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Father’s Day Guide: The DIY Dad

Thursday, June 13th, 2013 | Author:

Father’s Day is tough. Gift ideas are not easy to come by … and let’s face it, dad isn’t much help. So this year we’ve decided to go all out for dad’s big day. In this series leading up to June 16, we’ll give great gift ideas for all types of dads.

Who says gifts that require a little bit of work can’t be great? For many dads (mine included), nothing makes them more proud than showing off their handy work. Especially when their work solves a problem and makes life more convenient for others.

But what gift could possibly combine all of this? What gift can dad impress the family with by installing it in about 20 minutes while giving his home an upgrade that everyone will love? Let us show you with the Newer Technology Power2U AC/USB wall outlet! Article Continues…

OS X 10.8.3 Now Offers Fusion Drive Possibilities For Non-Fusion Drive Equipped Macs

Monday, March 25th, 2013 | Author: , and

We’ve been waiting and waiting for Apple to release the next version of OS X Mountain Lion in hopes that the next full version would have all the necessary components to setup a Fusion drive on any Mac capable of installing a hard drive and SSD together. A little over a week ago, Apple released OS X version 10.8.3 and, with one small caveat, our hopes were fulfilled.

The Profusion Of Fusion Confusion

But before we get to showing you exactly how to setup your own DIY Fusion drive, I’d like to dispel some mis-information that has been floating around the web. Up until now, most of the reports you’ve read about creating your own DIY Fusion drive on a machine have been incomplete. There have been many tutorials on how to create a Core Storage volume that have been labeled as “how to create a Fusion drive”. They are two similar, yet different drive configurations. I’ve addressed a lot of this information in comments on the OWC Blog, but figure it would be a good idea to review and further explain what a Fusion drive actually is as opposed to a Core Storage volume. Article Continues…

Category: Tech Tips

iMac Hard Drive Upgradeability Expanded!

Thursday, February 21st, 2013 | Author:

As you may recall, Apple changed the hard drive upgrading game with the  2011 iMac.

Up until 2009, changing a drive was easy once you could get to it. A few screws here, a connector there and voila – you were good to go. And OWC had you covered for all your iMac DIY hard drive upgrades.

With the late 2009 iMacs, Apple introduced a different connector for each brand drive, but as long as you stayed within the same hard drive brand, then it was the same, once you got to it – it was easy-peasy to make the old switch-a-roo. And OWC had you covered for your iMac DIY hard drive upgrades.

Then came the 2010 iMacs and the ‘same for same’ caveat still applied, but the 27″ iMac model introduced an additional SATA drive connection on the motherboard and the OWC Turnkey Upgrade program was born. Send us your 27″ iMac and we’d add up to 3 SSDs or even an eSATA port. It was a little more difficult, so we started with a do-it-for-you service, then made it available as a DIY kit. And OWC had you covered for all your iMac  DIY hard drive upgrades.

Lo and behold, the 2011 iMac changed the game again, no longer could you swap out the drive without failing the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) and sending the fans into a tizzy. Soon after, we expanded the iMac Turnkey Program with our Do-it-for-you service on these machines as well. And, now, we’re happy to announce that we’ve crafted that solution into an elegant little DIY Kit. So, once again, OWC has you covered for all your iMac DIY hard drive upgrades. Article Continues…

Creating your own Fusion Drive

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 | Author: and

One of the newest technologies available with the latest Macs is the ability to have what Apple calls a Fusion Drive. This is essentially a Solid State drive and a platter-based drive combined into a single volume. Apple’s underlying Core Storage technology then uses the SSD for the OS and frequently-accessed files, which will benefit from the speed, while placing lesser-used files on the larger, but slower platter-based drive.

The practical upshot of all this is that Fusion gives you roughly the performance of an SSD, while also taking advantage of the plentiful storage of platter-based drives. However, you don’t need to have a Fusion Drive from Apple to do this; with the proper command-line version of Disk Utility, you can create your own array with any platter-based drive and any SSD.

Of course, there are a few caveats to this setup (or the stock Fusion Drive, for that matter) that you should consider before committing to a Fusion setup. We’ll discuss those in a bit. First, though, let’s look at the process of actually setting it up.

Article Continues…

Category: Tech Tips

OWC DIY Kits Now Offer Up To 1.5TB Storage/Backup Capacity To Solve Hard Drive Space Shortage Computer Users and Gamers Face

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012 | Author:

Other World Computing announced today its popular OWC Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Storage Upgrade Kits now offer up to 1.5TB of storage/backup capacity—over 50 percent more than factory offered—for the latest 2012 MacBook Pros, all Apple MacBook Unibody models from 2008 and later, PC notebooks, and certain Xbox and PS3 gaming systems. OWC also offers DIY Kits up to 1.0TB and OWC SSD based choices up to 960GB for nearly every MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.

Solves Hard Drive Space Shortage

For many computer users, once hard drive space starts getting tight, they feel they have no other choice than to replace their entire machine. They often aren’t aware they can upgrade the internal drive themselves and what is required to get the job done. OWC DIY Kits are the cost-effective answer to this problem and offer complete, easy-to-install choices starting at $52.50 that can provide enough space for holding up to 1.5 million JPEG photos, 750 DVD movies, 115 hours of digital video, or 526,000 MP3 songs.  Article Continues…

Category: Press Releases