I have a couple of spare 500GB 2.5″ drives that were going to go into my HP DL380 rack server, but for the reasons described here, I ended up replacing with some WD drives instead. So I wanted to install these in my Mac Pro instead to at least get some use from them.
The pre ‘trash can’ Mac Pro towers
have 4 slide out drive trays (see here across the center of the case) that allow you to easily install or remove 3.5″ drives without messing with any cables. Attach a drive into a drive sled, screw in the 4 screws on the sled and then push it in.
For 2.5″ drives however, they obviously won’t fit into the drive sled. There’s a number of adapter options if you just Google for “mac pro 2.5 drive adapter” or similar, and the prices are all over from $5 to $30 or more.
I went for a cheaper $5 option on Amazon.
When the adapter arrived, what’s interesting is it looks like the adapter was 3D printed:
The kit came with easy to follow instructions and needed screws.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.kevinhooke.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/20180212_211640.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1)
Following the instructions and attaching the drive, here’s what it looks like with the adapter fitted into one of the drive sleds:
On booting up, the top drive is the original disk that came in this used Mac Pro, it has an HFS+ partition installed with El Cap, and a partition installed with Windows 10. The 2nd is the newly added 2.5″ 500GB disk. Great!