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I do CD ripping as a side biz. I use a Mac Pro as the computer, and I have a very custom built tower that holds 7 SATA optical drives, connected via USB2 to a USB2 hub, which then connects to the Mac.
It worked well enough over the years but it's time to upgrade to a better setup. I bought a duplicator tower, which is a case made just for holding optical drives. It holds 11 total. The SATA drives themselves from the old tower are fine and so I transferred them over. It's just the case and data connections that need modernizing.
But here's the million dollar question. How do you connect 10 (forget that last one) optical drives to a Mac? I had come up with a few ways but now I'm running into trouble.
Plan A
Plan B
Plan C
There were SO many options available just 5 years ago, but they all seem to have gone away. If you have any suggestions for solving any of these problems, or if you can think of a totally different way to connect all these drives to a Mac, affordably, please let me know. Note that while this Mac Pro does have PCI slots, I will likely be using this tower with newer Macs soon enough so solutions that require PCI slots (besides a PCI USB3 adapter) aren't really practical.
Here's a picture of the old setup:
The case is a true hack-job. It's an old Blue & White G3 PowerMac case, with the drive framework out of two different PC towers riveted in place. Then with PowerMac G4 plastic trim bolted in place of the G3 stuff. I created this monstrosity a very long time ago. And it has worked pretty well but it's time to upgrade.
Here's a picture in action, working on a batch of CDs:
It worked well enough over the years but it's time to upgrade to a better setup. I bought a duplicator tower, which is a case made just for holding optical drives. It holds 11 total. The SATA drives themselves from the old tower are fine and so I transferred them over. It's just the case and data connections that need modernizing.
But here's the million dollar question. How do you connect 10 (forget that last one) optical drives to a Mac? I had come up with a few ways but now I'm running into trouble.
Plan A
The best way was to get these SATA port multiplier bridge boards. They turn one SATA port into five, BUT these ones in particular also had a USB3 port. So two of those in the case would give me 10 drives on two very fast, very un-cluttered buses. The main problem with this plan is that the only company still making this board has suddenly discontinued it! Here's a link. Note that the duplicator case has no logic board, thus no PCI slots. But it does have a whole slew of what is often referred to as "SCSI" bracket slots, which is exactly what that bridge board fits in to. So this would have been good but it appears that's no longer an option.
Plan B
So idea number two. Two more simple, single USB3 to SATA bridge boards, and then a pair of more traditional internal port multipliers to turn two USB3 ports again into 10 SATA drives. But again, problem. The variety of different SATA port multiplier boards has greatly decreased over the past few years. There used to be many that were boards on those same SCSI port brackets, but with all of their ports facing internal (which is what I would need for this application). Now when you look for these port multipliers, all you seem to get is boards made to have one port facing out, and the other 5 facing in, AND they don't include the bracket. Given the limited mounted options inside this optical tower, I don't see how I could use boards like that inside this case. And using this method would give me 4 boards total which is kind of a lot, again given the limited space.
Plan C
The last idea I had was a modern version of my old setup. Basically I'd buy an 11+ port USB3 hub, and buy 11 USB 3 to SATA/IDE adapters. It would work, and even with all 11 drives on one USB bus, there would still be 4x the needed bandwidth even at peak read speed on all 11 drives. But there are a few downsides with this option too. Because USB hubs come in cases, I should be able to mount the hub to the inside wall easy enough. But how do I power it? I have plenty of SATA and ATA power connectors, but all the hubs I've seen want power from an external AC adapter and in via a round DC plug. The voltage is probably right and the amps are probably more than ample but the connector is all wrong.
The other problem with this plan is the USB3 to SATA adapters. There are MANY cheap USB3 to SATA adapters, but nearly all of them are made for 2.5" hard drives, and plug in to the data AND power connectors on the drive. That clearly won't work in this case, my drives need to be powered by my tower's real power supply. There are some "old style" adapters that have a USB dongle, with a short SATA cable, and a dedicated external power supply. I could just omit the power supply easy enough, but the problem is more the cost of 11 of these adapters.
The other problem with this plan is the USB3 to SATA adapters. There are MANY cheap USB3 to SATA adapters, but nearly all of them are made for 2.5" hard drives, and plug in to the data AND power connectors on the drive. That clearly won't work in this case, my drives need to be powered by my tower's real power supply. There are some "old style" adapters that have a USB dongle, with a short SATA cable, and a dedicated external power supply. I could just omit the power supply easy enough, but the problem is more the cost of 11 of these adapters.
There were SO many options available just 5 years ago, but they all seem to have gone away. If you have any suggestions for solving any of these problems, or if you can think of a totally different way to connect all these drives to a Mac, affordably, please let me know. Note that while this Mac Pro does have PCI slots, I will likely be using this tower with newer Macs soon enough so solutions that require PCI slots (besides a PCI USB3 adapter) aren't really practical.
Here's a picture of the old setup:
The case is a true hack-job. It's an old Blue & White G3 PowerMac case, with the drive framework out of two different PC towers riveted in place. Then with PowerMac G4 plastic trim bolted in place of the G3 stuff. I created this monstrosity a very long time ago. And it has worked pretty well but it's time to upgrade.
Here's a picture in action, working on a batch of CDs:
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