I'm planning on getting the SSD + 2TB drive option for my new iMac and using the 2TB drive as a scratch disk for final cut (as well as my itunes media drive and a few other things). My question is will this much use on the drive be bad for it? Right now I'm just using external drives and when they fill up I get a new one so I don't put as much use on them as I would with the 2TB drive where I plan on just archiving the footage onto a external hard drive when I am done with project and then continue using the 2TB drive for my next project.
My new 2010 hexacore Mac will have 24G memory, an OWC Extreme Pro 120G SSD (positioned in the lower optical bay) and four 2TB WD RE4 drives. I'll use my old Synology 209 NAS (two 1TB WD Green Raid 1 drives) for TM backups over 1000Mbps Ethernet. Yes, I'll need to upgrade to a larger NAS very soon. This will be my first Mac Pro (have MBPs and iMac) and will be used for web design and development (mostly Adobe CS5 products).
The SSD will be used for boot and application files. I plan to use Disk Utility to create a 1+0 Raid array for data files. For a Scratch disk, should I: 1) create a partition on the 1+0 Raid Array for Scratch 2) partition a chunk of the SSD for Scratch 3) attach a spare external 2.5" WD drive via Firewire 800 for Scratch
Based on my reading, it seems that option 1 makes the most sense but I'm not entirely sure if you can partition a 1+0 array with Disk Utility. I'm pretty sure option 3 is quite silly but wanted to toss out the idea. Lastly, are there any generic recommendations on scratch volume sizing?
I have my OS and apps on one HDD and my home folder located on another. Which of these should I allocate for my photoshop scratch volume? I'm assuming scratch partition should be set on the drive containing my home folder, not the drive containg OS and apps.
I am on a macbook pro that has relatively low RAM and video games sometimes will jump, so does a lot of graphic intensive programs, how do I make a scratch disk that any application will load some of its RAM into?
I'll be setting up my Mac Pro tomorrow and it has 3 Hard Drives.. I plan to have it set up like this
HD1 (SSD): Boot/Applications HD2 (1TB): Data/Music HD3 (640GB): Scratch Disk Partition or full HD for Scratch Disk?
If HD3's Scratch Disk is fine as a partition, I'll partition it 3 times for a Windows Operatin System, Time Machine, and a Scratch Disk.. is there a problem with using this drive like this for the scratch disk?
I have a new mac pro with 4 int hard drives (the original boot drive and 3 x 1TB int hard drives).
How should I configure the the drives for photoshop scratch disk?
I intend to have the three int hard drives as a single striped RAID for all my data storage. Can I use the data storage RAID as the scratch disk or is it bad practice to have thesame disks that I'm storing files on as the scratch disk?
I have now attached my Time Machine backup disk to the USB port on my Airport Extreme base and selected it as backup disk but it then started the whole backup again. Is there a way of just continuing with the existing backup on this disk? I can look at the old backup from time machine by selecting the older backup manually but this option is most wasteful of space. It's the same disk connected to the same machine, why can't it just carry on?!
I'm a serious photographer and do my post processing in Capture NX2 (2.2.4). Sometimes, especially when saving files, it drags on interminably. I have read that one way to speed up NX2 is to create a scratch disk. I'm currently upgrading my HD on my iMac G5 (Leopard) to a 1TB HD. Would it be wise (and efficient) to create a partition on the new HD and use it as a scratch disk? I understand you can't use the boot drive as a scratch disk, but if I partition will I be able toname the new partition something other than Macintosh HD, thus permitting use of a scratch disk?
Looking at current SSD's and they do seem to offer exceptional performance. Have a little spare budget after the 6-core purchase and was wondering.. Add a (modest) SSD as a boot and app disk? SSD as a working/scratch disk?
Now - we all would like the biggest, fastest etc etc. But taking another view,ie in 6 months time there are going to be cheaper, faster,bigger, better value for money. So - for design CS4/5, 3D...looking for drive big enough to make worthwhile testing the water. Still a bewildering amount of options out there. A starting point seems to be 60G OCZ vertex 2 ?
I just got a 2nd caviar black 1tb and I'm goin to be setting up raid with another drive.. I have data on my current 1tb which is backed up with time machine. what do I have to do to get the drives workin in raid? I'm lookin to have a faster write speed since I need the raid setup. Since I will be using the 2 drives for my data and a photoshop scratch disk, should I create a partition for the scratch disk? I've seen some say yes.. Some that said no but without reason.What r the pros/cons to partitionin the drive?
