MacIntosh question

[Catty1]

My new employers have an iMac G4 Power PC. It runs at 1.25 GHz, and has only 768MB of RAM (DDR S[D]RAM).

Since it is used for full business work in national and international community development, it gets heavy memory loads.

Would you recommend a faster processor and more RAM? Would love some feedback.

ALSO - on a regular PC, regular maintenance is done by disk cleanup, disk defrag, etc. Are there any maintenance procedures for a Mac?

Thanks very much. :)

(PS I am checking with the dealer and a Mac guru in town also)

PPS - the owners of the iMac believe it is best to turn the computer off at night as it helps keep it 'cleaner'. They say they have to do this at least every couple of weeks or it will clog up.

Ummm....doesn't sound right to me!

[BitsyNaceyDog]

Would you recommend a faster processor and more RAM? Would love some feedback. I'd get more RAM. We always add more RAM when we get a new computer, Macs just never come with enough.


ALSO - on a regular PC, regular maintenance is done by disk cleanup, disk defrag, etc. Are there any maintenance procedures for a Mac?
Not really. Whenever she's online if there are any updates they will automatically notify her, she just has to give the go ahead for the updates to download.


the owners of the iMac believe it is best to turn the computer off at night as it helps keep it 'cleaner'. They say they have to do this at least every couple of weeks or it will clog up. I've never heard that or done it. It's certainly not hurting anything though. Quitting your applications (especially with their search engine) at the end of the day or logging out of their account (which will quite the applications) will help keep things from "clogging up". Or they can just periodically empty their cache. There's something called "Activity Monitor" that... well... monitors your activity- it will tell you what is hogging all the memory.

[Catty1]

Thanks!

I looked up the spec on this iMac and it will support up to 1GB of RAM.

Replace the 256 with another 512 I suppose. PC 2700 - not too easy to find!

I'll check the Activity Monitor - thanks!

[Karen]

Sometimes with a Mac that is close to having all its RAM being used, you have to quit out of ALL your applications before it actually releases the memory. I'd check and see how much memory your commonly used applications are set to take up, and certainly upgrade the memory in the machine.

What operating system version are you using?

[Catty1]

OSX :)

And, as KBlaix said, I'll check the Activity Monitor before opening any programs, and see if I can find out what is using most of the memory.

The photos, I bet. Time to get these folks into Flash drives, as this particular iMac will not support more than 1GB of RAM.

[jennielynn1970]

Here are the specs on the laptop I have... it's a MacBook

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz

I bought my laptop from a guy who tweaked it himself. It is maxed out more than any typical Mac that you'd buy from a certified dealer. It's got a ton of apps and utilities on it.

We had been using Norton for problems, but they've been using Disk Warrior lately. Another application for issues that I've found is Onyx.

The G4 will last them for a while, but have been out for a few years. eMacs aren't a bad deal either, and getting a Mac that has a Core Intel Duo processor is a better deal as well.

[Randi]

Catty1, a faster processor and more RAM really depends on whether you are working with heavy things or not. I have a Mac (G5) with two harddisks and the same RAM as you have, but a faster processor, and it’s been running quite smoothly - even with loads of images and very heavy maps on it. If you have two harddisks on it, the one thing you should beware of, is keeping your heavy files on the harddisk that doesn’t have the system on it.

Macs are notoriously reliable computers, but even the best computers sometimes have problems: be it a hard drive crash, Mac OS X problem, or a more extensive hardware failure. Having the right diagnostic, repair, and data recovery tools can make all the difference for recovering your data and for diagnosing or resolving issues. In this article, Ryan Faas identifies and compares the five best tools for working with the hard drive, keeping your Mac running, and diagnosing problems.

I run Disk Utility frequently, and a few weeks ago, I ran Disk Warrior, that repairs directory damage and optimizes the directory. I’ve heard good things about Apple Jack, but hasn’t used it myself yet.

Also, install the Apple updates you need, and clear your cache now and again.

Anyway, here’s a good read for you! :)

Data Rescue II

Prosoft’s Data Rescue II is a tool that is designed to do one thing, data recovery, and designed to do it extremely well. Data Rescue II is for situations in which you need to recover critical data that has either been deleted or is stored on a damaged drive. It can work with drives that are failing because of corrupted directory structures (the most common hard drive problem) or because of physical problems with the drive.

Unlike hard drive repair tools, which work by attempting to repair or rebuild corrupted directory structures, Data Rescue doesn’t make any modifications to a drive. This enables it to have a greater chance of recovering data from a drive than the process of actually trying to repair the drive. Repairing a corrupted hard drive can often be successful, but if it fails, it can also result in further data loss. Data Rescue’s read-only approach means that it often has a better chance of recovering data than other tools.

