drive, to add the optical drive, you will also need to complete the following steps.

1. Remove the Hard Disk caddie in slot 1 (should be your primary Hard Disk)

2. Unscrew the two black screws holding down the (seen below)

3. With these screws removed, you should be able to move this combo-SATA connector to the side, and easily see the hole in the mounting chassis where the parellel cables and others pass through into the disk caddy section of the case.

4. Some delicate finger work may be required at this stage to work your SATA cable through this gap into the optical drive bay, but once through you should beable to easily pull enough cable through to connect the cable to the rear of your SATA optical Drive.

NOTE : Be aware that when re-inserting the optical drive bay into the system, you must leave enough slack cable on the SATA lead to allow it to tuck underneath the caddy (you should be able to gently pull on the cable from within the main section of the case to take up the slack as you lower the caddy into place.

Additional NOTE : Also be very careful to make sure that the parrelel cable is out of the way and also tucked underneath the caddy. A friend of mine who added an additional drive to their system sliced the cable on the runners as the caddy was being lowered back in (Mac Pro Cases may look awesome, but they got some sharp teeth it seems lol)

5. Well with all these cables in place, including power (which you should be able to use the standard molex on its own or via an adapter), screw back down the hard disk connector and insert the drive, reboot into OS X and you should have access to your new SATA Optical Drive.

Windows XP / Vista (Via Bootcamp)

Well, this isnt quite as easy… Unfortunatly the two onboard SATA ports which are accessible in OS X are disabled within bootcamp and as yet there is no way to re-enable them for use. So this leaves a slight problem, as you can see from the picture above, the only other SATA connectors availiable are these Hard Disk bay connectors which require Male connectors, and alas their is no standard SATA extension cable availiable (least not one that i have found). So this leaves us with a couple of options on howto approach this problem.

1. By removing one of the PCI slot blanking plates from the rear of the case, you can run a USB cable from one of the rear ports into the case and use a USB to SATA converter.

2. If your lucky enough to be a resident of the United States, take a visit to www.satacables.com and order yourself a SS-AZX20MPSS - This is a custom SATA extension cable which should do the job easily, they also do a SS-POW-EXT20 which is a combo connector which will take the SATA data and SATA power connectors through to the drive (Unfortunatly, since im a poor citizen of the United Kingdom, they wouldnt ship to me, even after i told them id be happy to pay delivery, within reason)… NOTE : Due to the fact i havn’t seen one of the combo connectors, i was slightly concerned it may not actually fit through the hold in the chassis between the HDD bays and the Optical Caddy bay !

3. Make your own SATA extension cable (Male to Female SATA cable)… Well this is the option i took…

Making your Own Cable

Pretty easy, just take a standard SATA cable and using a pair of clippers, carefully cut away all the surrounding plasic from the end of the connector… Leaving just the data pins and the piece of plastic underneath them. You may want to use a stanley blade to shave away the edges to make it a more smooth fit with… Once completed you should end up with something that looks like the picture below.

With this cable now made, follow the same steps as with the OS X guide above, but instead of connecting this SATA cable to one of the onboard SATA connectors, place it at the furthest edge of one of the Hard Disk connectors and slide it into their.

Thats about it folks… Its quick and easy and works fine.