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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

New MAC User : Three questions

Greetings,

my first Mac should arrive end of the week. Now I have a basic question. I like the idea to have only monitors and keyboard/mouse/wacom in my office, hence would like to place the mac into the adjacent maschine room which would be round about 8 meters away.

1.
I ordered 10 meter cables for the monitors, but what about bluetooth? I have no experience with bluetooth. Can I use the keyboard and mouse over that distance with a stone wall inbetween?

2.
What about USB and Firewire connections, what maximum cable length can you use without need to boost the signal?

3.
Assuming bluetooth works as described in 1., it is my understanding that the macbook pro cann communicate with the mac pro via bluetooth, hence I can access data on the mac pro via my mac book. But waht about the DVD drive in my mac book? Can I use that to install software on the mac pro?

Thanks!
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Hi George

the FW specs says 5 meter, when coupling two together, a powered hub or repeater is required.
Even shorter with USB, about 1.5 m, as its much lesser voltage.

Does it makes sense?
personally, I doubt, as walking 2 x 8 m for inserting a CD, etc make you becoming a marathon men. Up to the olympics, bear!

BT is not made for heavy data transport, nor is USB. The faster lines are FW, S-ATA, and a 10-Gigabit-Ethernet. The slower device will alwith slowing down the faster one.
 
Hi Michael,

that was why I was hoping to use my Macbook for CD/DVD purposes to make installations or copies from the Mac Pro.

So if I understand you correct, the BT would not work on that distance with the obstacle of a wall inbetween? My dealer said there shoul dbe no problem with that, he claimed 15 meters would be the distance usable.

The reason for the Mac Pro in a seperate room is simply noise, when you do music, you do not want to have the sound of computer fans or harddrives in your ears at the same time.
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Hi Michael,

So if I understand you correct, the BT would not work on that distance with the obstacle of a wall inbetween? My dealer said there shoul dbe no problem with that, he claimed 15 meters would be the distance usable.

okay, I can see the noise problems, but BT is not made for big data transfer, as you've with big sound files. It's not a distance problem, but the bandwith of the protocoll.

So my suggestion would be FireWire-net, aka IP over FireWire.

Don't forget to give the FireWire-net a different IP, than for the router/web, therefore something like 10.0.0.2
 
I may not have been clear enough. I just need that keyboard/mouse/wacom to work on that distance. The latter posing a problem as it is USB.

Any ideas what I need to achieve 10 meter usb?
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
I may not have been clear enough. I just need that keyboard/mouse/wacom to work on that distance. The latter posing a problem as it is USB.

Any ideas what I need to achieve 10 meter usb?

George, you need active, aka powered USB-hubs at the maximal distance of the USB-spec.
The wacom here sucks 500 mA, which is at the top range of the USB-power. The keyboard requires 250 mA, only.

The longer the cable gets, the less power comes through.
I read the USB-info at wiki, it says 5m cablelenght, which is AFAIK to long for a 500 mA-device.
But you should be fine with 3 x 3 m, and 2 hubs.
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
1) Your bluetooth will work across the room, so 10 feet should be no issue.

2) I have two printers attached to my MacPro via 3 or 4 meter USB cables, no problems at all. Cannot speak to FW as my longest is 1 meter.

3) You can network the two machines across bluetooth, but probably better to use at least FW800 and best to use GigLan as they're going to be a lot faster and more reliable. Mac has support for both built-in, and you won't even need a GigLan hub if you use a crossover LAN cable. Don't know if the DVD drive sharing will work as I've never tried that. But why not get at least one optical drive in your MacPro? They're only a few bucks and save you a bunch of hassle...

Cheers,
 
Hey Jack :)

Thanks for that, that is kewl, I have my 11880 connected via ethernet anyways, the 3800 is USB.

I got an ethernet switch, so you are right, I just run another cat5 if the wireless should be dodgy.

