If you upgrade a Mac to an SSD drive – having good management of your files is important where you use an additional drive or drives to have capacity for your photo, music, video libraries, etc.  With the relatively small sizes of SSD drives, they can fill up with data fast; but the performance benefits of SSD are undeniable.

If you’ve been following our blog since the beginning, we’ve given several tips on relocating these types of files off your internal storage on onto external storage solutions. Today’s modern operating systems make this pretty easy.

For those audiophiles out there, an iTunes library can quickly become an overwhelming size.  Back in March, we showed you how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive such as the Mercury On-the-Go Pro.

Photography enthusiasts will also find their pictures taking up more and more hard drive space.  You can also move your iPhoto library to an external drive to keep your primary drive lean and operating at top speeds.

My basic rule of thumb to follow is to keep the Operating System and your applications themselves on the main, internal hard drive while storing the files, documents, pictures, movies, music, etc. on the separate drive.  By doing so, you can even use a 64GB SSD for boot and application performance benefits WHILE maintaining access to extensive file libraries that can’t all fit onto an SSD.

Check out OWC’s full selection of SSD Drives and External Hard Drive Solutions to find the fit that’s right for you.

Four years ago today, Web users everywhere that were looking to escape from the mediocrity of Internet Explorer were treated to the official release of a new browser, Mozilla Firefox. Since then, It has since become one of the most popular Web browsers currently available, second only to Internet Explorer, which, of course, ships as the default browser for Windows.

Firefox started as an offshoot of the Mozilla Application Suite which, in turn, was built on the open-source code of Netscape Communicator. Since then, Mozilla dropped active development in favor of the standalone apps Firefox and Thunderbird, and the full application suite was spun off as the community-developed project, SeaMonkey.

Firefox is considered by most to be stable and safe, and is available in Mac, Windows and Linux versions. That compatibility, plus an extensive add-on architecture which allows users to customize Firefox, are the main contributing factors to its popularity.

Even though I, personally, tend to stick with Safari for the vast majority of my Web browsing (especially in Snow Leopard, where Safari 4 is a 64-bit application), I still keep an updated copy of Firefox handy; every so often, I’ll find a site that pitches a fit over Safari, yet handles Firefox just fine. However, on the two virtual machines (Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux) I have on my MacBook Pro, Firefox is the main browser I use.

Many other people I know, both Mac and Windows users, use Firefox almost exclusively. Its compatibility with many corporate and online banking sites is far better than Safari (without changing user agent strings); I don’t think we need to go into its security advantages over Internet Explorer. ;-) I’ve also found Firefox to be reasonably zippy on PowerPC-based machines, often rendering more complex pages faster than Safari, so it may be a good option for you if you have an older machine.

Overall, Firefox is well worth the download, even if you don’t use it every day. You can find the latest version (v.3.5.5, released late last week) at www.mozilla.org/firefox

During my time here at OWC, I have cultivated my love of the Mactintosh independent software community. In the past, I have shared some software gems with you, be it here on the OWC Blog, in various QuickTips and in full-blown reviews. What I’ve always liked about independent software companies is that they often put out software that’s just as good as (and sometimes, better than) the larger software companies at a fraction of the price, so I’m generally glad to toss a few bucks their way and/or give them a featured write-up.

It’s a part of that support for independent developers that I feel the need to draw attention to a great deal going on over at MacHeist. These guys somehow manage to get together high-quality pieces of software from independent developers and bundle them together for additional savings over the already affordable prices of most independent software. For a limited time, though, they’ve got an even better price on their bundle than they usually do – FREE!

Yep. that’s right. For the next six days or so, you can register and download the MacHeist nanoBundle at absolutely no cost.

So what’s in this free bundle? Let’s take a look. more…

Sometimes even the best educated guesses can be thrown for a loop when an unforeseen “X-Factor” comes into play. Such is the case with the Late 2009 iMacs.

