The new Hitachi offering joins the Seagate GoFlex Satellite  as yet another device that is trying to make external storage relevant to user who are increasingly using mobile devices to consume content. Like the GoFlex, the G-Connect offers 500 GB of storage, and the ability to simultaneously stream to multiple devices. The G-Connect offers some nice advantages over the GoFlex, however, like the ability to stream to up to five devices, instead of just three, and an Ethernet port that lets it plug into a wired Internet connection and act as a wireless access point. But it also carries a major drawback: it lacks an internal battery, so unlike the GoFlex, you’ll have to plug the G-Connect into a power source if you want to use it, which for some might limit its utility as a mobile support device. Still, when a power source is available, as they often are on trains, planes and coffee shops, it should greatly expand the media library available to your iOS devices.

When iOS 5 arrives, iPads and iPhones will finally be cut loose from their PC tethers. That will mean that users can depend on them as their only computing devices, if they wish. But owing to the limited local storage options on iOS devices, they might run up against space constraints when doing so. iCloud aims to help with some of that, by making music, apps and books available on-demand from Apple’s servers, so that you can delete them as needed when you’re running out of room, and grab them again when you need them. But that solution depends on relatively unfettered access to an active Internet connection. Users without mobile data plans for their devices, or those with caps like Verizon’s new tiered plans will have a harder time taking full advantage of a cloud computing future.

Devices like the G-Connect and the GoFlex could be just the start of a flood of supplemental hardware designed to provide a local alternative remote streaming for users who either don’t have the bandwidth to take advantage of the latter, or who’d rather own their content than rent access to it from content providers. External local wireless storage also offers more privacy, which is a selling point for some.

While I expect the general thrust of computing in general to continue to favor remote cloud options, I think the personal cloud stands a good chance of developing at a similar pace at the same time, albeit on a smaller scale. Physical storage is cheap and getting cheaper, while the same can’t necessarily be said for broadband access. As Apple and other device manufacturers move to make the cloud the centre of its universe, it’s only natural that a percentage of consumers will opt to find an alternative centre for their own gadgets that allows them to remain autonomous and possibly save money.

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Don’t replace the hard drive

The fans-gone-wild issue and the failed AHT warning is a result of the logic board losing communication with the sensor. Thermal sensors have been included in Macs for as long as I can remember to help the system adjust fan speed to maintain acceptable temperatures. If these sensors do not report any temperature information, the firmware will turn the fans up to full to prevent a core breach in the warp engines, and/or red-hot CPU’s flowing like molten slag all over your pretty blue logic board. It’s a precautionary measure to prevent an overheating problem. The AHT warning is there to tell you which sensor has failed so you can replace it.

What makes this sensor different is that it is integrated into the custom hard drive. A lot of the earlier thermal sensors were stick-on affairs that attached to the hard drive or other locations with tape. I presume that Apple asked manufacturers to bake them into the drives to reduce both additional component costs and assembly steps.

Wires from the thermal sensor are taped to this hard drive

Unfortunately, this change means repairing a failed hard drive out of warranty (I think hard drives are designed to fail just after AppleCare expires) means paying Apple to do it instead of a cheaper DIY solution. This also means you can’t upgrade your drives because Apple will only replace drives with the exact same part. Under their current policies, you simply cannot get a bigger hard drive (or replace it with a SSD) even if you were willing to pay Apple’s prices. You better order your new iMac just the way you want it, because it’s going to stay that way for a long, long time.

Even more concerning than the design change to force the use of genuine Apple replacement drives is the absolute travesty that Apple has allowed this design flaw of the iMac to continue for so long.

