Quick Links for Buying
Where to go to buy Macs and related items.
CHOOSING & CONFIGURING A MAC
Choosing and Configuring a Mac
An in-depth look at how to find the right Mac setup for you
- How to Choose a Mac
- How to Select and Configure a Mac Pro
- How to Select and Configure a MacBook Pro
- How to Select and Configure an iMac
- Buying a Refurbished Mac
- Buying a Mac at the Apple Store
- Upgrading Your Mac
- Setting up Your New Mac (or renovating one)
- Boot Drive Dogma
- Backup and reliability
- Simple and cost-effective backups
- Backing up with Apple’s Mac Backup
- My Mac Pro: An Example
- Mac Pro Memory: choosing, installing, testing
Using Apple Time Machine for Backup
How to use Apple Time Machine for Data Safety
- Using Mac OS X Time Machine for data safety
- Configuring Time Machine
- Choosing a Time Machine Backup Drive
- Restoring Files with Time Machine
- Time Machine and Backup Tips
- Starting a Time Machine Backup When Desired
- Excluding Items from Time Machine Backup
- Optimizing Time Machine
- Using Mac OS X Time Machine with Adobe Lightroom
How to Buy / What to Buy
Nuts and bolts of buying a Mac, and recommended extras.
- Buyer's Guide: Step-by-Step
- Buyer's Guide: Ordering a Refurbished Mac Pro
- Buyer's Guide: Ordering a New Mac Pro
- Buyer's Guide: Setting up a Mac Pro
- Multi-interface External Enclosures
- eSATA Enclosures
- Memory for Mac Pro
- Hard Drives for Mac Pro
- eSATA Cards for Mac Pro
- Recommended Solid State Drives (SSD)
- MacBook Pro Memory
- Hard Drives for MacBook Pro
- eSATA for MacBook pro
- Displays
- Power Conditioning (UPS)
- Vendor OWC
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
Special Report: Upgrade Now or Wait?
How To Guides
How to perform useful tasks and upgrades.
Mac Trials and Tribulations
Headaches and hassles encountered with OS X.
MAC PRO and MACBOOK PRO High Performance Pro-Grade Solutions
The MPG Photo Workstation™
Get a Mac desktop ready-to-use, customized for your needs
The MPG Pro Laptop™
Get a Mac laptop ready-to-use, customized for your needs
FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
Optimizing Photoshop CS5 Performance
The best hardware and configuration for Photoshop CS5.
- Introduction
- Maximum Memory on Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, iMac
- Cache Tile Size = Sharp Stick In The Eye
- 64-bit and 32-bit Plugin Issues
- Adobe Plugins for CS5 Performance
- Warmup Time — Memory Allocation Hit
- Scripts to Warm Up Photoshop CS5
- Analysis of CPU Core Usage
- Various Other Photoshop CS5 Issues
- diglloyd Benchmarks
- Conclusions
Optimizing Photoshop CS4 Performance
How to configure a Mac to maximize Photoshop CS3/CS4 performance.
- Introduction
- How to Configure Photoshop CS4 for best performance
- How to Speed Up Saving and Opening Files
- Performance in CS4 vs CS3
- Test results for Photoshop CS4 on Mac Pro
- Test results for Photoshop CS4 on MacBook Pro
- Using Solid State Drives (SSD) for Photoshop CS4 Scratch
- Optimizing Photoshop CS4 on Apple MacBook Pro With Solid State Drives
- MacBook Pro Photoshop CS4 speed demon SSD
- Using a RAM disk as a Photoshop CS4 scratch disk
- Benchmark actions
- Photoshop CS4 oddities
- Conclusions and Recommendations (CS4)
Optimizing Other Photography Software
Speedups for working with images.
OPTIMIZING MAC PERFORMANCE
Optimizing Mac Performance
Learn about Activity Monitor and understand how CPU cores, processes, memory use, and software scalability affect performance.