As we were getting information together for the new iMac instructional videos, we came across a little tidbit that, apparently, hasn’t been covered anywhere else: Apple has switched the iMac’s method of hard drive temperature sensing. They’ve gone from an external sensor that attached to the outside surface of the drive to a connector that seems to use the drive’s internal sensors. more…

Every now and then, you may find that your startup seems slower than normal or that some things are just not working the way they used to. When that happens, it is usually best to be proactive, rather than putting it off until the problem potentially gets worse. There are numerous things that can cause problems with your Mac, both hardware and software. When working with computers, it pays to not only have a physical toolkit, but also some good software tools to help with various situations. Having the right options at your disposal can help save time, which most people do not seem to have enough of.

One great little maintenance utility you can use is Onyx. Onyx takes several important maintenance tasks and puts them all in to one easy to use package. Even better, though, this software is free! more…

About a year ago, OWC CEO Larry O’Connor revisited a recurring topic in his Tips n’ Deals Newsletter and OWC Chris covered that in a post on how the Rules of Upgrading rarely change.

Both of them explored five different ways you can upgrade your Mac to extend its useful life. Since some time has transpired, some new machines were released by Apple, and Snow Leopard has now become a reality, it’s time we take a fresh look at some “old” rules of upgrading:

#1 – Upgrade Your Memory
I think we’ve lost count of how many times we’ve talked about how upgrading your memory gives you the best performance boost for the investment. Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 is a 64-bit (along with its applications) which allows each application to address more than 4GB of RAM at a time. OSX’s memory management now is a lot more flexible in keeping its cached instructions, lessening the need for a hard drive hit.

The bottom line is simple: Your OS and Applications can certainly run on the minimum memory, but having more memory installed makes for a whole lot more enjoyable and productive experience, all for a low investment. With upgrades ranging from $44.97 for a 2GB module for a MacBook, through 16GB of RAM for an iMac, up to a full 32GB of memory priced at $27.25 per GB to max out your Mac Pro, a memory upgrade is dollar-for-dollar the best investment you can make for your Mac.

You can find memory (and other upgrades) for nearly every Mac produced over the past two decades with our easy online upgrade guide. In addition to the instructions you’ll find in just about any Apple computer manual, we’ve got easy-to-follow free installation videos that further illustrate how easy it is for you to get that memory into your Mac. And if you need further help, it is just a click a way in our online tech center.

#2 – Upgrade Your Storage.
The big news for 2009 was the rapid pace of developments in storage capacity, speed, and overall performance. Now we’re talking up to 2.0TB for 3.5″ drives, up to 1.0TB for 2.5″ drives, and SSDs have truly emerged as a legitimate consideration. Since we promised SSD benchmarks in our last coverage of this upgrade, we’re going to focus on them here. I did a comparison of how SSDs measured up to hard drives and SSDs were the speed, reliability, and quiet running champs. Just how much faster are SSDs? Check it out: more…

It’s a fact the files we work with on a day-to-day basis are getting larger. As digital cameras grow more advanced, so do the sizes of the pictures they take. Music is now available in near-pristine, lossless formats and movies are now are in high-definition video with multichannel soundtracks. Then, there are the various applications themselves, many of which can take up multiple gigabytes. All this data takes up space and before you know it, your hard drive is maxed out.

When you find yourself in this predicament , you have three options: clean out some accumulated files, get an external storage solution to move files to and provide more storage capacity, or use our free instructional videos to put a higher capacity drive into your machine.

Cleaning out older files isn’t really a viable option. Eventually, your drive will continue to fill and you’re back to square one.

Transferring older and/or duplicate files to an external drive is often the easiest route to take and we make that option simple with Plug and Play solutions for Macs and PCs. Unfortunately, if you’re highly mobile and using a MacBook or MacBook Pro, carrying around that extra drive and the connection cables (even with a bus-powered pocket-sized drive like the Mercury On-The-Go Pro) adds a few more things to pack and keep your eyes on.

Which brings us to upgrading your Mac’s internal drive. While the thought of “opening the hood” on your machine sounds daunting, it’s actually very straightforward with our instructional videos that walk you through the process.

After upgrading your internal drive, transferring your data over from your “old” drive to a new, faster, larger one is just as easy when using Migration Assistant in conjunction with a fresh install of OS X. To show you how to get it done, OWC Chris has created step-by-step instructions in our Tips & Reviews archives.

