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The Mac Pro First Generation is an Intel Xeon-based workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The first generation model includes the machines from 2006 through 2008.

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Need to buy A Hard drive, and OSX? info Raid?

Interested in a large startup disk for my Mac Pro 3.0 QX Model 1186 EMC no. 2113. Need storage and back up for photography library. Any advantage to a specific strategy?

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Hello, Dan. Thank you for responding to my question? When I purchase my Mac Pro tower as a custom option i chose to upgrade to the Quad Core Xeon X5365 ( Clovertown ) processors Intel Core micro archictecture...The label on machine also has serial # G863842RWS4 Small Dog Electronics replaced Video Card and Identified bad RAM. I shipped to them with out hard drives. Start up drive out of space and did not Boot up/ moved to many times and not sure were in storage my system restore disk is. So Apples label on my machine may refer to ( Quad Core Original )

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Stephen - Sounds like there's no Apple store (or reseller) near you. That you had to ship your system out for repairs. Without access to the original install disks it's going to be hard. Apple requires you to have Snow Leopard already present on your HD before you can install Lion so getting a fresh copy of Lion may not help you here. Besides you have no space to install it. - See below answer for the next steps

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As you didn't clarify what system you have (I haven't heard of a Mac Pro QX do you mean a MacPro tower?) we can't get into what drive(s) will play well in it.

Go to About this Mac, click on More Info button to get the System Profiler to come up (you can also go to your application folder in older Mac OS's to get to it). Copy down the system info and post it here.

In your case storing photographs can be daunting as you can have very large files (RAW) and you also want to view them quickly as well as sort them with some logic so you can find a given image.

A single system may not be the ideal setup here. Consider using a web server (accessed only within your home/office). This web server can give you the flexibility to view and manage the images without having to physically move them around and see thumb nails (smaller or Jpeg'ed versions) and use meta file labels to sort or find things.

If that sounds like what you want then you want a server system with a RAID external drive to host your images not an internal drive. For a backup strategy here you would have two or three RAID systems to mirror across. Taking one off site (stored at your banks safety deposit box or home).

If you're just starting off think of this as your objective on were you want to go. No problems starting off small in any case still setup a external RAID to hold your picts.

Here's my three cents on my general rules on how to setup your HD's:

Breaking down the file types into different groups can make it easier to understand where they need to be.

- OS & App files need to be on the first partition of your primary HD.

- If you can move temp files to your second partition (see below) Each apps have settings (pref or internal) to alter their location (some can't be alterd).

- What you download or create should be on your second partition and/or external HD.

Partitioning:

Laptops - Small HD systems, leave as one partition. If you have a larger HD think about setting up a second partition (three-four max).

Desktops - Best to have at least two partitions on the internal HD (most have larger HD's - 500GB or bigger). Tip: use pref settings or folder aliases to make getting to the second partition easier and automatic.

Partitioned drives makes backing up easier & quicker as you don't need to backup your OS & Apps as frequently as your data so you can focus the backup on one partition.

External HD's:

Everyone should have at least one external to backup your system.

First - Small HD which I have a clean install of my OS to boot from and has my diagnostic and maintenance tools (could be a Flash thumb drive). As you can't defrag the partition/Drive you booted from you use this drive to boot from to defrag your files (checking them first for corruption)

Second - Backup, holds anything I care about or can't replace from CD/DVD.

Burnable CD/DVD's - Not as reliable as a HD (slower to write or read from as well). Still useful to hold music or downloaded stuff. Best to have a few copies just in case.

Flash drives - more reliable than burnable CD/DVDs for long term storage. But! if you over use them (lots of over-writes) they do degrade.

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Next steps:

Try again to find your CD/DVD's as it's a lot easier to recover then rebuild.

Best setup here is to get two high speed 500GB (or smaller) drives and setup a mirror set. Use these as your startup and application drives (not data). As your system can support up to 4 drives you could setup a second set of mirrored drives to host your data files. Here a larger set makes sense (1 or 2TB disks).

But before you get there you need to get a working startup disk and recover what you have.

You'll need to buy a new HD for your startup disk (if you plan to mirror get two of the same disks). Double check what you have now and the physical size (I think you have 3.5" SATA drives in this system). If you can locate a reseller who is willing to at least install Snow Leopard on (one disk) for you you have a prayer. Make sure you tell him you have a Mac Pro Tower so he installs a full complete copy of the OS (Snow Leopard at least) on the disk (has to go to custom options to do this).

If you can't get someone willing to do this see if one of your friends has a running Mac and has the Leopard or Snow Leopard logo'ed install disks (not the disks that came with his Mac).

You'll need to buy an external case (Firewire) for your new drive (If you don't feel comfortable doing this you could buy a prebuilt external drive and then use it as a recovery disk for the next time). Assemble the external making sure you don't zap it in the process. Install a clean full copy of the OS and install the drive into one of the trays for your Mac. Make sure it's the only drive in the system for now. Power it up, does it startup?

If not what happened?

If it did great! Moving forward

Now shut it down and install your mirror drive using Apple's Disk Utility tool make sure not to mess up here ;-} It will take some time for the disk to image out. Next, if you plan to use Lion this is the time to upgrade.

OK, now install one of your data drives repeat the process using Apple's Disk Utility tool, this time you don't want it to be tied to the other disks. Repeat again installing the second data disk, again setup mirroring between it's mate. This time its quick as theres nothing on the other disk.

To recover your apps and current data on your old disk install it into the external case you bought plugging it in and hopefully it comes up. Before moving anything run Disk Utility on it making sure you have no corruption's. Follow my earlier post where to put things.

Lastly, Once your over the shock of all of the expenses getting to this point get an external Firewire Mirrored disk to use as a backup for your photos. Rebuild your old drive as a bootable Snow Leopard disk (not Lion) so you can recover the next time.

Good Luck!

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