The iMac is the hardest piece of Apple kit to work on yourself on by a long shot. The Mac Pro is designed to be easily opened. MacBooks and MacBook Pros provide easy access to the hard drives and RAM. The new Mac mini has a twist off access panel. Even the old Mac minis are not that bad as long as you have the right putty knife. It’s certainly not as bad as the old iBook (about 50 screws to get at the hard drive!), but it’s the worst of the current Macs. I don’t even think most people need access to the other components inside the machine, but access to the hard drive is important. The old iMacs were designed so that you could remove the back and get quick access to the drives. The aluminum iMacs were designed to open from the front so that you have to remove the glass panel (it pulls off with suction cups) and the LCD screen behind it to get to the drives.

The front glass panel is removed with suction cups

The worst part is that you often put it all back together only to find a piece of hair or lint or a stray thumbprint on the back of the glass. Takes me straight back to the days when I ran a frame shop and would turn a framed photo back over after papering the back only to find a small piece of dust emerge from the dark suede mats, staring at me from under museum glass like a blazing signal fire warning of imminent customer dissatisfaction or framer’s rage. That glass on the front of the iMac is likely responsible for more referrals to Apple’s generous mental health programs than any other item that has ever sat on a Genius Bar.

It does make for a very pretty iMac though.

Which is, I suppose, the reason why Apple has kept roughly the same iMac design for so long (since 2007). Maybe the drive could be relocated from where it is now, smack dab in the center of the machine, out to the edge where it could be accessed with a removable panel. But you can’t add an access panel for the drives to the top or bottom because that has to be kept open for the convection cooling airflow to pull air in at the bottom and vent out the top. So maybe, the side opposite the optical drive. But that would mess up the unibody look of the iMac with no visible seams in the aluminum (just the RAM slot at the bottom). Okay, so maybe adding easy hard drive access is too much of a design sacrifice, but now even if you manage to get at the hard drive, you can’t replace it.

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Advantages of Paired Storage

I love this setup. I have the blazing fast speed of the SSD (it really does feel like getting a new computer) and I have enough room for everything I need thanks to the spacious HDD. There are some other advantages that might not be obvious at first glance, too:

• You can install an alternate system on the HDD. I have Snow Leopard installed on the SSD for everyday work and I have Lion installed on the hard drive for testing.
• You can use Boot Camp to install Windows on the HDD because it is a true internal drive. Boot Camp won’t work with an external drive, but it works great with this setup and it doesn’t use any of the space on the precious SSD.
• I have lots of room for Virtual Machines on the 500GB HDD so I can create other testing setups as needed.

Yes, I have to connect an external optical drive every time I need to install something from disc, but once I was done with the initial setup I haven’t needed it that much. It really has proved to be the perfect arrangement  for my needs. Here’s how you can do it with your own MacBook.

The tools. Click to enlgarge.

What to Order

• 115 GB SSD from Other World Computing (OWC) with mounting bracket and tools — $280
• Seagate 500 GB 7200RPM drive — about $70
• external USB enclosure for the slim optical drive — about $30
• external USB enclosure for the 2.5″-inch HDD — about $20
• blazing fast computer with lots of free space — PRICELESS!

Sizing Things Up

To get the space requirements for your SSD, select your drive and “Get Info” to see how much space is used (make sure to empty the trash first!). Now check how much space is being used by the User folder(s) on your computer. The difference between the two is all the system files and applications that you will want to put on the SSD. The Users folders themselves can go on the HDD.

As an example, I was using about 300 GB on my HDD. The Applications (including CS5 and Xcode), root Library and System folders take up about 53 GB of space. My Home folder takes up about 240 GB (and my iTunes Media is on a network share). I wanted enough room for my system files and applications on the SSD, and some room left over for a portion of my user files so that these frequently used files would benefit from the speed of the SSD.

Picking the Right SSD

Using my computer as an example, I could conceivably get by with a 60GB SSD (I have 53 GB of system and application files, as mentioned). But that’s cutting it too close for the system files (OS X needs 4-5 GB of free space just for temp files and such things). And it would mean that all user files would have to go on the HDD. On top of that, early reports indicate that SSDs benefit from extra free space to keep them running fast. In my case, that would mean at least 80 GB. I wanted to get a drive from the high-performing OWC Mercury Pro line, so I moved up to the next available size of 115GB. If you’re struggling with the decision, it’s always a good idea to buy as much storage as you can afford.