Thanks!
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Hi Bear
I received the same Mac a few days ago, here the Temp is between 20 to 33 C° (when I forget to put the aircon on). The Mac Fan never started, they are very well cooled machines.
Mine is silencious as a dead man…
Maybe the BT would work on 10 meter, but I doubt if it has an Irish stone wall to get thru!

FW can be quite long provided that you get the right cable, you should check there:
http://www.touslescables.com/
http://www.abix.fr/cables-connectique,LI.html
Remember I'll come to Ireland soon… I can bring anything (well almost!)

I would have the Mac by me and the external HD drives away… or just shut them down when doing music…
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Nicolas, the fans are running, just at minimum speed and you cannot hear them :) You can load this utility and keep lots of stats available on your title bar, temps, CPU activity, Memory, Disks and temps: istat menu @ http://www.islayer.com/

Enjoy,
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Hi Jack
Ok, I agree, but the main importance thing is that one cannot hear the fans!

Unless Georg wants to make a studio for recording…

I have also to admit that my acouphens do cover a lot of little noises :-(

Thanks for the link, I use another one (meter menu) but I'll give a try to yours…
 
Yeah, the new Mac will serve the purpose as a recording monster as well as running photohsop, lightroom etc.

I just like the idea to ban all those boxes and external HD's from my main office and have it nice and quiet instead.

Then again, may be this latest Mac Pro ain't that noisy as I expect. I just saw a Mac last year in Germany, it was a G5 I think, but boy a hairblower could not be worse that loud this sucker was.
When I asked him whether his Mac is having chronic bronchitis or something he said this noise would be quite normal. LOLOL

Btw Jack, I did not go for the apple cinema display, but decided towards the NEC 3090 Spectraview instead and a smaller 24" Eizo HD2441W. Heck, I had to get a desk build that suits such a setup, but should be really nice. Desk arrived last friday, 2.65 meter long and 1.20 deep, made from toughened satin glas, hanging in a U-Channel that is screwed into the wall and standing on 4 slim stainless steel legs. LOVE IT! :)
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Georg

The desk sounds wunnurful -- congrats! Monitors are a personal choice, lots of good ones and what you do with them -- not brand -- is what counts in my book :)

PS: If you have a newer Mac Pro and can hear it, you probably have something set up incorrectly...

:D,
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Then again, may be this latest Mac Pro ain't that noisy as I expect. I just saw a Mac last year in Germany, it was a G5 I think, but boy a hairblower could not be worse that loud this sucker was.
When I asked him whether his Mac is having chronic bronchitis or something he said this noise would be quite normal. LOLOL

Nothing to see, some G5 are… yes noisy

Heck, I had to get a desk build that suits such a setup, but should be really nice. Desk arrived last friday, 2.65 meter long and 1.20 deep, made from toughened satin glas, hanging in a U-Channel that is screwed into the wall and standing on 4 slim stainless steel legs. LOVE IT! :)

We need a snap of it (if you remember how to snapshoot!) !!!
 
Georg

The desk sounds wunnurful -- congrats! Monitors are a personal choice, lots of good ones and what you do with them -- not brand -- is what counts in my book :)

PS: If you have a newer Mac Pro and can hear it, you probably have something set up incorrectly...

:D,

Thanks Jack, and yeaaaah, monitors are not an easy decision to make, at least in my book. I spoke to all of them on my shortlist, which was Quato, Nec and Eizo.

Boy am I glad I did not buy this bloody G5 he wanted to sell me last year, I think it was 2 month later that it completly broke down. Yup the Mac Pro is the latest version. Really exited about that. :) Will be a change for me as I am used to work on three monitors since 2001, but well, 3x ~19 Inch eye suckers and no where near the quality of a modern monitor.

I have six external harddrives at the moment, but I am wondering whether I ditch the older 250 Gig Lacie FW and Western Digital USB drives and only keep a few larger TB drives instead of having a lot of wall warts.

Nicolas, yup will make a snap when the Monitors arrived. Should be end of July, fingers crossed.
 