I just bought a second refurb imac 27 and today when i received it and i started transfering the information from time machine i saw 3 little black dots on the middle of the screen, now i thought dust behind the screen? but i also consider maybe dead pixels? a scratch?Here are the pictures i took from the imac.How do i know for sure if these are dead or stuck pixels? i called apple care but it will take one week or more if i send it to check, so i wonder if there is something i can do to verify if these 3 dots are really dead pixels? or if it is dust behind the screen?
What is Best setup for iMac with SSD and HDD? Best location of scratch & home folders? Computer: iMac 2.93 GHz Quad core i7, 8GB RAM, 1 TB HDD + 256 GB SSD There is not much info from Apple about the best way to set up an iMac with a Hard Drive and Solid state drive. I've looked at a few of the forum posts across the web and came up with a plan and lots of questions. (I do use photoshop frequently, but not on a professional level):
1.I will keep OS and Applications on SSD 2.Would you do it differently or not at all about moving the home folder? I saw some posts about moving the entire home folder, but it makes more sense to me to only move selected folders withing the home folder to take advantage of speed of SSD. So will keep the home folder on SSD, but move certain folders (document, music, iphoto, download, etc.) to 1 TB HDD via instructions I found on the macintoshperformanceguide website (**is this the same as creating an alias?): cd sudo cp -r Documents /Volumes/Master sudo rm -rf Documents sudo ln -s /Volumes/Master/Documents Documents 3.I will attach an external hard drive for most of my documents and backup storage 4.My main question and here is where I'm not sure what's best?
I want to speed up photoshop as much as possible? Should I make a partition on the internal HDD for a scartch disk? If so, how big? Is there a benefit to partitioning for scratch disc use? Should I not partition HDD and use for data and scratch? Any other way? I wish apple had a how to maximize use of the imac with HDD and SSD page!
My new 27" i7 is supposed to be delivered next week, got the SATA cables for installing my own SSD, but am a bit doubtful as to where placing my Scratch space. So, I will end up with an iMac with two internal drives (SSD + HDD).OS, System Library and Applications go to the internal SSD (120GB).
As I will be using FCS (besides CS package and other smaller programms) I would like to set up a dedicated Scratch drive for it.
Which of the following options would you go for, and why?:
1: install scratch space on the internal HDD together with all the other data (pics, music, videos - space is not the issue with a 2TB drive). Would a partition be advisable in this case, since I heard that partitioning slows a disc down considerably.
2: install scratch space on the internal HDD (scratch only), and all other files (pics/music/video) on an external FW800 HDD.
3: install scratch space on the external FW800 HDD (all other files on the internal HDD like usual).
4: use an external RAID backup as scratch space as well (something like the Drobo) with a FW800 connection.
I was looking for feedback on using the Drobo not only as a backup, but also as a scratch - some people found it great working, others not so much...I'd like to find out, if that has to do with the FW800 bottleneck, or if a Drobo scratch is even slower than an external FW800 HDD would be. I know that eSata would be faster, but that is currently out of reach (besides the OWC mod.).
I have taken everything off my desk top and backed it up and it's still saying the same thing! I've also emptied the trash. I get it when I try to use Photoshop.
Searched the archives but no luck so far. My old PB G4 is running 10.4.11. When I installed the OS, I chose not to install iPhoto and iMovie because I didn't think I'd need them on this machine. I'd now like to add them, but am not sure how to do it without wiping the hard drive and starting completely from the beginning. There's got to be an easier way...right?
I got my new iMac. It's beautiful, but the wireless keyboard has sharp edges. It easily scratches the aluminum finish on the magic mouse bottom, and the plastic on the top. Obviously the answer is "don't hit bump your mouse into your keyboard"... but with the 27" screen... you have to move the mouse A LOT to get your expose' corners working! Other than that, works well.
Side note: exceptionally impressed with parallels 6 -- but I gave it 2 cores and 6gb of RAM.
I can remote desktop into it with my macbook pro and do some quick coding in Visual Studio - nice. To setup remote desktop in parallels 6 -- you need to go to Virtual Machine.. Configure..Network... change it to shared connection with Airport.
I am getting an i7 iMac in the near future (ordered yesterday, won't arrive til Jan. 3rd ) And I am getting it stock with just the 4gigs of ram, and don't plan on upgrading anytime soon, but I probably will at some point when prices come down. Anyway, I use photoshop some (not a power user or anything but I use it for some stuff) and I was wondering if you could use a mini sd card as a scratch disk, and if you can, is it a good idea? Thoughts/opinions/comments.