Removing the Optical Drive

I have held various certifications in Apple hardware repair starting back in 1994, but I honestly didn’t need any of that training to upgrade my mid-2009 MacBook Pro. Any uni-body MacBook or MacBook Pro is pretty easy to get into. iFixit.com is a great resource for a detailed photo walk-through of the steps to remove the optical drive from your Mac. I placed the optical drive in an external slim USB enclosure so I could continue to use it, and I also have an external Blu-ray drive for any DVDs or CDs that I might need.

I also removed my existing hard drive, placing it in an external enclosure, and installed a new 500 GB 7200RPM drive from Seagate in its place. You might choose to stick with your computer’s existing HDD, depending on your storage needs.

The bracket for your SSD. Click to enlarge.

Installing the SSD

The next step is to attach the SSD to the bracket, after which you can install the bracket itself where the optical drive used to be. As I mentioned above, I bought the SSD and the bracket in a bundle from OWC. They helpfully include the tools that you need and provide online video guides for the installation.

The inside of the MacBook with the SSD installed. Click to enlarge.

Configuring the System

Setting up your new drives in Disk Utility. Click to enlarge.

I decided to do a clean install of the system to the SSD and then copy over select files from my user folder. I booted from the OS X installation disc (I actually have an external FireWire 800 hard drive set up for this purpose – saves 20-30 minutes), formatted both drives with Disk Utility and ran the installer. When that was done, I booted to the SSD, ran the guided setup, Software Update, and installed my core applications.

Handling Users and Home Folders

There are a couple of choices here. I could move my entire user folder to the HDD, but I wanted the benefits of the SSD for some frequently used files from the Home folder. I decided on a mixed solution where I could keep some user folders on the SSD (~/Applications, ~/Desktop, ~/Library in particular) and the folders with hefty storage requirements (Documents, Downloads, Movies, and Pictures) on the HDD. I kept the ~/Music folder on the SSD so that iTunes would be able to quickly load the iTunes Library file, which is the index to all of the media files and the associated metadata like ratings and play count. I had previously set the preferences in iTunes to point the iTunes Media Folder location to a network share, so all of my media files are actually on a network share. I suspect that most people would want to keep their ~/Music folder on the SSD and use the advanced preferences tab in iTunes to move the iTunes Media Folder to the hard drive.

I copied the old Documents, Downloads, Pictures and Movies folders from my original HDD (now installed in an external enclosure) to their new home on the big internal hard drive. Once I had them in place, I was ready to fix up my Home folder.

Symlinks

The trick to splitting up your Home folder so that some stays on the SSD and some points to the HDD is to use symlinks. Symlinks are a function of the UNIX underpinnings of OS X to create something like an alias, but at a low-level in the filesystem. I created links to point certain directories in my Home folder to locations on the HDD. After creating the links, those folders appear to be in the “normal” spot in my Home folder, but they don’t use any room on the SSD as they act like an alias that points to the HDD. Even thought the image below shows “Alias” as the kind for these link files, don’t make the mistake of creating an alias in the Finder. You will need to use the command line to create a symlink.

Bottom Line

This new setup has everything I need. Incredible boot times, fast application launching, and overall snappy performance. I have a triple-boot system with Snow Leopard, the developer preview of Lion, and Windows 7, with room for a few Virtual Machines too. Now that the Mac App Store is taking off, I don’t even have to hook up the optical drive very often. It’s beautiful.

If you’ve done something similar, I would love to hear about it. If you want to try this setup and have questions, I’ll try to answer in the comments below.

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Apple has released what it calls “Performance Update 1.0,” an update to its Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard) operating systems for selected iMacs and MacBooks.

