Once the machine was bootable again, I was able to clear files from the damaged disc and update the system on the good one. Once I was able to force the machine to boot from this newer system and drive, she worked much better. Years ago, however, we had installed a new WD Caviar Black 1TB drive and installed a new system onto it. It had an old system installation on it and the computer was trying to boot from that old installation. The old 250 gig drive was the original drive that the machine shipped with. This second aspect turned out to be the thing causing the most problems. I was able to fix this machine by adopting a two-pronged approach: 1 – carefully removing each module, vacuuming all the accumulated dust from every connector and component, vacuuming the RAM and 2 – bypassing the failed hard drive. The machine is still very-fast even by today’s standards, largely because of the dual four-core Xeon design, but today it is let down by a puny graphics card, slow RAM and a hard drive that died. The Mac Pro was engineered to meet a service life, not a low price-point.
Industrial build quality, machined aluminium everywhere, custom high volume ball bearing fans, forced air cooking, massive custom heat pipe cooling for the dual quad-core Intel Xeon enterprise processors, solid capacitors and 105 degree rated parts feature in this machine that was designed for commercial use by imaging professionals. This beautiful 2007 Mac Pro is like nothing you have ever seen if you’ve only ever seen inside regular PCs. With Paul closing his studio and relocating, I wanted to repair the gruntiest of these machines for him – a 2007 Mac Pro 2.1. Perth’s notoriously hot weather and the near 12 hours a day operation gave these machines real beating. My good buddy runs several powerful Apple Mac Pro desktop machines for use in his photographic studio.