Hard Drive Configuration, How should I set up 2 Hard Drives? Options

[Lotus17]

I plan on buying one of the new Seagate NL35 hard drives for my PowerMac G5. The model I want is a 250GB, SATA, 16MB Cache. Here are a few questions.

1) Which hard drive should I make my main hard drive? The 160GB stock or the 250GB Seagate.

2) I should load my programs, samples, and other instruments onto my main hard drive, and use the second hard drive as purely recording space?

3) Is it okay to put other files on my recording drive? I have an extensive music library and was curious which drive would be best to put that library on.

4) My last question pertains to my current external hard drive. I have an external enclosure with the Oxford 922 chip via FW800. The drive itself is a Seagate 160GB, ATA100, 8MB Cache drive. Whenever I run Logic and start recording, there is up to a 5 second delay from when I click the record button to when the program recognizes that it is going to record. It is a little tedious but records flawlessly after that little delay. What could be some problems that I should look into? Thanks!

[lepetitmartien]

1/ the 160 stock, keep system and apps on it. One Tiny bit you can do is to partition it First partition a small one for virtual memory (3-5 GB depends of how much RAM you have), Second one for the rest (system, apps, plug ins, docs the pics of your cat whatever but not audio !)

2/ you can't put your apps elsewhere than you system drive, it's a unix thing. Install everything on the system HD, under an admin account (not the first one, create another one, keep the first one as safety belt) and work your music on this account. In case of problem you'll have all your apps available on any user you create without fuss.

USE journaling on this drive. Save if you app editor says not too, but it can save you system and HD content…

3/ You can put anything you want on the second HD, even a back up system. check the second drive has checked (in information) "don't care about permissions on this HD" (the sentence should be something like that, bottom of the information window)

Use journaling on this drive save if it's slows you down really. it's a safety belt.

4/ Isn't the drive asleep? It may be the reason. Else I don't see why. Check it's permissions (should be as stated above) too.

Now there are back up strategies to think of too, but as you have 3 drives, it should be simple

[Lotus17]

Lepetitmartien, how do I turn my hard drive off from sleep? Where would the settings be located? Could it be jumpers on the drive? Firmware? I dunno where to look to find it. I looked under disk utilities and tried searching Google for results, but I was getting too many hits that were really not neccesary. Thanks Lepetitmartien! You rock!

[lepetitmartien]

I do the best I can, if I was a logic/cubase/DP/PT/GB guru too, it'd be way better too (but fortunately, we have GREAT members)

The only place is in the energy saving system preferences, under "suspend" you have a checkbox to suspend HDs.

There was also something in the options when you format in the apple disk utility but I can't check back if it's there (in my case it'd be a good way to lost data… I don't know if it's still around.

About the options accessible thru jumpers on the drive, usually, they don't work on mac (save size limits), but you can always try!

I know some members are having a hard time in order to stop HD to go to sleep on some model, but that's the only solution we have at the moment.

[dixiechicken]

Lotus17!

Try this for changing suspend/sleep times -

On my new PM-G5 sleep-time for my harddrives was set to ten minutes.
This setting is not accessible through the controlpanel.

You must first use the "Netinfo Manager.app" application in the Utilities-folder
to activate your root-account.

After this:
1) Open the Terminal application.
2) At the promt - type su and hit enter
3) Type your "REAL" root/superuser password and hit enter
4) Type pmset -a disksleep 120 and hit enter

Now your harddrives wont go to sleep until 2 hours have passed by.
If you type 0 instead they should NEVER go to sleep.

You can change this value any time you wish. If you start "About this computer" in the Apple-menu,
and klick the "More info"-button and skroll down and select "Power" in the left pane,
you should see the new sleep-time value for your harddrives.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

This post has been edited by dixiechicken: Wed 5 Apr 2006, 13:54

[Lotus17]

Hmmm, Dixiechicken... I don't know what you mean by my "REAL" root/superuser password... I am trying to think my hardest about that... but I don't know what you mean. Thanks for the help. If you can get back to me and help me out, that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

EDIT: I figured out how to get my password. ^_^ Lets hope i dont screw up my system...

This post has been edited by Lotus17: Wed 5 Apr 2006, 16:28

[lepetitmartien]

you should be able to do that without netinfo and not bothering about Root.

from an Admin user account, in the terminal type

sudo pmset -a disksleep 120

He should prompt for your admin password. Et voilà !
(not tested but should work)

enabling the Root Account is a bad security idea. "sudo" helps making Root operations while keeping things low profile.

[dixiechicken]

Lotus17!

Hmmm, Dixiechicken... I don't know what you mean by my "REAL" root/superuser password... I am trying to think my hardest about that... but I don't know what you mean. Thanks for the help. If you can get back to me and help me out, that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I meant the password you decide to use when you activate your root account - with NettInfo.app.


Lepetitmartien:s point about security risk is certainly valid to some degree.

Most Linux/unix distros always have the root account activated - since thats the admin that actually installs the os on the computer.
Although all distros also have the strongest urgings to create a normal user account and use this for daily tasks and only use the root account for configuring your system.
IF you activate the root-account choose a safe password.
(somthing like: YWXZphc_913-xdwQ) - a mixture of letters,number an other chars

Havent tested his "sudo" suggestion myself - but it should work.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[Lotus17]

So, I did activate my root root password... how much danger am I in and what damage can happen, and can it be permanemt damage? I plan on formatting my computer in like 2 months anyway, so will that unactivate the SU account?

[lepetitmartien]

You can deactivate the Root account by the same netinfo operation.

The problem with Root, is it's the Super-Admin, it can really Do Everything. So it's a bad idea to use it while connected on the net for example. Or to have it activated in Netinfo (so that someone could connect as Root as this time there's a password to crack).

No need to be paranoid, though there are security issues at bay most people don't understand plainly. My main concern is more the bad manipulation as Root.

In 99,9% of root-needed situations, "sudo" does the trick neatly, eliminating the network/root security issues.

I think that you can activate root, if you deactivate root right after the operation, it'll be all right.