I have six external harddrives at the moment, but I am wondering whether I ditch the older 250 Gig Lacie FW and Western Digital USB drives and only keep a few larger TB drives instead of having a lot of wall warts.

Ah, choice choices, how recognisable.

I decided that for on-line storage a 4-drive NAS (NetGear ReadyNAS NV+) would reduce the cable clutter and still alow a lot of flexibility (incl. wireless laptop access) with reasonable speed (30 MB/s wired, wireless is obviously bandwidth limited). I run it in X-RAID mode, which allows extendible redundant storage (I know that's not the same as a backup) with hot-swappable Enterprise/RAID quality SATA drives of my choice. The NAS can be run from UPS power, which allows a graceful powerdown cycle by USB connection with power outages.

Backups can be made on physically separate (USB) storage units like Western Digital and LaCie (usually Maxtor drives inside), but they can be kept off-line off-power for most of the time which reduces wear, power/cooling requirements, and lightning/power surge risks.

Bart
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
I have six external harddrives at the moment, but I am wondering whether I ditch the older 250 Gig Lacie FW and Western Digital USB drives and only keep a few larger TB drives instead of having a lot of wall warts.

I got rid of all my small drives when I went Mac earlier this year. I transferred everything onto a few 1TB externals, and duped those for offsite, redundant back-up. Also put a pair of 1TB's in open bays in the Mac Pro and striped them for uber-fast reads and saves of my image files. However, my drives were filling up and I'm not really satisfied with a jumble of external boxes, so I just ordered one of the new FW800 DROBO units. Not as fast as true RAID 5 probably, but then it's just an external box for mass storage, so am thinking it will be fine. I really like the intelligent RAID 5 format and its capability to use my existing drives in a mix and match fashion. So my new set-up will be a pair of smaller drives striped in the Mac Pro for fast reads and saves on my current working files with all the historical images off on the DROBO, and then the DROBO backed up to a set of drives stored offsite.

For the box, OS and scratch: I know several folks that stripe a pair or more of drives for increased OS and scratch performance. I do not like striped arrays for my OS due to lower reliability, but was considering it for scratch. Issue here is I have 16 Gigs of RAM in my box so don't hit scratch very often in the first place even with my big files. But, Western Digital just released a new 300G SATA2 10,000 RPM Velociraptor that screams! (see barefeats: http://www.barefeats.com/hard103.html) A buddy ordered two for his older Mac Pro, one for OS and apps and one for scratch, and basically halved all his launch times and CS3 processing times. Biggest issue I have with them is they are not standard SATA connector location, so don't fit inside the slide-in bays. (There is a gizmo you can buy that allows you to mount a pair of 3.5 drives in the lower optical bay and utilizes the two additional spare SATA ports on the MB.) Other issue is they're pricey at $300 or $1/gig... Good news though is WD just announced a SATA bus location-compliant version that should be available in a few weeks. When those hit the market I may spring for a pair myself.

Lots you can do to these bad boys :)

Cheers,
 
LOVE IT!

Add a few WD Raptors and this should perform quite well!

Thanks Bart, I am checking on prices now.

Yes, shopping around is always a good idea. I got a better price for a partly filled (2 drives) unit than for an empty one (at the same local supplier)!! Also, should you decide to get a NetGear NAS (there are also other good brands, but the NV+ is popular and availability is usually good) make sure to check their hardware compatibility list for recommended drive models (they are not all created equal, it appears). Throughput can also be improved by choosing a good gigabit network switch, if needed, that allows Turbo-packages.

It's not as cheap as a stack of external boxes, but it looks quite reliable sofar, and it's well supported (spare parts like e.g. a replacement fan are readily available). There is also a huge userbase, so firmware is probably quite stable by now.

Bart
 
George, you need active, aka powered USB-hubs at the maximal distance of the USB-spec.
The wacom here sucks 500 mA, which is at the top range of the USB-power. The keyboard requires 250 mA, only.

The longer the cable gets, the less power comes through.
I read the USB-info at wiki, it says 5m cablelenght, which is AFAIK to long for a 500 mA-device.
But you should be fine with 3 x 3 m, and 2 hubs.

