Mac, PC, RAID5

(Moderator Note: split from this thread )

SPB: I bow to your superior capabilities. Fact is, 'most' users can go into PC World or CompUSA and buy all the bits they need to build a PC to run Microsoft's Windows O/S. Few would even contemplate building a LINUX or MAC machine and stand much chance of editing their first photo within a reasonable time.

I do admit to a certain bias towards Microsoft products. They've made me a lot of money over the years as I build, sell, and maintain servers and workstations based on their products. That said, I only deal seriously with corporate users who know better than to download and try freeware from the 'net because they appreciate the damage that their business can suffer. None of my customers however is in the graphics business.[/url]

actaully the father of one of our brides showed me his linux box.
it's a killer system built totally of off the shelf components, with redhat....he gave up on ms due to viruses and spyware maladies (that can't be good for anybodies business except MS/pc technitions) and he swears he'll never go back..he was no expert when he started, and claims the set up was no harder than any other system he's tried. He hasn't tried Mac.
I've lost no productivity due to systems problems with osx and when your All in one (emac, imac, or laptop) starts with the best components, the most stable and secure operating system in the world, all you need to do is take it out of the box, (I added more ram-off the shelf from most big chains) and plug it in to an outlet and an ethernet cable, and you can set up a network, and a .mac account, sync all your data across multiple machines, build a web page, and start editing photos in the same time it takes windoze to install(never mind loading software and drivers)...(ps..damn near everything works right out of the box)...
my only complaint? pefs!!!! crw's work fine.

Mannesty,

When you go buy all the bits to build a computer, you do not think about the operating system. It is irrelevant - you build your computer. The operating system is installed afterwards.

It does not matter what system you have Linux/Windows and Mac are all dead easy to install and they all are aware of things like PCI cards, DVD and so on.

Also open source is not only restricted to Linux. There are some exceedingly good packages for Mac and increasingly there are such for windows also.

I did not say everything software and hardware will work. This is why I bought Extensis Portfolio and File Juicer - one shareware and the other commercial. These handle .pef files perfectly and the newer Pentax cameras are being bundled with Silkypix which is great software.

I don't bother messing with plists even though I use heavily mySQL and the terminal a lot for all my databases - a habit picked up from Linux. That is what I love about Mac, you can exist with one foot in the GUI and the other in the terminal. Both have their place. And you can do exactly the same in Windows and Linux.

Is not the real problem that Pentax just have too many models and each one is not live for long before being replaced. I have had my DL since January 2006, it is already one model behind (DL2) and replaced by the new K100/110 and I don't understand why the format is made slightly different from model to model - even if it is just in the header file. In that case it is better to stick with JPG

By the way manesty...I know you're very smart and good at what you do....I can't really argue about the latest versions of windoze and the latest hardware.....I haven't touched a Microsoft product since windoze me, and a 233mhz pentium with mmx.....But it was the constant down time, software conflicts and blue screen of death that put me off forever. (my belief was that wiring a cell phone to an electric shock collar and programming it to go off whenever my 'puter crashed, wrapping that around Bill Gates' neck would be the only thing that could sway me to buy another ms product).
my macbook can run windows...if I obtain a copy of the operating system, I could choose to boot into iether system, but I can't imagine ever wanting to.
bout the best testiment I can offer for the mac is this:
I have learning disabilities. In school I never got past gr8. I failed gr 9 intro to computers 4 times. Child and Family services felt my grades were so bad they dumped me off on a street corner in Toronto (bout a thousand miles from my hometown of Kenora Ont), where I was homeless for nearly two years. I can pick up a camera, ask for $1400.00 for a wedding and get it.
I do all my work on macs.
never opened the manual.
try that with windoze.

Don,

I don't know so much about the smart bit . . . after all, I'm not using a mac

Your prowess in your chosen field of photography is obviously a talented gift that you have and good luck to you. I am not in the photographic/imaging business, a mere amateur, but an enthusiastic one.

