Awaiting a Leopard
Yes, we preordered a Leopard family pack and are anxiously awaiting its arrival this week. Together, my wife and I own most of the models in the current Mac fleet, i.e., a Mac Pro, a MacBook Pro, an iMac, and a MacBook. I do not intend to hold back any machines from the upgrade once it arrives, though I am making full, bootable disk backups of all our current Tiger-driven systems.
Frankly, Leopard has so many features we will find helpful I wish we could talk the rest of our Mac-running family members into also upgrading this week. But, other than my two sons, the rest of our Mac-using family members hardly know what an operating system upgrade is. They are running Panther and Jaguar.
Anticipating Leopard’s arrival, my wife starting making comments about how she was looking forward to using Time Machine. That made me take a look at the hard disks we had available for use for all the machines and forced me out to Fry’s to pick up one more external hard disk and one more internal.
The external hard drives in the house available for use included a 120GB Firewire 400 external (I was using that to back up my MacBook Pro’s internal hard drive which is also 120GB), a Maxtor Easy Touch II 300GB Firewire/USB 2 hard drive (used to back up the 320GB Maxtor Easy Touch III used to run the MacBook Pro from when at home), a LaCie 120GB Firewire 400 external hard disk (used to back up my wife’s iMac). I back up my Mac Pro by cloning the Mac OS X portion of the machines’ boot disk to a 300GB Maxtor SATA hard drive in the Mac Pro’s number four slot. That was not going to be a big enough inventory to back up all four machines, especially since the optimum hard drive sizes for Time Machine need to be as big or bigger than the drive being backed up. So, after mentally working out a new plan, I journeyed down to my local Fry’s Electronics where I purchased a 500GB Maxtor SATA II internal drive (on sale for $94) and another Maxtor Easy Touch III 320GB Firewire/USB 2.0 external hard drive.
My new plan is to use the new 320GB Maxtor Easy Touch to back up the identical drive I use to run my MacBook Pro when at home; use the generic Firewire drive with a 120 upgraded to 160GB hard drive to back up the MacBook Pro’s internal drive; use the 300GB Maxtor Easy Touch II to back up my wife’s 250GB iMac; and use the LaCie 120GB Firewire drive to back up her MacBook. The Mac Pro will still use its internal disk #4 to back up its boot drive and the RAID 1 set I use for scratch drives to the new 500GB Maxtor SATA II.
I’m looking forward to using Spaces, primarily on the Mac Pro, so I can set up a desktop for video editing, graphics and desktop publishing, everyday surfing and Mail, and maybe even one for flight simulators. I’ve been looking for an elegant way to segregate the tasks I do on the Mac Pro for some time, and I’ll let you know whether Spaces does the trick.
I’m also looking forward to seeing how well both the still photo and video backdrops in iChat work and how much horsepower they take to run.
Additionally, I know I'll try out the To-Do Notes in Mail, though I’m not sure how useful it will really be. Most of the time, when I send myself a reminder of something to do, I’m not using a Mac. I’m at work on a PC, so I suspect I’ll still be e-mailing myself regular e-mail notes as a reminder for quite some time to come.
I’ve been backing up all my systems this afternoon, readying for the Leopard installation. The cloning of hard drives using the two Firewire 800 Maxtor units has been taking much longer than I expected, an hour or two more than the equivalent backup took using my MacPro’s internal SATA interface. I’ve been running them in parallel to normal operation of my MacBook Pro using its internal hard disk. I though that might go faster than booting off the Firewire 800 and cloning it from there, but now I’m not so sure.
Anyway, I’ll post reports with screen shots as fast as I can. I will be working in the STS-120 mission in the Mission Engineering Room, so posts will be contingent on how the mission is going. We’ll miss our shot at getting Leopard t-shirts, but pre-ordering it will ensure I get it quickly no matter hat the mission schedule turns out to be. We’re looking forward to it.
Frankly, Leopard has so many features we will find helpful I wish we could talk the rest of our Mac-running family members into also upgrading this week. But, other than my two sons, the rest of our Mac-using family members hardly know what an operating system upgrade is. They are running Panther and Jaguar.
Anticipating Leopard’s arrival, my wife starting making comments about how she was looking forward to using Time Machine. That made me take a look at the hard disks we had available for use for all the machines and forced me out to Fry’s to pick up one more external hard disk and one more internal.
The external hard drives in the house available for use included a 120GB Firewire 400 external (I was using that to back up my MacBook Pro’s internal hard drive which is also 120GB), a Maxtor Easy Touch II 300GB Firewire/USB 2 hard drive (used to back up the 320GB Maxtor Easy Touch III used to run the MacBook Pro from when at home), a LaCie 120GB Firewire 400 external hard disk (used to back up my wife’s iMac). I back up my Mac Pro by cloning the Mac OS X portion of the machines’ boot disk to a 300GB Maxtor SATA hard drive in the Mac Pro’s number four slot. That was not going to be a big enough inventory to back up all four machines, especially since the optimum hard drive sizes for Time Machine need to be as big or bigger than the drive being backed up. So, after mentally working out a new plan, I journeyed down to my local Fry’s Electronics where I purchased a 500GB Maxtor SATA II internal drive (on sale for $94) and another Maxtor Easy Touch III 320GB Firewire/USB 2.0 external hard drive.
My new plan is to use the new 320GB Maxtor Easy Touch to back up the identical drive I use to run my MacBook Pro when at home; use the generic Firewire drive with a 120 upgraded to 160GB hard drive to back up the MacBook Pro’s internal drive; use the 300GB Maxtor Easy Touch II to back up my wife’s 250GB iMac; and use the LaCie 120GB Firewire drive to back up her MacBook. The Mac Pro will still use its internal disk #4 to back up its boot drive and the RAID 1 set I use for scratch drives to the new 500GB Maxtor SATA II.
I’m looking forward to using Spaces, primarily on the Mac Pro, so I can set up a desktop for video editing, graphics and desktop publishing, everyday surfing and Mail, and maybe even one for flight simulators. I’ve been looking for an elegant way to segregate the tasks I do on the Mac Pro for some time, and I’ll let you know whether Spaces does the trick.
I’m also looking forward to seeing how well both the still photo and video backdrops in iChat work and how much horsepower they take to run.
Additionally, I know I'll try out the To-Do Notes in Mail, though I’m not sure how useful it will really be. Most of the time, when I send myself a reminder of something to do, I’m not using a Mac. I’m at work on a PC, so I suspect I’ll still be e-mailing myself regular e-mail notes as a reminder for quite some time to come.
I’ve been backing up all my systems this afternoon, readying for the Leopard installation. The cloning of hard drives using the two Firewire 800 Maxtor units has been taking much longer than I expected, an hour or two more than the equivalent backup took using my MacPro’s internal SATA interface. I’ve been running them in parallel to normal operation of my MacBook Pro using its internal hard disk. I though that might go faster than booting off the Firewire 800 and cloning it from there, but now I’m not so sure.
Anyway, I’ll post reports with screen shots as fast as I can. I will be working in the STS-120 mission in the Mission Engineering Room, so posts will be contingent on how the mission is going. We’ll miss our shot at getting Leopard t-shirts, but pre-ordering it will ensure I get it quickly no matter hat the mission schedule turns out to be. We’re looking forward to it.
posted by Andy Foster at
7:29 PM
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