[solstace]

Hi everyone!

Random enquiry but here goes anyway...

I have an iMac G4 (1.25GHz 17" model) that still has the stock 80Gb internal drive fitted. I believe this drive is nearing the end of its useful life, and certainly it's too small. I've set up a bootable external Firewire hard drive (a Lacie BigDisk 500Gb model, 2x250 IDE drives in RAID I think to make up the 500Gb) and have been using this to store system and media files - mostly so that I can use Time Machine to easily back up the whole shebang to another 500Gb USB 2.0 drive. Happy days.

After running it this way the system has become more stable and less "laggy" - but I'm not sure I'm getting the highest disk performance I could/should be. As it is, I need another 500Gb drive anyway so I can have three copies (one working, one on-site backup and one off-site backup) of my data. So what I'm wondering is, could I get faster performance from this machine by replacing the internal drive with a 500Gb drive?

I'd also think about upgrading RAM, replacing the noisy fan and giving it a good clean while I've got the lid off, but it's an elderly machine and already runs with 768Mb RAM. With iTunes and EyeTV being its primary applications (it's a TV/Music player) running Leopard I don't know it's worth spending more money on than simply ensuring my data is secure...

Thoughts anyone?

[Taskiss]

It's a 6 year old machine, right? My personal opinion is, keep this one running on whatever shoestring you can and save your cash for a new one.

This system is the cutsie one, right?



You can probably save a bit and sell this one on e-bay or something. Mac's have incredible resale value and I'm guessing you can do pretty good with it. I googled e-bay and came up with one for sale at $550 so you're halfway to a new iMac if you can sell yours for a similar amount.

[TheLump]

ok, regarding the prices...i gotta know....

why are the imacs selling for retarded amounts of cash when you can get an emac (same thing but with a crt) for 200 tops?

[curiousuburb]

Unless you're capturing to disk and noticing dropped frames, or the internal disk is almost full ( <10% free space) with low RAM and tons of consequent swapfile paging, I doubt HDD speed/capacity is what makes it seem 'laggy'.

How much RAM have you got in it? How much free space on the drive?

[curiousuburb]

Originally Posted by TheLump ok, regarding the prices...i gotta know.... why are the imacs selling for retarded amounts of cash when you can get an emac (same thing but with a crt) for 200 tops?

Because eMac has a CRT (screen burn in, flicker, etc), and the desklamp iMac is beoootiful industrial design worthy of more cash?

[TheLump]

i've noticed far more imacs with dead screens than emacs with burn in screens.

actually.....today was the first time i've seen an emac on ebay with burn in. guy also wanted a fortune for them too....

staring at one right now..... g4 1.25ghz, 512mb ram, 120gb hdd, 99 and 40 shipping. oh if i had the cash to spare today......

[solstace]

Originally Posted by curiousuburb How much RAM have you got in it? How much free space on the drive?

Yes, it's the Anglepoise/"Cute" system referred previously.

It has 768Mb RAM (rarely full, according to Activity Monitor) and at least 100Gb free on the current system drive.

[curiousuburb]

Originally Posted by solstace Yes, it's the Anglepoise/"Cute" system referred previously. It has 768Mb RAM (rarely full, according to Activity Monitor) and at least 100Gb free on the current system drive.

Less than 1 Gig RAM and you're running Leopard?

Drives aren't your problem.
Lack of RAM is your problem.

Leopard 'needs' at least 1 GB just to be comfy... before you start adding to the load with QT cache / Safari leaks / codec overhead. That there will likely account for the lagginess you report.

If you've got a decent TM backup strategy (with multiple drives in multiple locations to tick the dataparanoia checkbox), you're playing safe on the storage front.

But I'm confused... you implied you boot via FW from your external 500 GB and use it for all system and media... do you use the internal 80GB for anything?

Why not use the internal 80 for System and basic use... and keep the 500 purely for media files (with a 2nd bootable partition if req'd)?

By splitting system and media (with cloned system in 2nd partition), you preserve a bootable clone to recover system with, and your media drive doesn't get written to excessively with spotlight metadata or endless cache files (preserving larger contiguous blocks for higher performance media capture).

OS X automagically defrags files over 20MB, but this takes RAM and drive space overhead, and it would seem if you're below the comfy threshold of RAM you'd want to maximize performance. Moving daily System out of the Media Capture drive might give you better performance in each.