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Well, I Finally Did It! (and a question)

khollister

khollister

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 1, 2003
555
56
Orlando, FL
Just pulled the trigger on a 3.2 GHz Quad, 27" ACD, OWC 120 GB SSD, 12GB OWC RAM and ESATA card. Used my employee discount on the Apple stuff. Got a mDP extension cable from Monoprice for the monitor. Using ESATA for my Voyager drive dock I use for backup drive cloning. I'll be taking 2 2TB drives and a 1TB drive from my FW enclosures and putting them inside.

Use is photography (CS5, NX2, Photomatix, etc) and music (Logic, Kontakt, Spectrasonics).

One question - I plan to use the 120 GB SSD for boot+apps, but much of the music software wants to install with libraries dumped into /Library/Application Support/, which will soon overcome the SSD. I was thinking of aliasing that directory to a HD for installation and then copying the non-music stuff back over to the SSD. Any better ideas?

While Logic now has support for the 6/12 core processors, I just couldn't see the $800 price premium for the 3.33. The only real performance gain for me would have been the 8 -> 12 MB cache improvement and the 2 extra cores in Logic (CS5 is still not too MP aware).

I'm coming from a 27" i5 2.66 GHz iMac. Looking forward to a performance bump for the 3.2 as well as the SSD option and all the drives being internal (lose the collection of external FW stuff & pick up speed). Also more comfortable from a maintainability standpoint than the iMac.
 
Congratulations! That's a great setup that will serve you well for a long time. I've used symlinks for audio libraries in the past to direct Garageband and Soundtrack files to another drive. This worked fine and did exactly what you're searching for. I can't remember if aliases work or not, but I chose symlinks for some reason :eek:

Do any of those apps allow you to choose the directory? You could have them in your ~/Library folder if they'll allow. Another, less ideal option, is to install them in your ~/Applications folder. This *should* lead to the audio libraries installed in the ~/Library folder. You'll, of course, lose out on the SSD benefit so it's probably not a good solution. I've done this with some of my larger applications so I thought I'd at least mention it. Someone with more knowledge will certainly chime in :)
 
Great setup! I have the 2009 2.93GHz Quad with the 120GB OWC SSD and 12GB of RAM too, sounds like yours is just like mine except 266MHz faster :) - I got the W3540 and you will have the W3565.

Have fun with it!
 
dissolve said:
Congratulations! That's a great setup that will serve you well for a long time. I've used symlinks for audio libraries in the past to direct Garageband and Soundtrack files to another drive. This worked fine and did exactly what you're searching for. I can't remember if aliases work or not, but I chose symlinks for some reason :eek:
Click to expand...

Duh - you are correct. I meant symlinks.

A few of the tools allow installation to other drives/folders, but some of the damn stuff doesn't.
 
khollister said:
Duh - you are correct. I meant symlinks.

A few of the tools allow installation to other drives/folders, but some of the damn stuff doesn't.
Click to expand...

Symlinks are probably your best bet for those that don't. It's too bad some applications don't support multiple drive setups very well. Good luck and enjoy your new MP :D
 
Congrats! Tried talking the wife into letting me adopt a Mac Pro today myself, but she wasn't having it. Compromised and came home with a quad-core i5 iMac instead, with the understanding that I'll upgrade to a Mac Pro in the next 2-3 years.

Just out of curiousity, what kind of discount does Apple give to employees? Should I be looking for a part-time job? :D
 
BOSS10L said:
Congrats! Tried talking the wife into letting me adopt a Mac Pro today myself, but she wasn't having it. Compromised and came home with a quad-core i5 iMac instead, with the understanding that I'll upgrade to a Mac Pro in the next 2-3 years.

Just out of curiousity, what kind of discount does Apple give to employees? Should I be looking for a part-time job? :D
Click to expand...

I don't work for Apple - Apple provides discounts to employees of certain companies just like education. The discount in my case is only about 7% - offsets the sales tax at least.
 
khollister said:
I don't work for Apple - Apple provides discounts to employees of certain companies just like education. The discount in my case is only about 7% - offsets the sales tax at least.
Click to expand...

Oh okay. I'm an MA student so I'm already getting a discount. I just didn't know if it was this super-secret cool 25% off type thing. :)
 
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