A little known fact about the Mac Pro is that it actually features six SATA ports. With four used for the hard drive slots, that leaves two free doing nothing. Some theorists may tell you that Apple left them there for use with SATA optical drives. That may be a possibility, but the fact is, the majority of optical drives (including Blu-Ray) use the PATA interface that’s used by default. That effectively leaves two free SATA ports.

I kept rolling that thought over in my mind, wondering when I’d be able to take advantage of it. Today seems to be that day. Newertech has introduced a $25 extender cable designed to span the distance from your motherboard to a free PCIe slot. For a tiny investment, you have the equivalent of a eSATA card for your Mac Pro. It even includes instructions. Couple that with OWC’s Mercury Elite Pro-AL Dual SATA Drive Enclosure and you can create your own extremely high speed external RAID. That sounds like a cost effective way to create a good drive for Time Machine, no?

I’m almost a little surprised that Apple didn’t think of/do this (in a prettier way by routing them to ports on the back, like the rest).