You might also look into KVM switches which would run everything on shorter cables (video, keyboard, mouse, and USB) as they are inexpensive (~$20 USD last time I checked, but you get what you pay for).

Heck, I had to get a desk build that suits such a setup, but should be really nice. Desk arrived last friday, 2.65 meter long and 1.20 deep, made from toughened satin glas, hanging in a U-Channel that is screwed into the wall and standing on 4 slim stainless steel legs. LOVE IT! :)

Any pictures? I have no idea what U-Channel is. <smile>

I have six external harddrives at the moment, but I am wondering whether I ditch the older 250 Gig Lacie FW and Western Digital USB drives and only keep a few larger TB drives instead of having a lot of wall warts.

An older solution:

http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/500p/

Please note that item is old and you can find more options now.

Ah, choice choices, how recognisable.

I decided that for on-line storage a 4-drive NAS (NetGear ReadyNAS NV+) would reduce the cable clutter and still alow a lot of flexibility (incl. wireless laptop access) with reasonable speed (30 MB/s wired, wireless is obviously bandwidth limited).

Going DAS would moderately increase cabling to 1 cable for every 4 or 5 drives depending on if one used SAS or eSATA w/ a port multiplier. Both are hot swappable IIRC. Write speeds will then be bound by the speed of your controller and PCI-Express bus which can hit 600 MB sustained w/ SAS. But even an X1 PCI-Express port can exceed 100 MB/s.

Even for simple external backup, single drive eSATA enclosures with a single modern drive will outperform USB by a large percentage.

NAS is consistently at a performance disadvantage to DAS in the consumer realm without jumping an order of magnitude in pricing. While the slower network link in NAS allows for more features at a pricepoint due to looser real-time performance requirements.

I got rid of all my small drives when I went Mac earlier this year. I transferred everything onto a few 1TB externals...

So my new set-up will be a pair of smaller drives striped in the Mac Pro for fast reads and saves on my current working files with all the historical images off on the DROBO, and then the DROBO backed up to a set of drives stored offsite.
One thing to watch is transfer rates of your drives. At times one can talk a group of older drives and gang them together with RAID To boost performance, but if the drives are old enough then it may not be worth it due to their low aggregate performance (i.e., a single brand new drive and single drive enclose could provide higher performance.

For the box, OS and scratch: I know several folks that stripe a pair or more of drives for increased OS and scratch performance. I do not like striped arrays for my OS due to lower reliability,
but was considering it for scratch. Issue here is I have 16 Gigs of RAM in my box so don't hit scratch very often in the first place even with my big files.

Just move your applications out there or buy an SAS controller and use RAID 5 or RAID 6 (although RAID 0+1 is good enough).

But, Western Digital just released a new 300G SATA2 10,000 RPM Velociraptor that screams! (see barefeats: http://www.barefeats.com/hard103.html) A buddy ordered two for his older Mac Pro, one for OS and apps and one for scratch, and basically halved all his launch times and CS3 processing times. Biggest issue I have with them is they are not standard SATA connector location, so don't fit inside the slide-in bays. (There is a gizmo you can buy that allows you to mount a pair of 3.5 drives in the lower optical bay and utilizes the two additional spare SATA ports on the MB.) Other issue is they're pricey at $300 or $1/gig... Good news though is WD just announced a SATA bus location-compliant version that should be available in a few weeks. When those hit the market I may spring for a pair myself.

A lot of the larger 7200 RPM drives come close for way less money due to their higher areal densities. Western Digital actually slowed down some 7200 RPM 500 GB drives as they outperformed their 10,000 RPM Raptors. More expensive is not always faster (although quality control and warranty are often better).

some thoughts,

Sean
 
Hi Sean,

thanks for jumping in here. :) What is DAS Sean? I know about SAN or NAS.