On to my HD question: should I pay apple to upgrade my HD to the 2TB drive? I think I will definitely fill up the 1TB so I'd like the extra space, but would prefer to buy the drive from ifixit or owc or something to save some cash, but the thought of having to remove the huge glass screen with suction cups and disconnecion the LCD seems a little daunting so I was wondering if I should just save myself the hassle and get the upgrade done by mac (it'd be $225 instead of $250 because I get the student discount) Of course I'd lose out on the 1TB HD that I could later stick in to an external HD enclosure, so its a pretty big hit in terms of cash.
From watching the teardown on ifixit changing he HD looks like it could be a little tricky, but I'd like some input from you guys. I am pretty tech savy (former PC user so I've replaced a lot of components like ram, video cards, HDs, ec cetera) but getting past the wall of glass is daunting, but I may just be hyping it up, so I wanted some input.
Third and finally, I got the wired keyboard because I wanted a # pad but I just found out my old Logitech G13 has mac drivers so I was thinking of switching to the wireless one just so I could have a wireless mouse + keyboard for when I want to watch a movie or something from further away, though ideally I think I'd prefer a keyboard with a built in track pad or track ball, but I don't really want to fork out the cash for it now. So is there any advantage of the wired numeric apple keyboard compared to the Logitech one? I can still control media, I have a remote, and it can do expose and screens and all that good stuff. But as always I wanted to make sure I wasn't over looking anything.
I tried to install a new version of osx into my laptop. Everything runs smoothly until after I choose the language I prefer. The computer then tells me that the disk is no good for this computer. I can't seem to get past this window at all, no matter what I do. I've held down apple "s" which then shows me "-sh-3.2#". What does this mean? And how can I get back into my computer? Thx
I know they just updated them in March but I'm wondering if they're going to get the quad core or core i7 processes anytime this year? Also, starting June I believe is the going back to school promotion. Basically you get an ipod or touch for free after rebate, right? Can you still get the $100 student discount off?
I bought a macbook pro yesterday and tried to install snow OS X from the CD that the MBP came with onto my iMac, for some reason its not allowing me to. Is the OS X cd good for only one computer?
I have read a few posts of new i7 users posting various stats on their machine. I am specificaly interested in the gpu performence (without OC). I am a traditional tower pc guy, but i have slowly but surely been able to convince myself of the relative merits of going loaded imac i7 over low end MP (the least of which is the horrible value and waiting 500+ days for no real improvments other than having the base now include a few bto upgrades to save you a few hundred bucks...but dont get me started).
Anyway, back on message, NAS solves my concerns about extra HD's, the cpu is certanly fast enough, mem not an issue...so my only concern is gpu.
Just looking at it from a price perspective, i am not sure how comfortable i am that a $130 graphics card will keep me fat and happy for 3 years (tech refresh assumption). I don't need a $600 cards, but when i have typicaly built pc's, the last few years, a $300 or so card has kept me happy. With the imac, it appears that switching gpu's is not easy or something i will probably do during its warranty covered life cycle....
So how good is the card (sorry it took so long to get there). I am a somewhat power home user...not professional, but i probably fall under the label i saw floaing around on another post as someone using 500 bucks of sw to load up raw images of their cat...or in this case kids and a golden retriever. I love games, but to be fair, my xbox has replaced most of my need for quick fps. 27in is a big screen. Can i play most games at full frame/speed extra? I assume photo shop cs5, et will work fine.
i really am on the fence on which one to get, i guess next week hopefully i can really price compare them, but the MP just seems to be such a god awefull value that its hard for me to jusitfy buying the low end model...my legacy prejudiceness against all in ones is taking a bit to get over...the imac seems to be the obvious choice.
I recently acquired an 17" iMac G5, 1.6 PPC with 2 GB RAM. I upgraded to Leopard 10.5.8, installed iWork and iLife '08, Aperture 2 and a video game. I also added some enhancements, Divx and an I.M. program.
I plan to use it for basic home stuff such as photos, video editing (basic), t'internet etc. I dont plan to play any games on it (i have a ps3 and a wii which do a much better jobs me thinks). The question is this: will the low end 24in imac be good enough? there seems to be a lot of negative comments round here on the graphic card. also on a not less serious note, do you find the screen too big on your desk. Is it overwhelmingly big?
I bought a new iMac a couple of weeks ago, it's my first alu one but I've had two of the white plastic ones before. The sound from the internal speakers in my old iMacs is pretty acceptable for day to day usage (not playing music of course), but the new one sounds horrible... extremely tinny. So is this just what they're all like these days? If not I guess it's got some issues:-/