- Ways to Optimize Your Mac’s Performance
- Optimizing your Mac — Get Adequate Memory
- Optimizing your Mac — SSD for Fast Virtual Memory
- Optimizing your Mac — Fast Hard Drive or SSD
- Optimizing your Mac — Quit Vampire Programs
- Optimizing your Mac — Turn Off Unused Services
- How to Delete a Space-Hogging SleepFile sleepimage
Optimizing Video/DVD and Other Software
How to make your software run faster on the same hardware!
Optimizing Mac Application Performance
Optimizing specific application peformance.
Special Report: Virtual Memory on Apple MacBook Pro
Virtual memory performance on the Apple MacBook Pro 2010/2009 with solid state drives and hard drives.
OUTRAGEOUSLY FAST SYSTEMS
Apple July 2010 iMac 27-inch Quad-Core
Just how fast is Apple’s new quad-core iMac?
Apple Mac Pro Westmere 4/6/8/12-Core (Aug 2010)
Choosing among 4/6/8/12 cores, and is 2010 Mac Pro faster or better than 2009 model?
- Introduction New!
- Which Mac Pro CPU for Photography, Video, Sound? New!
- Clock Speed, Cores, and Cache New!
- Estimating CPU Performance New!
- Hits and Misses New!
- Ordering Tips— What to Get and What to Skip New!
- Solid State Drive Option New!
- How Much Memory and Where to Buy New!
- Value Compared to Quad-core iMac New!
- Internal SATA Bandwidth New!
- Test Machine Configuration New!
- Photoshop Performance — diglloydSpeed1 Updated!
- Photoshop Performance — diglloydMedium Updated!
- Photoshop Performance — diglloydHuge Updated!
- Photoshop CS5 Panorama (Auto Align and Auto Blend) Updated!
- Digital Camera RAW File Processing Speed Updated!
- Performance with PhotoZoom Pro Updated!
- Performance with Helicon Focus Updated!
- Performance with PTGui Pro Updated!
- Real World Memory Bandwidth Updated!
- Performance with Apple Logic Studio Updated!
- Performance with Adobe After Effects Updated!
- Performance with Handbrake Video Encoding Updated!
- Cinebench CPU and GPU Updated!
- Conclusions Updated!
Shootout: 8-core 2.93GHz or Quad-Core 3.33GHz?
Why 4 cores are often faster than 8!
Optimizing the MacBook Pro Core i7
Maxing-out your MacBook Pro Core i7 with memory and drives.
UNDERSTANDING MAC PERFORMANCE
Mac Performance 101: Cores, Processes, Memory
Monitoring tips and application CPU core scorecard.
Mac Performance 102: Storage
Learn about hard drive and interface performance, including RAID, partitioning, eSATA, Firewire, and more.
- Introduction
- Why you need more space than you need
- Why you should avoid Port Multiplication
- SATA, Firewire, and USB
- eSATA compared to Firewire 800
- How to Partition Hard Drives
- RAID striping and mirroring
- Step-by-step to setting up RAID on Mac OS X
- RAID 5 for Performance and Reliability
- SoftRAID — easier RAID
- eSATA PCI-Express card configuration
SSD
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Solid State Drives
Fast and durable, enterprise-grade solid state drives.
SPECIAL REPORT: Real World SSD Performance
Many brands of solid state drives put on a good show when new, but some degrade with use.
- Introduction
- Seasoning the Drives
- New vs Seasoned OWC Mercury Pro RE 200GB
- New vs Seasoned OWC Mercury Pro 240GB
- New vs Seasoned Crucial RealSSD 256GB
- New vs Seasoned Crucial M225 256GB
- New vs Seasoned Intel 160GB G2
- Comparing Results
- Fill-volume 1000-file Graph
- Severe Duty— OWC Extreme Pro RE vs Crucial RealSSD
- Severe Duty— OWC Extreme Pro vs Intel 160GB G2
- Conclusions
Solid State Drives (SSD)
Choosing and using solid state drives.