And when you’ve got everything up and running with all the data you had from the previous drive, we even make it easy to retask that “old” drive, by either putting it into an external enclosure or using it with one of our Voyager hard drive docks. If you choose the enclosure route, we may even have an installation video to show you how to do that too!

It doesn’t get any easier than OWC for the tips, tools, and products you need to get more from your technology investment.

Back in August ,when Apple updated their MacBook Pro line of laptops, the ExpressCard slot was replaced with an SD cardslot.  Here in October, Apple again has added this feature to the entire iMac lineup. It’s located just beneath the optical drive on each machine.

This would be a good time to revisit my prior article: What good is the MacBook Pro SD card slot anyway? to learn how to make the most out of this added feature.  It goes into detail on making a boot drive out of an SD card as well as an emergency startup disk.

Additionally, the widescreen form factor of the new iMac lends to using the machines for multimedia displays.  An SD card makes a great medium for transferring your multimedia data between computers.  A DVD quality movie takes up about 2GB per hour of playtime.  With SD cards ranging from 2GB to 32GB currently, one could store up to 16 hours of footage on a single card.  More exciting is the introduction of the SDXC format which as early as 2010 could have us storing from 64GB up to 2.0TB on a single card.

I for one wouldn’t be surprised to see movies, TV shows and other media being distributed on SD cards just the same as we see CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs currently. Time will tell on that one.

As mentioned in one of my blog posts last Friday, we’ve been busy testing the limits of the 2009 Mac mini models.  In late August, Apple released Mac mini EFI Firmware Update 1.2 which improves compatibility with the latest Apple memory kits on Mac mini computers.

It did a little more than that though.  It improved compatibility of OWC brand memory as well.  As all of our memory meets or exceeds Apple’s requirements for RAM, it’s no surprise that, yet again, OWC can support memory expansion beyond the maximum installed amount suggested by Apple.

We have fully tested all 2009 release date Mac mini computers with both Leopard and Snow Leopard and found no issues regarding which OS was used for testing a full 8.0GB of RAM installed.  Under both operating systems, the memory was fully utilized and no system detriment in speed was observed.

Keep in mind, this information is for Mac mini model identifier macmini3,1.  Intel Mac mini machines released prior to 2009 (macmini1,1 or macmini2,1) have hardware limitations that only allow those machines to max out RAM at 2.0GB and 3.0GB respectively.

Want to take your mini to the maximum? OWC has the Mac mini upgrades you need to make your machine screaming fast.

With Apple’s new machine releases, we’re hard at work in the OWC Test Labs seeing just how fast we can make the machines go.

Our first machine that we’re looking at is the October 2009 2.26GHz MacBook.  This machine is pretty tight on the inside – meaning there isn’t much extra unnecessary space inside.  Like the iPod and iPhone, conservation of space seems to be a high-priority of Apple’s design teams.  So even though the machine is lighter and sleeker, it does pose some drawbacks in upgrading.  This Macbook has no problem running either a 5400rpm, 7200rpm or SSD drive for the fastest speeds, however; the physical height of the drive is limited to the 9.5mm form factor.  The 12.5mm drives are too tall to fit in the space provided.

I should reiterate that point.  The drive doesn’t officially fit.  Sure, we were able to cram it in, and screw the cover closed (with a little bowing of the bottom) but we don’t suggest or will support actually running the drive this way.  Too much physical pressure on a drive can certainly contribute to early drive failure – it’s just not worth risking your data or the expense of a warranty compromised drive.

We’re pleased to announce our findings that our OWC brand memory certainly takes the cake in these machines!  While Apple lists 4GB as the maximum amount of installable memory, our 8GB memory kit OWC8566DDR3S8GP is now tested and fully certified for the full 8GB utilization – a real performance benefit for memory intensive application loads. While we were at it, we also tested another brand 8GB memory kit and found it consistently caused kernel panics and non-boot issues. Even though both are the same spec of DDR3 1066MHZ SO-DIMM, sometimes quality does have its result.

Thus, when we talk about how OWC brand memory meets or exceeds all Apple requirements for memory, it’s not just idle chatter or marketing-speak. Our on-premise testing lab enables us to physically confirm this fact for every machine listed in our compatibility charts.  Then, we back our quality assurance with a lifetime warranty.  How can you go wrong?