Let me put the record straight a little. I do not, and never have, knocked the later Apple products. I have tried to use one, I just don't feel comfortable with them. I also worked for many years on UNIX based systems (before LINUX was even heard of). I know Windows very well . . . and I know mostly what is good and bad about it. I also know that I am comfortable with its limitations and quirks. Apple products over the years have carved a name for themselves in the graphics industry, but that's about it as far as I know. It is unlikely that you will find a Mac or Linux box running your local supermarkets cash registers, for example, not if they are a big chain anyway. Well, actually, you might find a Linux box in some of them nowadays.

Windows has come a long way it seems from your last encounter, and from your CPU description, I'd guess you were using version 3.x or possibly 95, 98 at a push. As long as reasonable quality hardware is used, the BSOD is almost unheard of nowadays with Windows XP. I have to use the professional flavour of XP because I always work in a domain environment.

I make my living out of selling Microsoft products, therefore I need to use Microsoft products, no matter what. I am never likely to buy a mac anything for that one reason alone.

Windows XP is a very stable operating system, it's some of the trash software that gets loaded onto it that causes it to be unstable. Some of it from Microsoft, I agree, but no where near all.

As for Microsoft products vulnerability to hackers, viruses et al, there are more 'bums on seats' sitting in front of a Windows PC screen than there are any other OS. If the mac OS or UNIX in its various guises was as popular (server applications excepted), they would be equally popular targets for those who derive some warped pleasure or financial gain from disrupting commerce and industry generally, of that I am certain.

A true short story, entirely related to this issue.

I have just returned to UK from Spain where I took several hundred wildlife photo's of bugs and things tiny. Last Sunday, I turned my home built PC on to find it would not boot. Further intensive investigation, much to the annoyance of my wife, showed the C: drive (system drive) to be there and working as far as I could tell at that stage. . . but it was completely empty. I had backed up my important stuff to tape only a few days before but nevertheless, I lost several hundred photo's which p**s*d me of more than a little and I had no time to source a new disk and rebuild it so it got shelved for the time being.

I hurriedly reinstalled my decommissioned laptop for my wife to use until I go back, then left on Friday with the failed C: drive.

I got the failed drive (Maxtor 160Gb SATA) back to UK where I have more equipment, software, and time to deal with this kind of problem and in a few hours, with the aid of R-Studio (brilliant piece of software), I recovered all my lost photo's plus some other files I had forgotten about.

It turns out that the disk has a number of badly failed sectors, mostly to do with the Master Boot Record (MBR) and other fairly critical areas that caused it not to boot. . . and guess what, it's just out of warranty.

Now there is no OS that I know of that can withstand a catastrophic hardware failure such as this was unless the system drive is a fault tolerant RAID array which is not really appropriate for a home Windows/Mac/Linux box (well I thought not, I'm beginning to know better). I managed to get the data recovered very quickly on my Windows PC, I'm not so sure I could have recovered my data so easily if I were using any other OS.

I know you weren't knocking Apple. (it was me bashing windoze...lol)...
but truthfully...make your next laptop a macbook pro, partition the Hd and infect one partition with Windoze and use mac osx on the other. (using Bootcamp u can boot into windoze for work, and osx for your photography and everything else (you can also run parallelles and switch between os's as easily as switching between windows (osx in one window and windows in the other!) the macbooks (running windoze)have actually been out performing similarly equipped windoze only, laptops in testing...
the ilife suite and pse4 will astound you. the automator program and applescript will have you spending less tim in front ot the pc and way more time to take photos. And no they're not paying me, but I wish they would.
ps, setting up a raid is a simple 2 click procsess. I got three machines running with a terabyte of storage, with each machine bootable off an external backup drive...if one drive failes, I reboot the machine, and it runs off the external backup till I get a replacement drive...total downtime 1 mins, while the computer reboots. loss data - none.

Don,

Thanks for your insight. RAID is not natively available within Windows desktop OS's, only Windows Server OS's. It can of course be installed by the inclusion of a suitable RAID controller (Adaptec preferred), and booting from that. I had actually considered reloading my broken PC with Windows 2003 server and using software RAID for that very reason. Hardware based RAID is always better (read faster) but the emergency recovery systems I use often don't support the RAID controller. Losing the system drive is a real pain in any flavour of Windows, or any other OS for that matter.

