Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/09/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Brian, you have me drooling with envy!!! Nathan Brian Reid wrote: > This is utterly off topic, but I'm the barkeep here and I don't rant > very often. > I just finished some risky modifications to a brand-new computer and I > am utterly delighted. I suspect that what I have to say here is of > interest only to performance freaks and computer engineers. > > My daughter had a summer job working at Apple, and as a (part-time) > employee she was entitled to buy a small number of things at > significant discounts, and, further, she is explicitly allowed to buy > them for relatives. So I gave her some money to buy me a Mac Pro with > the maximum processor power that the law allows, one 500GB disk, and > enough memory to be bootable. Since I already had a working computer, > I felt free to dissect it and make changes. > > I found some certified Mac Pro memory for $100/GB in 2GB parts and > filled all 8 memory bays: 16GB of PC3500 RAM. The 2GB parts are > dropping in price because the 4GB parts are starting to ship (at > $600/GB; no thank you!). > > I also got my hands on the new Mac Pro RAID card, and > 3x750GB/eSATA/7200RPM disks. I built a 3-disk RAID 5 array out of it, > and benchmarked it to drool over how fast it is. > > So far this is just hardware diddling. Now came the scary part. I put > my home directory on the RAID. I didn't want to risk making the whole > system run on the RAID, so boot and system functions still run on > Disk0, which is standalone. > > The Unix sysadmin in me wanted just to make /Users/reid be a symlink, > but I have enough scars and wounds from Mac OS that I knew it couldn't > be that simple. A quick remedial reading of the Netinfo Manager > "documentation" gave me the courage to go muck with that; changing the > Netinfo resource for the home directory for user "reid" from > /Users/reid to /Volumes/HindolvestonRAID/reid" did the trick. I put in > the symlink, too, as an act that is partly superstition and partly > "can't hurt; might help". > > Shut down, restart, move all of my files to it with Retrospect, > restart again just for good measure, and log on. > > Zooooooooooom. I've never experienced anything like it. You > doubleclick a big klunky application like Dreamweaver or Illustrator > or InDesign and it comes up before you finish blinking. The RAID card > tickles all of the disks, so there's a lot of very quiet disk noise > for a fraction of a second while these applications are launching. > Safari launches in an unmeasurably short interval. Photoshop launches > in about 4.5 seconds and opens a new image in about 0.1 second. > Lightroom launches in 3 seconds. > > I think I can learn to live with this performance. I have to decide > whether I'm going to be totally anal and do Retrospect backups of the > RAID 5 to protect against fire and earthquake and other catastrophes. > > Brian Reid > giddy with power > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > -- Nathan Wajsman Almere, The Netherlands *Opportunistic Image Acquisition* General photography: http://www.frozenlight.eu http://www.nathanfoto.com http://www.greatpix.eu Picture-A-Week: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws Seville: http://www.frozenlight.eu/fotosevilla Stock photography: http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=wajsman http://myloupe.com/home/found_photographer.php?photographer=507 Prints for sale: http://www.photodeluge.com Blog: http://www.fotocycle.dk/blog SUPPORT FREEDOM OF SPEECH, BUY DANISH PRODUCTS!