We often think of OWC as a giant resource…a collective of individual skills, knowledge, talents, and passion…that all come together to offer assistance to Mac users around the world. Whether it be our free lifetime US-based technical support, Live Chat even on the weekends, our free Installation Videos, and more, we’re pleased to help you get the most from your Mac and your technology budget.

We’re pleased to lend a helping hand because we’ve been there as customers too…looking for help and not getting it in a timely or courteous manner. And like all good deeds – or even Karma – what goes around comes around.

Case in point…check out how creating a world of help gets started:

I had problems with my Lexmark X4850 All in One printer/scanner after installing 10.6 and had to wait for Lexmark to issue a new driver. After that, with some fiddling around, I got to print wireless, least before that, only on the wire.

That was not it however!

The first time I tried to scan (and never could do this wireless for some reason, even though Lexmark said I should be able to) I was unable to and the program crashed. I tried and tried, and finally found out I had to use a “workaround” using the TWAIN method.   This is how:

Lexmark drivers bundled with Mac OS X 10.6 do not come with the usual All-in-One Center application that allows the user to scan using TWAIN backend. To scan using the bundled drivers, users can utilize the Image Capture application bundled with Mac OS X 10.6. Users may access this application by going to the Application folder and launching Image Capture or by going to System Preferences the Print & Fax, selecting the Print Queue and opening it and clicking on the Scanner button on the upper right corner. TWAIN scanning support will be provided in future releases of 10.6.

It works, but you have to remember it after using the usual method for a long time. I tell you this in case others have the same problem and ask you.  You helped me often, now it is my turn.

Regards,

Rick S., Winter Park, Florida
OWC customer for about 5-8 years, Mac user for about 18 years

Equally cool to his tip was some additional insight from Rick on how deep the OWC commitment to serving goes. It seems OWC Larry was personally helping Rick upgrade a MiniTower G3 years ago and must have given Rick his home phone number. Larry’s wife answered the phone, informed Rick that Larry wasn’t home, and then proceed to help Rick to the point of being complimented as being “quite knowledgeable too”.

We encourage you to turn things around too and send us your helpful tips so that we can share them!

In case you haven’t heard, Apple has acknowledged that there is a bug in Snow Leopard that can be rather devastating to your data. All the data in your Home folder has the potential of disappearing if:

1. you installed OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard over an existing installation of  OS X 10.5 Leopard.
2. you had a Guest account enabled in Leopard, which got brought over to Snow Leopard AND
3. you logged into your Guest account under Snow Leopard.

Damage Control

If all of those three pieces of the puzzle fit together, you may find yourself logging into your main account only to find all your data is gone.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and simple way to get your data back—you’re going to have to restore from your backups.

By far, the easiest method is to do a full restore from the last time you had all your data. If you clone to an external, simply boot to that drive and clone back to your Mac.

If you use Time Machine, it will take a little longer. You will need to perform a fresh install of OS X on your machine, then choose to import information from your latest Time Machine backup with an intact System folder.

Don’t have a backup? Your data may be lost in the Snow.

Prevention

The first step to avoiding data loss—from this bug or from others—is to establish a backup strategy NOW. Seriously, I mean it…large external drives are dropping in price rather rapidly, so there’s no real reason for not having a complete solution.

The next thing to do: disable the Guest account. Unless you routinely have people temporarily logging onto your computer, leaving the Guest account active at this point is kind of like having a hand grenade sitting on the kitchen table—you’re not going to use it, but if it is accidentally activated, you could be in a whole world of hurt.

To disable the Guest account, go to the Accounts preference pane. You will need an Administrator password to unlock the pane. Once unlocked, select the “Guest Account” option and make sure the box to allow guests to log in is unchecked. Then, close the Preferences window.

Theoretically, if you go back in and re-check that box, you should be able to use the Guest Account normally. However, until an update is released that specifically deals with this issue, doing so is asking for trouble. If you absolutely need to have people logging into your machine, your best bet will be to create a managed (non-admin) account for them.

Simply unlock the Accounts preference pane as described above and click the “+” button on the left. Name the new account whatever you want and don’t give it a password. Make sure that you uncheck the box that allows that account to act as an administrator. Now you have an account that will behave similarly to the Guest account, except when the user logs out, it doesn’t erase their (or your) files.