- Overview of Solid State Drives (SSD)
- How to Make Your Mac Feel Lightning-fast
- Installing a solid state drive (SSD)
- Reconditioning a solid state drive (SSD)
- Crucial 128GB solid state drive (SSD)
- Crucial M225 256GB solid state drive (SSD)
- Intel X25-M G2 160GB solid state drive (SSD)
- OWC Mercury Elite On-The-Go External SSD
- Intel X25-E SSD
- Intel X25-M SSD on MacBook Pro
- Intel X25-M SSD in Mac Pro RAID
REVIEWS
MacBook Pro eSATA Cards
A review of eSATA cards for the MacBook Pro.
- eSATA with ExpressCard/34 Slot
- Test Procedure
- eSATA with Mercury Extreme SSD
- eSATA with OWC QX2 RAID-5 Enclosure
- eSATA with Hitachi 7K2000 2TB Hard Drive
- eSATA with Voyager Q + Mercury Extreme SSD
- eSATA with 2TB Guardian Maximus RAID-1 Mirror
- eSATA vs Firewire 800
- Support for S.M.A.R.T. Status
- Conclusions
Apple MacBook Pro Core i7 (April 2010)
A review of Apple’s first Core i7 laptop.
- Introduction
- Features and Changes
- Ergonomics and Usability
- Test Configurations
- CPU Performance and Memory Speed
- System Boot and Application Launch
- SATA performance With Solid State Drives
- SATA performance With Solid State Drives: BIZARRE
- Performance with Photoshop CS4
- Performance with RAW File Processing
- Software Development (XCode)
- Conclusions
Misc. Reviews
Ad hoc reviews of hardware and software.
- OWC 8GB memory modules for Mac Pro
- NewerTech MAXPower eSATA 6G PCIe Card for Mac Pro
- Newer Technology Guardian Maximum 2TB RAID-1 Mirror for Plug and Play Reliability
- OWC Elite-AL Pro mini
- OWC Mercury Elite Al-PRO QX2
- Data Robotics Drobo
- NewerTech Voyager Q Drive Dock
- OWC On-The-Go 2.5-inch enclosure
- Sonnet Fusion F2 portable 2-drive RAID
- 2009 Apple MacBook Pro unibody 17
- Pimp My MacBook Pro
- 2008 Apple MacBook Pro unibody
- 2009 Apple MacMini
- Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard/34
Mac Pro Early 2009 (Nehalem)
Configuring and optimizing.
Desktop Hard Drives
Performance and use.
- Introduction
- Western Digital RE4 2TB Enterprise Grade 'RAID Edition' HDD
- Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB hard drive
- Hitachi 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 / Ultrastar A7K2000
- Western Digital RE4-GP 2TB
- Low-power 2TB consumer hard drives
- Hitachi 1TB Deskstar E7K1000 Saturn.E
- Hitachi 1TB Deskstar 7K1000
- Maxtor 500GB Maxline Pro 7H500F0
- Seagate 1TB Barracuda ES_2
- Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11
- Western Digital 1TB RE3
Laptop Hard Drives
Technical performance data.
SOFTWARE
Software Tools
Tools for testing reliability and performance.
- DiglloydTools Software overview
- Purchase and Download
- DiskTester - drive performance and reliability
- MemoryTester - Memory and stress testing
- IntegrityChecker - Verify file integrity
- Command line tips
- Troubleshooting Issues
- DiskTester error: Cannot allocate minimum contiguous free space
- DiskTester error: permissions error, -5000 error
DiskTester User Manual
How to use DiskTester to test your hard drives or SSDs for speed and reliability.
- DiskTester User Manual
- DiskTester Testing Guidelines
- DiskTester recondition Command
- DiskTester fill-volume Command
- DiskTester run-area-test Command
- DiskTester run-sequential-suite Command
- DiskTester run-sequential Command
- DiskTester iops Command
- DiskTester run-streams Command
- DiskTester test-reliability Command
- DiskTester create-files Command
- DiskTester read-files Command
- DiskTester show-info Command
- Notes on Using the Command Line
MemoryTester User Manual
How to use MemoryTester, stress test your Mac, check for bad memory, etc.
IntegrityChecker User Manual
How to use IntegrityChecker to validate and verify your files, images, etc on your main drive, backups, or DVD/CD.