Mac Upgrade - Need Advice On Planning This

masterthief

Okay, I keep trying to think up a plan and isn't working, so I'm posting here in the hope that ppl can help. PC Users should probably be able to offer advice too, so feel free to do so.

I have a Mac G5 with 150GB internal HD. I'm adding a 250GB firewire external HD and aim to add another 500GB(probs, might be a 250GB) external HD within 2 months tops.

I use the G5 for music production (this can take up a lot of file space), music study (e.g. playing along to backing tracks), basic photo editing and entertainment (music and video). It rarely sees the internet, usually just for update checks.

Right now, its running a bit sluggish, but I'm hoping that upping the RAM by 2GB will solve this (plan another 2GB in a month or so).

My key questions are:

(1) I need a backup of my music work (ongoing and completed files), and any downloaded programmes/updates. I'd also like backups of my itunes folder and photos, just in case things go wrong as it'd be quicker than reripping all those cd's. How best should I do this?

(2) How can I make sure that updates and iLife (preloaded, so no discs) can be reinstalled if everything goes horrible and I need to do this?

(3) I was thinking of keeping my music work and my entertainment files separate from each other (e.g. my music on one of the external HDs) - is there much point in doing this?

(4) How big an effect will having files stored on firewire external HDs make using them? e.g. I first thought of having the software and ongoing music projects on the internal HD, with completed music work, itunes stuff, photos etc., on one external HD - but will this make using itunes difficult/will there be latency issues?



Okay, I think that's everything covered. Please let me know what you'd do if you were in myposition, any advice/suggestions would me much appreciated. Basically I want my files to be safe, and easy to access. Massive props to anyone who posts.

masterthief

hmm, I'm both relieved I'm not the only one unable to answer this and worried about how I'm gonna sort it.

gmidgley

Glad you are looking after your mac :j

(1) I need a backup of my music work (ongoing and completed files), and any downloaded programmes/updates. I'd also like backups of my itunes folder and photos, just in case things go wrong as it'd be quicker than reripping all those cd's. How best should I do this?

What version of Mac OS X are you on? Have you moved to leopard yet? If so, I suggest something like Time Machine (Apples Own Back up System) use an external firewire drive, or even the new Time Capsule, this is a wireless Airport with 1 TB of space and uses Time Machine as an on going back up of your hard drive, check it out at http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/.

(2) How can I make sure that updates and iLife (preloaded, so no discs) can be reinstalled if everything goes horrible and I need to do this?

This article supplied by Apple should help you on the backing up http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106941

(3) I was thinking of keeping my music work and my entertainment files separate from each other (e.g. my music on one of the external HDs) - is there much point in doing this?

Nope, not at all, unless you want to be very very organised. As I say if you use Time Machine, Apple backs them up as per your Hard Drive anyway!

(4) How big an effect will having files stored on firewire external HDs make using them? e.g. I first thought of having the software and ongoing music projects on the internal HD, with completed music work, itunes stuff, photos etc., on one external HD - but will this make using itunes difficult/will there be latency issues?

Problem you have there is that iTunes will only look in one place for the tunes, and the library.xml file will only store one location. Check Apple.com/support, there are many conversations on there about storing them in multiple locations etc. Again its down to personal preference.

Hope you have fun with the mac and sorting it out.

Gary

isofa

Firstly for good backups / clones of the system under Mac OS X, use Carbon Copy Cloner. It's a well regarded piece of "donation-ware". It has backup facilities, but can also completely clone an HD to a newer larger HD, without the need for installing everything again (similar to Acronis TrueImage on the PC).

It's good practice to keep files on a different volume than the OS, and with large music / video files, you'll see an increase in performance too. I have a HD for various booting versions of the OS, and another much larger internal drive for documents and projects, partitioned into a couple of areas.

Firewire is pretty fast, especially if you use 800 rather than 400 as the connection. Is the Mac a Mac Pro G5? If so you'll have fast internal SATA connections, and a 500Gb internal drive can be had for around £70 to £90, try www.scan.co.uk

For externals, I've used the WD MyBook with 3 interfaces and it's been fast (500Gb), LaCie have a 1Tb one around at the moment for around £120 from www.macwarehouse.co.uk

Hope that helps!

masterthief

thanks for the responses guys, that's really helped (gonna spend tomorrow going over it and reading up the time capsule thing - hadn't heard of that before).

I'm on Panther/Tiger. Darn it, I can't remember, but its the one before Leopard anyway. Gonna upgrade to Leopard, but thought it best to do this after setting up the HDs and more RAM (and also because I'm gonna be a little skint after doing that, lol). what do you think?

thanks for the advice on HDs to consider - I was gonna go with LaCie or Formac, since they're pretty well established, but then I read some really bad reviews of each one - that the HDs fail for no reason, and stuff like that. But I think there's a good chance that these are just 'scare stories' (i.e. it'll happen every now and again with some HDs, but since LaCie and Formac slell more HDs, there'll be more bad reviews floating around the net than there would be of an unhaerd of brand).

The prices you quoted look really good too - I was budgeting around 150quid for a 250GB HD, but if I can afford it, I'll get two 500GB HDs instead.

isofa

Unless you really want the features in Leopard and you have a lot of older versions of software, I'd personally stick with Tiger (10.4) for the moment, because it has problems with software which isn't the latest version, and it's been more buggy than previous OS releases, I think a new patch is going to be released shortly.

Time Capsule is the backup system in Leopard, but if you use Carbon Copy Cloner, or any other decent 3rd party backup system, like EMC Retrospect, you can have similar functionality.

I think you'll get horror stories from all drive manufacturers, but most of the enclosures from LaCie, Formac etc have standard drives in by Maxtor or Samsung or WD, so there isn't much really to choose.
I've never had a problem with LaCie or the Western Digital MyBooks, but I'm sure you'll find people that have too. You might as well go for the best price, amazon usually has excellent prices on the externals.

Internally wise you'll get some very good quality HDs for give away prices today.
Scan are hard to beat price wise on internal HDs too.

Good luck with it

ikaruga

With music production work, I'd recommend a firewire external drive over a USB one. If you're using a lot of samples in your music then the faster the transfer rate from HD the better and also make sure the hard drive is at least 7200rpm as well.

Carbon Copy Cloner is the way forward if you're going to stick with Tiger (OS X 10.4.x). As mentioned, a very well respected piece of software.

I see few issues with upgrading to Leopard now though, unlike what isofa said. Even with music apps, the issues have pretty much been sorted and you're unlikely to see any conflicts there - of course depending on what package you're using. But Logic, Cubase, Ableton, Reason etc are all working fine under Leopard. Occasionally problems with drivers for soundcards may still exist.

isofa

As long as you are running the most up-to-date software you'll have few problems with Leopard.

However, part of the latest Adobe CS3 suite still isn't fully compatible, notably Acrobat Professional, patch due soon. CS2 has some problems. Versions of FileMaker below 9 haven't been certified, and 8.5 was a current version only 6 months ago. So beware!