Repetition

I’m going to say it again, simply because it’s so darn important: make sure you have (and use) a backup strategy. In the light of hardware failures, accidental deletion and now the OS itself threatening your irreplaceable data, failure to have one (or more) backups of your crucial data is an invitation to disaster.

So often we are asked in reference to our OWC Instructional Series of Videos, “How exactly am I supposed to ‘Use proper anti-static precautions when performing this upgrade’?” The real answer is…it depends.  There are actually several different ways, depending on your situation, that you can help to control static electricity in order to avoid damaging the electronically delicate components found inside your computer.

According to Wikipedia: Static electricity refers to the buildup of electric charge on the surface of objects. The static charges remain on an object until they either bleed off to ground or are quickly neutralized by a discharge. And it’s that discharge that can ‘zap’ or ‘fry’ your computer components, rendering them inoperable.

To give you an idea of how little static electricity needs to be generated to cause harm to your computer components, it takes as little as 5 to 10 volts to cause damage inside your computer.  In order for you to even feel the presence of  static electricity, the level needs to be above 1,500 volts.   You can accumulate an average of 10,000 to 12,000 volts just walking across carpeting.  Rubbing a balloon on dry fur (or hair) generates about 20,000 volts. Did you know the average person can carry up to 25,000 volts of static energy at any given time? So discharging any built up energy before you begin is important.

So, how are we to be safe when working in our precious machines? more…

I think that it is safe to say that the iPhone is fairly popular. It seems that as of late you can’t look at any gadget/tech blog without some mention of it. The App Store offers a myriad of programs, games and utilities, and there are all sorts of third party accessories available.

Even for those Mac users that don’t have an iPhone (like myself) this is a good thing, as it seriously contributes to Apple’s bottom line, which means more money in the coffers for Macintosh R&D as well iTunes/iPhone/iPod.

Unfortunately, with wild popularity comes increased scrutiny. As a result, when something goes wrong with the iPhone, there is often a large backlash.

Just this sort of thing has happened with the recent release of iPhone OS 3.1. It seems that many users are experiencing rapid discharging of the battery since updating.

In perusing Apple’s support forums, there are a number of threads, like this one, detailing the woes of those who have installed iPhone OS 3.1 on their iPhones only to experience rapid discharging of the battery. Even after turning off some of the noted battery-draining processes, such as wi-fi, bluetooth, and push notifications, people have been experiencing a reduction in battery life.

In some cases, it seems attached to a corrupt file or application in the iPhone. In these instances, restoring the iPhone and creating a new profile (rather than importing old information) seemed to resolve the issue. Unfortunately for many others, even after performing this procedure, the problem still remains.

Apparently, though, Apple has responded to the issue and has distributed a small battery tracking application, along with a short list of troubleshooting questions, to many posters on the above-mentioned thread.

Judging by the wide range of this problem and Apple’s response, is is very likely that we will soon see another update to iPhone OS that will resolve this issue. Until that time, though, iPhone users are left to deal with the problem themselves.

Fortunately, OWC is here to help. While we can’t fix the underlying problem —that’s Apple’s domain— we’ve at least got a temporary solution for your power problems: extended battery packs.

The most form-fitting option is the Energizer Energi To Go AP iPhone Charger, which integrates a protective sleeve with either a 1000 mAh or 1500 mAh battery for extra time between chargings.

For a less specific option, there are the Macally JBox mini and the Cellboost iRecharge. Both these items allow you to simply attach to your iPhone via its USB cable and charge it that way. While not nearly as slick an option as the Energi To Go, these items have the added benefit that they can be used with any device that can be charged via USB.

For more information on the iPhone OS and Software updates, check Apple’s iPhone Support center.

Breaking it down to its simplest forms, there are two main reasons to add a RAID setup to your computer system. Performance and Redundancy.

