What Apple Mac to get for VW2010 with renderworks

[jeremyb]

Long time pc user but having just used VW on a mac I loved it. Can anyone recommend the a)minimum and b)ideal spec desktop machine that I should get, if I take the plunge to convert. I would like the option to upgrade (does this mean a MAC pro?). And should I get quad as opposed to Dual core, and how about RAM and video cards? I dont mind spending a bit more to get a machine which lasts a while.

Any advice happily received.

Thanks

[CipesDesign]

See my [iMac 27"] specs below. I am very happy with this setup. The iMac is not exactly expandable, except for allowing for additional RAM. However in my opinion, unless you are doing heavy rendering all the time, it seems unnecessary to go to the MacPro line (especially as the cost is substantially greater).

[Bruce Kieffer]

I went from a tower to an iMac 3 years ago, and I've never been sorry. Had towers for 15 plus years before that. They are big, hot, heavy, expensive. Never did any expansion except add a hard drive. Getting an iMac with a 1TB or 2TG drive is plenty large today. Won't be a need to add storage to that for many years. The iMac has many benefits in my mind. If my iMac failed today, I would definitely buy the same machine Peter has. If Apple comes out with a new iMac with a high resolution screen, I'll be selling my iMac.

[jeremyb]

Thanks for all your advice. Think I am going to take the plunge and buy an iMac like yours Peter. Ooerrr! One other question, how do you do backups? I would want to backup to a different hard drive, suppose I could do this over an eternet connection to a hard drive on my pac, but what do you guys recommend?

[Bruce Kieffer]

Use Apple's Time Machine with a FireWIre or USB 2 connected drive. I have a Time Capsule (WIFI). It works great until you want to restore a file. It can take 20 minutes for the darn thing to load the "galaxy" interface over WIFI. That makes me nuts. My friend says his FireWire connected backup drive take only seconds to load the Time Machine restore interface.

[Pat Stanford]

Backups:

3:2:1

At least 3 copies, 2 different media (HD, CD, Internet, etc.), at least 1 copy off site.

I look at backups as three levels of desperation.

Level 1. I lost a file. If you accidentally delete a file or realize you made changes to the original instead of makeing a copy, you need to be able to get back that file or folder. Time Machine is great for this. It keep versions of changed files in the system. Typically it keeps hourly for the last two days, Daily for the last month and Weekly for as long as you have HD space for. It has saved me numerous times. Highly recommended.

Level 2. My HD just crashed what do I do now? If you need to get back up in a hurry, nothing beats having a complete bootable backup. I use SuperDuper to make a bootable clone to an external hard drive every night at 2AM. I have only had to use it once, but it let me get back on line in minutes instead of days. Another option is Carbon Copy Cloner.

Level 3. My office just burned down (or was robbed). If you have a major catastrophe, it will not do you any good to have 100 backups if they are all sitting right next to the computer. Either get an extra HD and swap it out off site on a regular basis (Daily is best but weekly or monthly is better than nothing). Or use an online backup service (Mozy, CrashPlan, Carbonite or others) to store your data in the cloud. Or you can roll your own online backup using something like rsync and Amazon S3 (not for the faint of heart). If you are not going to go online, consider sending your off site backups to someone in another part of the country. If you have it in your banks vault down the street and the earthquake (or tornado or hurricane) destroys the entire town it won't do you much good.

All of the specific software recommendations above are for Mac, but the general ideas apply to everyone.

You really need to consider how valuable your data is. Can you afford to lose a weeks work? A month? An hour? and choose backup systems that make you safe.

One more comment. Diversify your backups. Don't go and buy 5 of the exact same HD. Buy different ones. If there is a bug or hardware defect you don't want it to impact every copy you have.

Also, be careful of the Western Digital (WD) Passport mini drives. I have had real problems with them, I love the WD MyBook Studios. I have also had good luck with LaCie and iomega hard drives.

[CipesDesign]

Currently I am using time machine, to and external firewire drive. I (thankfully) have never needed to test it, but I assume it will works as expected in the event of an unforeseen loss of data. Make sure you get a large a drive as you can afford. The more storage space you have the better as time machine will automatically erase the oldest one(s) when your drive gets full... P

[Bruce Kieffer]

Peter,

Time Machine's compression is very good. I have a 500 GB drive in my iMac, a 500 GB in my MacBook Pro, and a 500 GB Time Capsule. I backup both computers to the Time Capsule. Both computers have about 230 GB of "stuff" on them (each). I can go back to January with my back ups, and the Time Capsule still has 200 GB available. I'm convinced that a back up drive that's twice the size of the space used on your computer is plenty.

[CipesDesign]

Thanks Bruce. I think that's a good recommendation. Have a good 4th!

[Bryan G.]

As of late my boot hard drive went down and was forced to use my time machine backup. IT WORKS LIKE A DREAM! thank god apple engineers came up with this one. If you are looking for a single source backup system a 1 or 2 TB external backup drive with Time Machine is a fantastic choice.

And Bruce is right if you need to go back to a specific day, easy as pie.

[Assembly]

I use time machine. Excellent.

I have three portable hardrives.

One sits constant on the main computer.

One is in a safe.

One comes home.

Each time you switch out your hardrive reset the Time machine to the reinstalled drive. It is easy.

If you have a small amount of data and lots of bandwidth dropbox.com is a good option.

Store your files in the dropbox. Keep one of your old machines offsite with a linked dropbox. This keeps copies in your local drive, the cloud, and anywhere else you have another link. Caution though if you delete a file in one location it removes it from all. However if you add a Timemachine drive to the remote computer then your covered.

As a note on dropbox- we have a shared VW preference folder stored in our drop box. This means that when one person adds a favorite file, or creates a new plug in it updates all the workspaces in the office.

[billtheia]

With regard to backups, I'm similar to Pat.

I have an iMac with a 1TB drive and use a 2TB Otherworld Computing firewire 800 drive that is partitioned into two, 1TB drives. I use one of those drives for Time Machine and make periodic SuperDuper clones on the other.

This gives me access to hourly backups if I lose a file and a way to "easily" restore my system if my hard drive fails.

I'm currently trying to decide which of the online backup services to use to cover fire, theft, or disaster.