A U-Channel is simply a aluminium profile looking like a "U", now turn that 45 degrees to the left for example and have a wall behind it, then screw the sucker into the wall, slide the 8mm toughened glas into it and secure with a gasket and silicon, this way you distribute weight of the table quite nice and need only four slimline stainless steel posts at the front. The desk is designed to easily take weight loads of 80-100 kilogram.

You guys gave me a lot to think about, I will not jump to conclusions and rather spend some time reading up on attached storage solutions to find out what is best bang for the buck. I don't need to jump at it right away, for now I have two 1 TB external Lacie's in addition to internal 3 TB (Western Digital) in the Mac Pro.

While I loved external HD's a few years ago, it really becomes a pest, LOL, they have a habbit to multiply like rabbits.
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
One thing to watch is transfer rates of your drives. At times one can talk a group of older drives and gang them together with RAID To boost performance, but if the drives are old enough then it may not be worth it due to their low aggregate performance (i.e., a single brand new drive and single drive enclose could provide higher performance.
That's a key advantage of the DROBO -- you can mix and match drive manufacturers, spindle speed, capacities and even mix SATA1 and SATA2 all in the same box and the DROBO smart RAID deals with it.

Just move your applications out there or buy an SAS controller and use RAID 5 or RAID 6 (although RAID 0+1 is good enough).
Have you compared prices of SAS drives to SATA2 drives lately? SAS is still running $2 - $3 per Gig, not to mention there aren't very many options larger than 147 Gig. Also, perhaps you aren't aware that with the Mac Pro you have to be either ALL SAS or none, and the SAS controller card for Mac is priced around $1000 all by itself. Bottom line is SAS is NOT a cost-efficient solution for most still digital imaging applications...