I plan to retire to Spain very soon (mid September if my house sale proceeds as planned), I might well look at a Mac machine then. Trouble is, I've worked with Microsoft software since day 1 and moving to another OS, plus the change in applications, is a bit daunting to say the least. Not to mention the cost. I guess I'll have to sell some of my Pentax gear to fund it

Thanks for the education.

Kind regards,

now don't go doing anything hasty...check out the mac mini.....
set up as a media server, attached to your tv( with an adaptor) and voila! dvds, movies, iphoto and Itunes, web surfing all with a remote and easy to use Front Row software! and networked to your windows system ( a kvm switch for use with your pc monitor and keyboard)....at a price that won't force you to sell off any Pentax Gear....And like I said the new intel macs run windows....you can keep you old programs, Apple did this right and MS is reeling from from a nasty uppercut...watch how many people switch in the next 20 months..you'll see what I mean....

Or... (just to throw a spanner in the works ) get a RAID5 server

Insight UK do the Buffalo Terastation for not a great deal of money.
http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=BUF1TBWLR
4 x 250Gb HDDs in a little box, you can config to RAID 5 (that's more space effective than mirrored BTW) giving you around 750Gb of network attached storage. Link to a Gigabit Ethernet hub and run your PCs and Macs off it

Then the PCs can pop, the HDs can die, and you've still got the photos on the server.

(I have a Quasar server in RAID5 doing just that, but it's more than the Buffalo)

PS: We're getting a little off-topic here... might have to splice this thread into a new one

Matt

I suppose I ought to tell the whole story now, though I'm ashamed to tell it as I tell all of my customers that I'm an IT professional

The machine that died on me has 6 x 160Gb Maxtor SATA drives in it. 3 of them configured as a RAID5 array and one as a hot spare. Belt and braces you'd think.

Trouble is, RAID only works to preserve data if the data is on it in the first place. Mine wasn't, which is why it caused me some grief

I did at least have a 250Gb external drive attached, on which I had a copy of most of my photo's.

In UK, 3 Windows servers are used to run my business. ALL of them have RAID5 + hot spare configurations and have tape backup systems.

Well we can all make mistakes . . . as long as we learn from them, that's OK with me ? At the end of the day, I suffered only inconvenience, no data was lost once I'd recovered the files from the dead drive . . . which goes in the bin today

BTW, for those interested who don't know about RAID arrays. RAID5 are fault tolerant configurations using a number of disk drives where the data is spread around all disks in the array. In plain and simple RAID5 configuration using a minimum of 3 disks your data is safe, even if a drive fails. To be really safe, a hot spare is needed as well, which is deployed automatically by the controller to take the place of the failed drive. In this configuration, you can have 2 drives fail and your data is still safe. Failed drives in RAID5 config must be replaced by drives having the same or larger capacity.

And for those who are paranoid about RAID5... get different batch numbers for each of the drives. RAID5 can only tolerate one drive dying, and if you get a set of drives all the same batch they can die together
Just a thought
Matt

Pause for thought:

Maybe we should transfer our digital images to film for safer storage

...and let the dust, fungus, and rot get at 'em?

Although I've not had to use it on my machines, I do have data recovery software that i've used to help a friend or three...I bought it in case a memory card gets corrupted...another interesting mac trick..
boot the machine while holding down the letter t and it fires up in "Target" mode which, if the machine is connected to another mac with a firewire cable, allows the "Target" mac to be recognized as a firewire disk drive.
this is a handy way to run disk recovery softare, or copy large amounts of data.

but the real issue for Manesty could be just a change in habit. He obviously has the skills, software, and hardware to recover from disaster...for many, those files would either be gone, or an expensive job to recover.

here's my $0.02:

try to get into the habit of downloading those files to hd, then burning a cd/dvd, rotate your memory cards, and then erase/format the card in your camera just before you use it( wouldn't it be nice to find that your pics were sitting ther on your other memory card, when your computer crashed?). I'm adding a new twist to my routine, the laptop allows me to back-up my files to my .mac account (remote server)when travelling. I consider my hd inside my computer to be Temporary workspace, and upon finishing a project, the files get archived....the hd in my machine is not my storage vault...