Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/09/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Cool... Will On Sep 6, 2007, at 8:40 PM, 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