As Apple describes it — in typically brief fashion — in its Support pages, ”This update addresses intermittent hard drive related pauses reported by a small number of customers.”

Gotta love those detailed descriptions!

The update may be related to an EFI Firmware Update in June that some MacBook owners suspect was the cause of intermittent crashes and system freezes. This latest update may well put these problems to rest once and for all, except there’s something interesting about the name…that 1.0 suffix hints at the possibility of further revisions to come. A “Performance Update, Update” perhaps?

The update isn’t for everyone, however. It applies only to the following Mac models.

MacBook
MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)
MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009)
MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009)

MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009)

MacBook Air
MacBook Air (Late 2008)
MacBook Air (Mid 2009)

Mac Mini
Mac Mini (Early 2009)

iMac
iMac (24-inch, Early 2009)
iMac (20-inch, Early 2009)
iMac (20-inch, Mid 2009)

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Apple users are dedicated defenders and evangelists of the products we love, but we also really like to get together and gab about the problems our devices have. I know I become obsessively detail-oriented whenever I pick up a new piece of Apple hardware, and am quick to overreact to every perceived imperfection I find by calling the Genius Bar and scheduling an appointment. Most of the time, my problems are more the product of a fevered brain and less concrete examples of design or manufacturing flaws, but some problems are all too real.

Case-in-point: Many consumers who ponied up the extra cash to get a faster, 7200RPM HDD vs. the standard, 5400RPM got more than they bargained for. Some of the drives apparently boast the unadvertised feature of making odd clicks and beeping noises while in operation. Maybe that’s just Apple’s way of making sure you’re paying attention to how much better your computer performs with the faster drive?

Seriously, though, the problem seems to affect quite a few users, with more reporting the same or similar issues every day. Reports indicate that in addition to audible clicking and beeping sounds, some of the drives are showing more serious performance issues, too, with the OS appearing to freeze for a brief second whenever a click occurs. While a vocal HD might just be annoying, a vocal HD that also seems to skip a beat is downright terrifying to anyone who depends on their MBP for work or for storing sensitive data.

Early theories on what’s causing the problem is the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 drive’s G-Force shock protection feature, which is probably redundant anyway, since Apple builds in its own fall detector and data protection system on every notebook it makes. Sadly, there’s no easy way to disable the special features for said drives. Users who’ve upgraded themselves with other 7200RPM drives seem not to be experiencing the issue, so the problem likely lies with the HDD and not with the MacBooks themselves. Cold comfort for those who’ve already paid for the Apple-installed upgrade.

The thread at the Apple support forums dealing with this issue is now 35 pages long, so I doubt it’s fallen through Cupertino’s nets. That said, no users have yet reported an actual drive failure as a result of the problem, so pressure for a response from official sources is not yet urgently required. I suspect they’ll play this one close to the chest and try to quietly issue a firmware fix before taking any more drastic action. For the time being at least, it looks like most appeals to the Apple Store for returns and exchanges are largely falling on deaf ears.

Is your machine one of those affected, and if so, has it become communicative? Describe your symptoms and discuss your experiences in the comments.

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Today it’s the foundation for all modern pre-installed Windows systems. It replaced the aging FAT (File Allocation Table) file system with a leaner, meaner standard. It’s more secure, more flexible, and has more built-in gadgets than a Swiss Army Knife. It’s NTFS, of course — the New Technology File System.

I grew up with NTFS. I was there when it was introduced with Windows NT, and I insisted on reformatting every Windows machine I ever got my hands on — wiping out stuffy old FAT32 — with a file system so much more capable and pleasing. Yeah, OK, I was total nerd about the whole thing, I know.

So it came as something of a surprise to me that I didn’t think about file systems when I was switching to the Mac. And I didn’t think about file systems when I took a terabyte hard drive from my old PC and put it in my Mac Pro. And I didn’t think about file systems when I first clicked around that drive’s contents in Finder.