Data Rescue ships on bootable CDs for both Power PC and Intel Macs, and it provides both an easy-to-use guided interface and an expert interface for advanced users. When attempting to recover data, it can sort available files by type, making locating and recovering specific items easier. It can be used to clone the contents of a damaged drive during recovery or to allow you to select only the files you need. The one requirement to be aware of is that Data Rescue II will require a second hard drive or partition to recover data to—this is required for its hands-off recovery approach.

If you are looking for a tool simply to recover data, there is no better tool than Data Rescue II. In fact, the ability to recover data and then simply reformat a problem drive using Disk Utility could provide consumers with a complete disk toolkit solution. The fact that it also offers you the ability to recover deleted files is icing on the cake, particularly for support professionals who often get asked to perform this type of miracle.


Drive Genius

Also by Prosoft, Drive Genius is a comprehensive hard drive utility. It can be used to verify and repair disk directory structures; it can also be used to rebuild directory structures from badly corrupted disks. Like most third-party tools, Drive Genius provides a better chance of recovering corrupted disks than Disk Utility.

NOTE

Repairing a directory structure is the process of comparing it with the contents of the disk and then making corrections where possible. Rebuilding a directory structure replaces the damaged directory structure with a new one based on the location of data found on the disk—a process often attempted if repair fails.

Beyond identifying and repairing corrupted directory structures, Drive Genius offers an array of more-advanced features not found in Disk Utility. The first of them is defragmenting and optimizing the layout of data on a disk. Although the Mac OS X Extended (HFS+) and related disk formats are not as susceptible to fragmentation problems as other formats, such as the PC FAT format, fragmentation can still occur, particularly on disks that are (or at one point were) about 90 percent full. Defragmenting a disk so that all the data of each file is stored in contiguous sectors can improve performance. Optimizing a disk so all related data is stored together (in particular, applications and Mac OS X boot and system files) can improve performance even more.

Drive Genius also offers a secure erase feature that can be used to securely erase all data on a drive or just the free space of a drive, which results in a secure erasure of any previously deleted files. This is offered in Disk Utility and using the Finder’s Secure Empty Trash feature as well. However, the ability to securely erase a disk’s free space is helpful because it ensures that any files not deleted using the Secure Empty Trash feature cannot be recovered without the need to erase the entire disk.

Hardware-level features include the ability to test the physical integrity of a drive, scan for bad sectors, and conduct performance bench marks. Drive Genius also offers two other advanced features.

The first is direct editing of a disk’s sectors (something only very advanced users should think about doing). The second is the ability to resize existing partitions on a hard drive without reformatting the drive (along with the ability to create/format new partitions and delete existing partitions, which exists in Disk Utility). This is a feature that was not available to Mac users until a few years ago. It is a very useful ability that is also provided by MicroMat’s DiskStudio (which is not included in this list because that is its only feature). This feature has also been added to the command-line version of Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.6, but it is available only for hard drives using the GPT partition table scheme—which cannot be used on startup disks for Power PC Macs.

Overall, Drive Genius is a great tool because it includes powerful disk-repair features and also because it incorporates a number of additional powerful and useful features. It is a good choice for support professionals as well as consumers looking for a multifaceted hard drive tool.


TechTool Pro

MicroMat’s TechTool Pro is probably the most comprehensive hardware testing and diagnostic tool outside of the tools Apple ships to authorized repair centers. It can test virtually every internal component of any Mac model. This is a great diagnostic tool for determining whether a problem is hardware-related and, if so, which piece of hardware is the cause of that problem. It can also verify the integrity of a hard drive’s directory structures as well as the integrity of the files stored on a hard drive and can be used to repair corrupted structures and files.

Like Drive Genius, TechTool Pro offers the ability to defragment and optimize the contents of a hard drive and to securely delete data (you can choose to securely erase an entire drive, free space, or specific files and folders). TechTool Pro also enables you to configure automatic testing of a given disk’s directory structures as well as to regularly query SMART status of hard drives, which can alert you to problems before they become drive failures. It also includes some data-recovery capabilities.

One of the most interesting features of recent releases of TechTool Pro is its eDrive function. eDrive creates a small emergency partition on your hard drive that can be used to boot a computer should the primary start partition fail due to corruption (in the event of a physical drive failure, this partition will not work any more than the main partition on the drive). The emergency partition includes files needed to boot the computer and a copy of TechTool Pro. This can be helpful in situations in which you do not have access to the bootable TechTool Pro DVD.

TechTool Pro is actually available in a variety of forms. In addition to the commercial TechTool Pro package, a version called TechTool Deluxe is included with AppleCare Protection Plans). MicroMat also includes a version on a small bootable Firewire flash drive called TechTool Protégé that is extremely portable and a version called TechTool Protogo that can be installed on an iPod, turning it into a portable and bootable diagnostic drive.

TechTool Pro is a very good all-round diagnostic tool. It is particularly helpful for support professionals because of its capability to test hardware. However, in my experience, its hard drive repair and data recovery features, while being more successful than Disk Utility when working with corrupted hard drives, tend to fall short of the capabilities in other tools—including Data Rescue II, Drive Genius, and Disk Warrior.


