Q I intend to upgrade my old-style Mac Pro to a new one. What should I do with the four hard disks inside it when I get my new Mac Pro, as I would like still to be able to access their content?

A You have several options, but must bear in mind that those drives are now at least two years old, and once out of warranty there will be an increasing risk of their failure.

As the new Mac Pro has no internal drive bays, only an internal SSD, there is no option to move them into your new Mac. That is probably just as well, as they would have been very likely to perform poorly and fail early.

You could keep your old Mac running as a file server, delivering those files across a network, but this would consume additional power and would be as likely to fail in the near future.

A more expensive alternative that will ensure all their current contents remain available to your new system would be to buy a new and substantial external drive (or array) of 2 TB or more, clone the contents of the old drives onto that, and store the original drives safely in your archive.

Finally, it might be wise to keep your old Mac as a backup system in case your new one needs to go off for repair, in which case, at least for the next year or two, you should keep those drives where they are.

Updated from the original, which was first published in MacUser volume 26 issue 21, 2010.