I did think about file systems when I tried to save changes I made to an old document that migrated to my Mac along with the drive. I was rewarded for my Saving efforts with an unwelcome dialogue telling me I couldn’t write to the drive. And then the penny dropped. My big, new shiny Mac Pro was using HFS+ while that second HDD was formatted with NTFS. And then I had to go and have a lie down for a bit due to an acronym-induced headache.

You’re unlikely to have experienced this access problem unless you have an external drive you like to use for both a Windows machine and a Mac.

Until Apple gets around to building full read/write compatibility into its operating system (and let’s not forget Snow Leopard is right around the corner) we have to find third-party solutions that cajole our hard drives into getting along with each other. One popular (and free) solution is NTFS-3G: a reasonably simple, though somewhat fiddly, application that requires users mount their NTFS drives/partitions in order to have full read/write access to the data stored therein. This can become cumbersome if an external drive is improperly unmounted on another machine. It’s not impossible to fix, mind you, but not effortless by any means.

If you need a simpler solution that offers transparent, and deceptively native, interoperability with NTFS formatted drives, you could try Paragon’s venerable (though horribly named) NTFS for Mac OS X 7.0 (or NTFSMOSX7 as I shall now refer to it because that string of characters is marginally less cumbersome than the full name).

NTFSMOSX7 is a small download, at a little under 3 megabytes and, once installed, ticks away in the background. There’s no user interface or settings to tweak. This really is nothing more than a driver.

If you buy the full version of the software, the download will undoubtedly be larger, since the paid-for app includes Paragon’s MacBrowser software for Windows. I might have tested MacBrowser for the purpose of this review, but Paragon never responded to my emails requesting more information, so if you have used it, and have an experience to share, please add a comment at the end of the article.

The only real problem I had once the hard drive was once again mine to use and abuse, was a conspicuous lack of Spotlight functionality. This is because, by default, Spotlight doesn’t index NTFS volumes. It’s not impossible to do, but it’s also not easy to achieve. The Spotlight preferences panel is typically spartan, so it’s necessary to bypass the Spotlight settings GUI and get your hands dirty in a Terminal session.

For those of you interested, by the way, the syntax for manually adding an NTFS volume (or any volume, for that matter) to Spotlight’s index via Terminal goes like this:

sudo mdutil -i on /Volume/VolumeName

Once entered, Spotlight will begin indexing your volume, which means it’s time for you to go watch some “Galactica” or “Big Bang Theory” while you wait.

A lot has been made of the apparent (and the not-even-remotely-important) differences between NTFS and HFS+. While HFS+ was ahead of the game at a time when too many Windows users were still mired in FAT (no jokes, please), NTFS was, and remains, a sophisticated file system. In fact, it bests HFS+ in many ways. Overall, though, is it better? I don’t know for sure, and I suspect for 99 percent of everyday users the question “who cares?” springs to mind.

Sidenote: Exuberant Apple supporters — aka Wailing Fanboys — muddy the waters with their auto-hate for anything not intrinsically Apple, claiming time and time again on discussion boards that “NTFS sux.” Occasionally, a particularly tech-savvy zealot will talk about comparing streams and counting data forks and probably even get into a debate over which Enterprise Captain is the best.

None of that matters so long as you can access your data quickly and painlessly, and, at least on the Mac, NTFSMOSX7 makes that possible. If you have to use NTFS volumes regularly but can’t reformat them to use HFS+, the $40 asking price for NTFSMOSX7 is perhaps not so steep in return for the convenience of seamless data interoperability. If, on the other hand, you want occasional quick-and-dirty access to an old NTFS volume and the ability to write data to it is not a serious concern, $40 is much too expensive for what amounts to a simple driver, and I’d suggest you stick with a free alternative.

You can try NTFSMOSX7 free for 10 days by downloading it from the Paragon web site. You can see which Enterprise captain is superior by clicking here.

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