Where's the "Any" key? New Tech Support Thread

[coldforge]

I upgraded to Snow Leopard. It breaks most SIMBL plugins and iStat Menus, but everythin else is pretty much the same.

[diesel_powered]

Sweet. Do you know if it breaks the iStat server/iPhone app combo?

[coldforge]

It does not.

[diesel_powered]

Excellent. Excellent. Thanks for the info.

[girl]

I upgraded too. Things open faster. I haven't had any problems yet.

[diesel_powered]

Okie, sold. All I really care about is Ableton, CS2 (that's right, I kick it old school), and Lightroom. I think it's kinda funny that they broke Aperture with this update, though.

[donblood]

You might want to verify that Ableton's working.  Apple specifically warned musicians to hold off on upgrading.

[donblood]

(This is likely due to hardware compatibility, but still, best not to fuck around.)

[diesel_powered]

Hmm. MOTU says all their hardware is compatible with a driver update, but everything is far less clear with Ableton. Doubly so since I'm two versions behind. I'll probably try it out on my mini first and then see where that takes me.

[diesel_powered]

So do higher capacity drives make more noise than low capacity drives? I switched all my video to a 1.5TB Seagate recently and sometimes it makes some distressingly loud noises. They're not the kind of rhythmic sounds you'd expect from a failing drive, but Im worried. Also, is there any favored software for diagnosing something like this?

[elpollodiablo]

Can someone suggest a quality external HDD, preferably for less than $100, that won't die within a year?

[davy]

My standard Western Digital 150G has been going for a couple years now.

[YojimboMonkey]

spindle-based HDDs = moving parts, and there is a small but significant percentage that will fail simply because of that.  Seems like every HDD mfg ends up having bad batches, there have been times in the past when I've recommended one over another just because I'd seen so many fail recently but then over the course of a year or 2 it'll swing back the other way. 

Seems like solid-state drives would have a lower chance of failure but they are not down to your price range yet I believe and also the capacity will be smaller.  So when you're getting a HDD, whether you will be putting in the computer or in an external enclosure, you're assuming a risk of failure. 

As far as the external enclosure goes, look for something built well.  If you're going to be carrying it around, remove all the cables from it before chucking it in your hipster messenger bag because a cable in the interface will break it loose from the board when things shift around.  And do your best to not jostle it while it's on because again, moving parts, you jar that thing while it's spinning and you are going to cause damage to a platter.

So do higher capacity drives make more noise than low capacity drives? I switched all my video to a 1.5TB Seagate recently and sometimes it makes some distressingly loud noises. They're not the kind of rhythmic sounds you'd expect from a failing drive, but Im worried. Also, is there any favored software for diagnosing something like this?

I don't know about higher-capacity drives but higher-speed drives will.  Also there have been complaints in the past that Seagate drives tend to be loud. 

[Ignatius]

So if you were cheap and you just bought a case and an internal drive, you couldn't count on its durability, right?

[diesel_powered]

Well I mean... in my experience, the branded external drives are just that. The Seagates are an internal Seagate in a fancy branded case. Sometimes certain cases will have more reliable interface chipsets than others, though. I'd just stick to a name-brand drive from a well-known company. In my experience LaCie tends to be a grab bag, I've had ones that had Maxtor drives and another that uses Western Digital, so I'd probably just buy one from a known and reputable drive manufacturer.

In my experience, the key with mechanical drives is to work in pairs. I've got my mission-critical work shit in a mirrored RAID box from Newertech and with those, mechanical failure is pretty much a non-issue as the odds of both drives failing at the same time are pretty slim. I am, however, too cheap to buy RAID boxes for iTunes and TV. (Thanks for the info, Jim.)

I opted for a solid-state drive in my new laptop and have been pretty happy with it. Boot time is wicked fast, etc. I'd definitely recommend one as a system drive. However, according to the guy I talked to at the store (store that sells Macs to professionals mostly, not an Apple Store) the solid-state drives are supposed wear out as well, causing your capacity to shrink as the various areas of the drive get used up. Has anybody else heard this?

[coldforge]

You can't ever count on a drive's durability. Any drive is going to have about a 3% chance of failing in the first year. Any data that you care about, you need to have multiple copies of. Luckily, hard drives are hella cheap, so you buy two of them. You can buy a cheap 2-slot RAID, or you can just use one drive and then mirror it every couple of weeks with a copy that you keep in a drawer.

[coldforge]

Well I mean... in my experience, the branded external drives are just that. The Seagates are an internal Seagate in a fancy branded case. Sometimes certain cases will have more reliable interface chipsets than others, though. I'd just stick to a name-brand drive from a well-known company. In my experience LaCie tends to be a grab bag, I've had ones that had Maxtor drives and another that uses Western Digital, so I'd probably just buy one from a known and reputable drive manufacturer.

In my experience, the key with mechanical drives is to work in pairs. I've got my mission-critical work shit in a mirrored RAID box from Newertech and with those, mechanical failure is pretty much a non-issue as the odds of both drives failing at the same time are pretty slim. I am, however, too cheap to buy RAID boxes for iTunes and TV. (Thanks for the info, Jim.)

I opted for a solid-state drive in my new laptop and have been pretty happy with it. Boot time is wicked fast, etc. I'd definitely recommend one as a system drive. However, according to the guy I talked to at the store (store that sells Macs to professionals mostly, not an Apple Store) the solid-state drives are supposed wear out as well, causing your capacity to shrink as the various areas of the drive get used up. Has anybody else heard this?

Yer man has no idea what he's talking about. That said, SSDs are hella expensive still, and what's probably worse, if they die they're much harder to recover data from.

[diesel_powered]

Not surprising. This is also the place that tried to discourage me from going for the SSD because they claimed it wouldn't improve performance. At least their customer service is good.

[donblood]

Does anybuggy know how to remove single entries from Firefox's history / wicked awesome toolbar?  There are a few things I'm sick of seeing in purple or popping to the top of my URL bar.

[coldforge]

In my History view in Firefox, I can right click on any entry and say 'delete this page'. Is that not what you want?

[Ignatius]

When I delete the most recent instance of a website I go to often in the manner cf suggested, it will no longer show up automatically when I type stuff in the url bar.

[donblood]

For some reason I have AWESOME BAR and purple links for stuff I haven't clicked since before my history threshold.  I might just start over.

[diesel_powered]

Anybody know why OSX keeps resetting my preferences to block incoming connections to Vuze? Anybody know how I can permanently reset it to accept incoming connections again?

[Greg Nog]

In Safari 4, is there a way to make it so that links I've followed are a different color from links I haven't?

[coldforge]

They already should be. Unless the website you're using specifically doesn't have different colors for regular and followed links, there must be something else interfering with your styling.