[DM-MUG] Mac Pro upgrades—hard drive formatting

Sat Nov 28 23:22:12 CST 2009

Assuming you're capable of running snow leopard, I'll have to assume you 
also are using an intel mac.  For the first question about what format 
to use for the new drive, do you ever plan on physically taking the 
drive out of the Mac Pro and installing it into an older Mac?  If not, 
then there is no reason to worry about it.  The GPT partition table 
format allows you more flexibility with resizing partitions in the 
future, and is a standard supported by Intel when an Intel device goes 
searching for a partition to boot.

For additional hard drives you wish to share, technically the filesystem 
should not matter.  If the hard drive is going to stay connected to only 
that one computer, then any filesystem that computer can read/write can 
be used.  All the windows computers on the network simply ask the Mac 
computer if it would mind sending the file to them.  The Mac will read 
the file off the hard drive and send it over TCP/IP to the windows 
computer using a protocol that was developed by Microsoft for 
filesharing between windows computers (SMB).  Luckily, some geeks got 
together and reverse-engineered that protocol to come up with a package 
for linux systems called 'Samba', which is probably also what Mac OS X 
uses to communicate with windows PCs.  Basically, though, this means 
that the other computer doesn't have to know how to read or write to the 
filesystem that is shared.  It only has to know how to talk to that 
hosting computer over the network, and the hosting computer does all the 
reading and writing itself.

If you are using some sort of portable or external hard drive, then you 
may want to use the FAT32 file system, though, since just about any 
computer will know how to use it.  That way if you are taking your 
thumbdrive, or an external USB hard drive from one computer to the 
other, then they will all know how to handle it.

> This topic is a spin off from the Snow Leopard topic from last week.
>
> I was thinking I was safe with the disk space until Jon pointed it 
> out. I went by Fry's Electronics, which is like the 2 story, ultimate 
> electronics mega super store chain only in the Western part of the US, 
> the size of the Wells Fargo Arena or the Iowa Cubs Stadium. They 
> didn't have any 750G internal hdd on the shelf, I was annoyed and 
> asked. Found out it's because they were in lock up, and the 
> salesperson gave me some paperwork, I go up to the check out counter 
> and find out it's on special for $50. which is considerably cheaper 
> than the website indicated. I was pleased.
>
> My question is pretty simple: When I use Disk Utility to format the 
> drive, according to lowendmac.com I should format it as APM in case I 
> want any pre-intel macs to be able to recognize the harddrive? I want 
> to make sure I format it correctly so I don't find out the hard way if 
> the situation ever presents itself.
>
> Under Disk Utility >>> Restore
> This is where I can 'clone' my harddrive correct? Does my boot drive 
> absolutely NEED to be in Bay 1? Or can I 'clone' the drive to the new, 
> larger drive in Bay 4 and designate that drive (APM) as my boot drive? 
> If I 'clone' it I think the drive is GPT, so am I stuck with GPT when 
> cloned? Is there a workaround? Hope all I'm asking makes sense.
>
> Lastly, isn't there a way to share the secondary drives? I have a 
> drive in Bay 3 partitioned and formatted as FAT32 since that was 
> supposed to be the format both Mac and PC can read/write. I have never 
> been able to share it, and thought maybe someone could enlighten me? 
> Windows can access the default startup SATA drive, but never has been 
> able to 'see' the secondary drive in Bay 3.
>
> Thanks in advance!
> -A.
>
> --- On *Wed, 11/25/09, Jon Thompson /<jthompson-lists at dmevolve.com>/* 
> wrote:
>
> From: Jon Thompson <jthompson-lists at dmevolve.com>
> Subject: Re: [DM-MUG] Update RE: Pokey Snow Leopard
> To: "Des Moines Mac Users Group" <dmmug at dmmug.org>
> Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 8:25 AM
>
> Anastasia,
> On thing I pointed out last night was that hard drives should not be 
> more than 90% full. If your hard drive is, _or ever has been_, more 
> than 90% full, you need to use Carbon Copy Cloner, Disk Utility, or 
> SuperDuper to clone your drive to a bigger drive.
> Once you get past that 90% threshold, you _must_ do that to maintain 
> stability in your Mac. Clearing off space doesn't remedy the 
> fragmenting issues that result.
> -- 
> Jon Thompson
> Evolve
> www.dmevolve.com <http://www.dmevolve.com>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:13 AM, AB <anastasia_prittee at yahoo.com 
> </mc/compose?to=anastasia_prittee at yahoo.com>> wrote:
> I think I'm going to have to call Apple to see if they an help 
> troubleshoot Aperture, otherwise I may have to do an exchange at the 
> Apple store or see if they can credit a portion for the full version 
> instead of the upgrade.
>
> Spaces and Expose seemed to work better after I did a hard shut down 
> over night. I suspect the lagging Snow Leopard and choppy Spaces and 
> Expose lead back to iTunes bogging down the system. Adding new 
> internal SATA drive and more RAM would likely be a necessary route to 
> reap the full performance benefits of using both at the same time. I 
> have more than adequate requirements, but my iTunes library consumes 
> the entire partition of half of a 750 GB secondary internal SATA 
> drive. I've been wanting to further upgrade the RAM in the Mac Pro 
> from 3G RAM. I'm thinking I'll ensure it with overkill with a pair of 
> 4G sticks from Crucial.
>
> I'll send a brief outline in another message of how one can configure 
> "Spaces" based on function. Basically as workflow management.
>
> Thanks, Victoria for the info about Tidbits Take Control re: 
> Thanksgiving Turkey. I'm going to approach it with a sense of 
> adventure! Now it may be I have more last minute company, so this has 
> the potential to turn out to be quite a series of misadventures with 
> the turkey. Maybe I will prep it the night before to do it properly.
>
> -A.
>
> --- On *Tue, 11/24/09, Victoria L. Herring /<VLH at HerringLaw.com>/* wrote:
>
> From: Victoria L. Herring <VLH at HerringLaw.com>
> Subject: Re: [DM-MUG] Pokey Snow Leopard
> To: "Des Moines Mac Users Group" <dmmug at dmmug.org 
> </mc/compose?to=dmmug at dmmug.org>>
> Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 12:52 AM
>
> I'm using Aperture 2+ on three SL machines just fine, so it's not
> that = and if you are getting that message ref compatibility, there's
> something else going on.  I don't use Spaces/Expose so can't comment
> on the rest but if you get this worked out I'd love to have you
> explain how Spaces/Expose work for you since I want to use them but
> haven't
>
> -- 
> Victoria L. Herring, Des Moines, Iowa. Blogs:
> http://blog.JourneyZing.com  [photography];
> http://www.herringlaw.com  [lawfirm];
> http://victorialherring.typepad.com/serendipity/  [personal];
> Twitter: VictoriaJZ
>
>
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