DiskWarrior

Alsoft’s DiskWarrior doesn’t offer the broad range of hardware diagnostics that TechTool does, nor does it offer the array features for things such as formatting, resizing partitions, and defragmenting drives that Drive Studio offers. It is designed as a drive repair tool and it can generally be considered the most powerful such tool. DiskWarrior can rebuild disk directory structures better than most tools; if it cannot repair a disk, it can usually build a replacement directory by examining the files on it. In fact, DiskWarrior is so often successful that many technicians respond in shock or surprise when DiskWarrior cannot repair a disk. In the process of rebuilding a disk’s directory, DiskWarrior also optimizes the layout of directory data for improved performance, particularly for tools such as Spotlight and the Finder, which rely heavily on disk directory information (DiskWarrior optimizes only the directory data and does not optimize or defragment the file data on the disk).

In its most recent version, DiskWarrior also offers the ability to verify and repair Mac OS X permissions as well as the ability to check for and repair damage to various types of files on a Mac OS X startup drive. It can verify and repair preference files, symlinks, and folder and file length limits—all of which can become corrupted and cause serious issues under Mac OS X. It also supports based tests of a drive’s hardware using SMART technology.

Although it doesn’t provide many bells and whistles, DiskWarrior is often the last-resort tool for problem drives and it more often than not can repair them successfully. It also has a very clean and easy-to-use interface that includes very good explanations of each feature and step in a repair process. When rebuilding a disk’s directory, it also offers the option to preview the replacement directory to ensure that it resolves problems and to copy data from a drive experiencing physical failures. If you are looking solely for a tool for resolving hard drive problems and checking for certain types of file corruption, DiskWarrior is an excellent choice.


AppleJack

AppleJack is the only open source tool in this list and it is the only one that isn’t focused on hard drives or hardware. AppleJack is a tool designed to resolve problems with Mac OS X that can cause failures and erratic behavior, including startup issues. It is a shell script that is designed to run only in single user mode. This makes it useful if you are troubleshooting a Mac that cannot startup properly.

Most of AppleJack’s features are actually easy to navigate access to existing command-line tools or troubleshooting techniques. However, placing them in an easy-to-use, menu-driven package that can be easily accessed from the single user mode command prompt is a great help to the troubleshooting process. AppleJack even offers an autopilot mode that runs through its core techniques automatically. The interface is also very user friendly for those not comfortable with command-line tools.

AppleJack provides access to the disk repair options that Disk Utility offers (the fsck command-line tool) as well as to the repair permissions function in Disk Utility. It also includes features for cleaning out system and user cache files as well as the ability to verify the system and user preferences files are not corrupt (this is done using the plutil command-line tool, which can also be done from the Terminal or using the Preferential Treatment application). It can also delete the virtual memory swap file, which is normally deleted when Mac OS X restarts but can become corrupted and that corruption can, in rare cases, remain despite a restart.

AppleJack also has a series of expert features that are listed as being experimental or still in development. These features include the ability test installed RAM using the memtest command-line tool, which can be installed along with AppleJack (memtest can also be run from the terminal or using the Rember application). Two other features include the ability to disable auto-login and login items for specific users (which can be helpful as part of troubleshooting failures that occur at login). There is also the ability to disable specific system configuration files if you suspect that they are corrupt.

AppleJack’s expert features also include several NetInfo tools, including an interface for easily restoring a NetInfo database, disabling NetInfo automounts, and deleting the local NetInfo database. Deleting the NetInfo database, a feature named "enable new machine setup" will cause Mac OS X to enter setup mode as though it were just installed. This can be for resolving problems associated with local user accounts, but without erasing the hard drive. It can also be used if you are giving away a computer and want to delete your user information but leave files in tact.

[Catty1]

The Diskwarrior sounds interesting - but right now the computer is moving at the speed of snail, so I am suspecting memory.

Will check Activity Monitor first.

Are Diskutility and Diskwarrior freeware? Or are they in the system somewhere?

Thanks, all

[Randi]

You will most likely find Disk Utility under Utilities in Applications, not sure about Disk Warrior - I boot up from a CD. Take a look here:

http://www.csctoronto.com/store/index.php?manufacturers_id=63&sort=4a

Also, check apple.com

[Edwina's Secretary]

PPS - the owners of the iMac believe it is best to turn the computer off at night as it helps keep it 'cleaner'. They say they have to do this at least every couple of weeks or it will clog up.



You should turn your computer off every night....I don't know about the health of your computer -- but for the health of your pocketbook. Computers draw current. In fact, if your computer is plugged into a power strip, you should turn the whole strip off when you are not using the computer. Those strips use electircity even when nothing is turned on.

This goes for electical chargers as well.

Good for your electric bill, your pocket book and the planet!