Upgrading to a 4,1

[screws]

Hi,

I would like to benefit from a newer, faster mac pro, and I'm considering buying a 4,1 8 core 2.66GHz. I currently use a 1,1 Quad core 2.66 with Digital Performer and a lot of Virtual Instruments and experience crashes and slowdowns galore.

To avoid as much hassle as possible I'd like to take all 4 of the Hard Drives out of the 1,1 and slide them into the 4,1, thus getting everything back up and running ASAP.

Good idea? No?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That's how I went from a G5 to a 3,1 and then installed ML on a wiped drive. Worked fine and even migrated from a Time Machine backup.

[HCMarkus]

Hi,

I would like to benefit from a newer, faster mac pro, and I'm considering buying a 4,1 8 core 2.66GHz.

The 4,1's are solid, use readily available and inexpensive RAM, and can easily be upgraded to 5,1 status with a simple EFI update from Netkas.org. If you think you might ever want to upgrade the CPU, do a little research at Macrumors.com. The dual processor 4,1s are more challenging to upgrade than the 4.1 single processor models. I did a 4,1 to 5,1 quad to hex upgrade that has yielded great performance.

Macofalltrades.com could be a good source for used MPs. Although I haven't bought from them myself, they have been around for awhile, and I have heard positive things from others.

One thing to consider is the video card. It seems folks running ATI 5770's and better are having good luck with DP. The GT120 that shipped stock with the 4,1 may be a tad weak to allow smooth operation. I am running a 5770 in my MP. There are lots of GPU options if you will be running OS 10.8.3; you can even use a number of current PC cards, you just won't get a welcome screen on startup.

Direct disc swap for data drives should be no problem. Whether you want to do so with a system drive is questionable; as MLC suggests, you might want to start with a fresh OS install if you run into any issues.

Get an SSD while you're at it for your startup drive. You will be glad you did.

[screws]

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the input.

My old 1,1 has 2 - 1TB drives, 1 - 1.5 TB drive and a 512GB SSD for system and apps. I'm really hoping to avoid the hours of re-installing and re-registering all my apps, plugs and all by simply sticking the SSD and other drives into the 4,1, which I went and bought yesterday from OWC.

I'll definitely be upgrading to 10.8 (I'm at 10.6.8 now) DP8 (7.2.4 currently) and any plugs that I need to upgrade to start working at 64 bit.

My audio is handled by a MOTU 2408 mkII so I'll stick the PCI 424 into the 4,1 as part of all this.

Thanks again, any other observations welcome! I'll be doing all this come Monday I think, when 4,1 arrives!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

As long as you don't have any problems with the current drive, you should be able to pop the old drives into the new machine and do a migrate when you start up the new OS that will be on the machine - assuming you will be moving to a new OS. Maybe you won't, but if you do, DO NOT bother with Lion. GO straight to Mountain Lion. You could also stay on SL if you're on that OS, but if you;re plugs and apps are ML compatible, I strongly urge you to go ML and run DP in 64 bit (again, assuming your plugs and apps are compatible.) Even if they are not, then use jbridge or (IMO better yet) Plogue Bidule to use older plugs and VIs until they are up to date.

The main difference between jb and pb is pb allows you to bridge your AUs as well as VSTs while jb only bridges VSTs. This is getting o/t, sorry, but if you need it, you know where to go now. pb also has a lot of other very nice features.

[mikehalloran]

The drives plug in to the new computer. You may have to reauthorized DP from the disk - no big deal.

If you have Internet authorizations on other programs, deactivate them first, this will save you a call to tech support. ILok as well as serial number authorizations will be unaffected (other than any driver updates).

These are the same steps you would follow if going to a new machine and transferring everything via Migration Assistant orTime Machine.

+1 Upgrade to OS 10.8. Lion was a transitional OS that Apple never quite fixed.