Let’s break these down individually:

Little Johnny was acting up in class and his teacher made him sit in the hallway while all the other kids went to recess. If he could finish writing “I will not put frogs in the teacher’s desk ever again” 100 times on paper before the rest of his classmates came back to class, little Johnny would be able to join them in the playground. more…

We just received stock of Hitachi’s new 2.0TB 7200RPM DeskStar 7K2000 Serial ATA Hard Drive. We always test and qualify new products of this nature before releasing them for sale and man, these drives are fast! Rock Solid, High Performance, Quiet too. The only 7200RPM 2.0TB single drive model currently available and by far, the fastest 2.0TB Serial ATA (SATA) drive available today.

But don’t just take our word on it, see for yourself:

We benchmark all of our hard drive solutions using the QuickBench TM 4.0 Extended Test.  This test measures the drive’s ability to sustain large amounts of data (measuring between 20MB and 100MB) transferred to and from your computer.  For the purposes of this run, we used our OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Quad Interface Storage Kit and compared three of the 2.0TB hard drive mechanisms currently in our lineup: more…

Since Snow Leopard’s release a couple of weeks ago, there have been several reports of various optical drives being unable to read the installation DVD. There have also been reports of these same drives being unable to read other DVDs, as well.

What the heck is going on here?

There have been reports of some “bad” copies of the Snow Leopard installer disc, which would explain some of the instances. A trip to your local Genius Bar or a call to Apple customer service can usually resolve that issue.

There are, however, a number of instances that were not resolved simply by using a different disc. In these cases, the optical drive stopped being able to read DVDs at all. In a large amount of the cases shown on the Apple Support discussion boards, it seems that many of these computers were infrequently used, so it is quite likely these were cases where the optical drive was bad or on the verge of failing, but infrequent use made diagnosis difficult. Interestingly, almost all of the drives having these problems were the stock drives that came with the computer.

So what can we do?

Usually, if your drive stops reading media, that’s a good clue that the drive needs to be replaced. If your Mac is still under AppleCare, then you should be covered. However, for those past the warranty and don’t have AppleCare, you’ve still got options.

1. Set up another Mac (running OS X 10.5 or later) to share its optical drive with the afflicted computer. While designed for the MacBook Air, this should work with any Mac. Though it is probably the least expensive method (as song as you have a second Mac) it is also frightfully slow, as it has to transfer all the data across your network.
2. Replace the optical drive with a new one. If you had AppleCare, the main resolution would be to replace the drive itself. So, why not do it yourself? Other than the SATA slot-loading drives found in the latest models (which would still be under warranty, anyway), OWC has replacement internal optical drives for a wide array of Macs. The drives aren’t the only thing, though. We also have instructional videos that walk you through the process of replacing the optical drive for many Mac models.
3. Use an external optical drive. This is a fairly good option for slot-loading machines – especially iMacs and Mac minis – since you can get optical drives with faster speeds and features that may not be available on a slot-loading drive, such as Blu-ray disc burning (sorry, still no BD movie playback, yet) and and Lightscribe labeling. OWC has a number of external optical drives available, all of which are bootable and will work with your Mac.

Don’t let a failing optical drive stop you from enjoying the benefits that upgrading to Snow Leopard provides. With our wide array of optical drive solutions and technical information, OWC can help get you on your way with a minimum of effort.

Quick tip - Use a mac running 10.5 or 10.4, select to share the Printer that is AppleTalk and volia - your AppleTalk printer is now useable to any Mac with 10.6

It is true that Apple has dropped the AppleTalk LAN protocols as part of the trimming done in 10.6 Snow Leopard.  It doesn’t necessarily mean its time to throw out that legacy LaserJet printer that had its printer queue setup through AppleTalk.  You could setup a print server.

If you have at least one Mac still running 10.5 or earlier on your network, you can setup your AppleTalk printer on that machine and share that printer with the other computers on your Network. Then use Printer Sharing to allow your Snow Leopard machines to still print to it. The Mac doing the Sharing would accept print jobs from the other computers as long as it was powered up and running when you wanted to print.

To use printer sharing go to “Sharing” under system preferences and enable the “Printer Sharing” service. Then, under “Print & Fax” click the box for Share this printer.  Now your legacy printer can still be used with Snow Leopard.

—- UPDATE 9/4/09 by OWC Grant—–

Our own OWC Jamie created a very well illustrated guide that walks you thru the above step by step. If you’re like me, a picture (or in this case several screen shots) is worth a thousand words…or at least three paragraphs!