Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/09/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> Wowser! And I thought my new iMac with 4GB RAM and one little hard drive was fast. I give you 6 months before you try to speed it up ;-) Phil > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information