A lot of the larger 7200 RPM drives come close for way less money due to their higher areal densities. Western Digital actually slowed down some 7200 RPM 500 GB drives as they outperformed their 10,000 RPM Raptors. More expensive is not always faster (although quality control and warranty are often better).
Indeed, but the original 10K Raptor was/is a SATA1 drive and the new Velociraptor is a SATA2 and whomps the older Raptor in all the tests. (You should take the time to click on the link I gave above for the Barefeats test of it.) But yes, the relatively new WD 640G dual platter SATA2 drive retails for under $100 and has shown excellent I/O specs... Actually considered striping a pair of them for scratch :)
~~~

George, DAS is Direct Attached Storage as opposed to Network... My DROBO is DAS in basic form, but you can also add a NAS base to it for around $200...

Cheers,
 
thanks for jumping in here. :) What is DAS Sean? I know about SAN or NAS.

DAS is Direct Attached Storage which is the way of directly boosting the disk performance of a single machine. SAN hardware is used to distribute high performance storage to group of machines and adds an expensive layer of hardware. SAS does supports using SAS as a SAN protocol. SAS, Fibre Channel, and many other SAN protocols and transport mechanisms exceed the performance of 10Gb Ethernet.

eSATA is a hot swappable DAS cabling system. There are many possible variations of eSATA. One could use a SteelVine using eSATA drive collection to support daisy chaining of eSATA drives like FireWire supports with more bandwidth.

One can also use port multipliers to connect multiple drives to a single eSATA cable with 3 or 4 drives in RAID 0 being able to saturate the connection. With up to 5 drives per eSATA cable being common, one can reduce cable and box clutter.

While the bandwidth of a single eSATA cable is lower than other technologies, they are faster than NAS storage and will bring up the bottom line of your workstations performance/responsiveness.
find out what is best bang for the buck. I don't need to jump at it right away, for now I have two 1 TB external Lacie's in addition to internal 3 TB (Western Digital) in the Mac Pro.

While I loved external HD's a few years ago, it really becomes a pest, LOL, they have a habbit to multiply like rabbits.

The next step up from 5 bay eSATA gear tends to be rackmount. But if you find something reasonable and larger (8 bay SAS enclosures are similarly priced, but the SAS controller is much more expensive).

The one thing to note here is that eSATA is faster than FireWire but not as expandable (shorter daisy chains). I think a nice eSATA card on a laptop could really boost its performance with a 5 drive enclosure.

some thoughts,

Sean
 
Have you compared prices of SAS drives to SATA2 drives lately? SAS is still running $2 - $3 per Gig, not to mention there aren't very many options larger than 147 Gig. Also, perhaps you aren't aware that with the Mac Pro you have to be either ALL SAS or none, and the SAS controller card for Mac is priced around $1000 all by itself. Bottom line is SAS is NOT a cost-efficient solution for most still digital imaging applications...
You can use SATA drives on SAS controllers too. You only need the SAS drives if you need reliability feature or 15K spindle speeds. What going SAS yields is fancier controller cards with more bandwidth (x4 and x8 PCI Express) and onboard XOR processors for RAID 5 and RAID 6.

You can get a cheaper SAS controller but may sacrifice features (cache, battery backup, ...). I would not rule out SAS (I would rule out SAS drives) for most digital imaging needs. eSATA is likely in the cost sweetspot for a small number of TB of data.

Indeed, but the original 10K Raptor was/is a SATA1 drive and the new Velociraptor is a SATA2 and whomps the older Raptor in all the tests. (You should take the time to click on the link I gave above for the Barefeats test of it.) But yes, the relatively new WD 640G dual platter SATA2 drive retails for under $100

I read the reviews months ago. The SATA I versus SATA II does not matter (the drive design in the old Raptor could not saturate a SATA cable so additional bandwidth at the transport layer cannot do very much to improve speed).

Heck, the old Raptor was being beaten by 7200 RPM drives.

The DROBO looks cool, but using old drives rather than a some cheap new ones will often kill performance w/ DAS.

some thoughts,

Sean
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Heck, the old Raptor was being beaten by 7200 RPM drives.
And the new one beats the current best 7200 drives. So while SATA1 may not have been saturated, the newer SATA2 drives are faster, and that's what counts for us in the real world, is it not?

The DROBO looks cool, but using old drives rather than a some cheap new ones will often kill performance w/ DAS.
Of course, I was just pointing out that it CAN use them. Personally, I'll be stuffing mine with 4 @ 1TB drives :)
 
Personally, I'll be stuffing mine with 4 @ 1TB drives :)

Are you planning to get the version 2 model, or do you already have one of the early V2 models (since it has just been announced)?

I have not read any user feedback, but I did read about the version 1 that it tended to run very hot, which is not a good thing for drive longevity. The version 1 model also was rather expensive for what it offered, and local availability was problematic in the Netherlands until recent.

One of the main concerns I have about Drobo's proprietary protocol, and fed by anecdotal user experience sofar, how good can it survive power failures? Proper RAID (e.g. RAID 5) implementations seem to be quite reliable in rebuilding files/file systems after catastrophic events (which is not the same as hot-swapping). Is the Drobo up to the task?

Bart
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
I ordered the V2 unit and am waiting for it to ship. Drobo is fine in a power out, but needs power if it is in the middle of a rebuild or that rebuild will fail. Fortunately it only needs to rebuild after a drive change or addition, but obviously a good idea to have it plugged in to a UPS. As for heat, the drives drive that (ha!) but the new unit is supposed to have more efficient and much quieter fans and run cooler.

I'll be able to share more once I get it up and running.
 
As for heat, the drives drive that (ha!) but the new unit is supposed to have more efficient and much quieter fans and run cooler.

Yes, the drives probably generate most of the heat (I don't remember if the box has internal power supply or external brick), but the long intensive processing of redundant data also caused more than healthy drive usage in the previous model. Hopefully they solved that as well.

I'll be able to share more once I get it up and running.

Looking forward to that.

Bart
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
hm drobo,
I'm not to sure about that, as it has its own proprietairy file system.
So if things go wrong with the drobo itself/internal raid controller, whatever apart from the harddisc, you can't just put a harddisc out of the drobo in the mac/external enclosure, as it will not be recognised.

The only way to access the data is buying a new drobo and waiting to be delivered...
 
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