Cyber Monday Deals at OWC and B&H Photo

OWC Cyber Monday deals. Items that caught my eye:

• DIGLLOYD recommended enhancement bundle for 2013 Mac Pro only $1999.
• DIGLLOYD recommended enhancement bundle for late 2015 iMac 5K only $2108.
• OWC Mercury Elite Pro 5TB USB external drive $229 (great for backups).
• MPG favorite TRIPP LITE USB3 hub for only $49 (see MPG review).
• 64GB memory for late 2015 iMac 5K for $675.
• Bus-powered 3.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini Portable for $249.
• Apple EarPods for only $8.75 or Uniden Earbuds Stereo earbuds $0.99.
• Leitz Mobile Battery pack, backup battery for iPod, iPhone, iPad $11 / 88% off

Build a 1.6TB enterprise-grade SSD box

Going fast—will be sold out within hours: 300GB Micron for $85 and 400GB Micron SSD for $99. The 300GB and 400GB are enterprise-grade with 28% over-provisioning!.

Here’s what you need to build a 1.6TB enterprise-grade SSD box for about $805.

Stick 4 of the 300GB or 400GB SSDs inside a Thunderbay 4 Mini for 1.2TB or 1.6TB of SSD storage in a nice compact box (Thunderbay 4 Mini).

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Build your own 1.6TB SSD Thunderbolt

View SSDs at OWC

B&H Cyber Monday Deals

Deals sell out when they sell out. Some like DealZone are good for only a day or a few hours.

View B&H Cyber Monday deals...

Nikon Bundle and Save
Canon DSLR bundle Savings
Canon Lens and Speedlite Savings

View Canon Deals Right Now

ALSO see Deal Zone Express: “Unbeatable Deals Throughout the Day”, new deals every few hours. Deals that caught my eye:

• Sony A7R II includes $200 B&H gift card OR Metabones adapter for Canon EF ($399 value). The Sony A7R II is a superb camera, see the diglloyd review of the Sony A7R II. My handheld favorite camera.
• Nikon D810 DSLR Camera Body with Adobe Creative Cloud 12-Month Subscription Kit $500 off. My workhorse camera.
• Olympus EM-D E-M5 + 14-42mm lens only $419 (53% off). Very enjoyable camera, perfect for the teenage photographer.
• PANASONIC Lumix DMC-GH3 Mirrorless Micro Four Thirds Digital Camera $498 ($300 off)
• Apple 21.5" iMac (Late 2013) ($350 / 27% off). Perfect computer for the kids for school work, email, etc.
• Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro (Mid 2015) $200 off
• All Apple deals: iMac deals, MacBook/MacBook Pro deals, Mac Pro deals, MacMini deals.
• Canon imageCLASS MF8280Cw Wireless Color All-in-One Laser Printer $250 / 55% off! View more printer deals.
• It’s winter! Stow the 30% off WAGAN 900Amp Jump Starter/Portable Power Station in your car trunk.

Deals Updated Daily!
Find by % savings, by brand, by category:
Macs, 4K Television, Printers, SONY, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, ZEISS, ALL DEALS...

B&H has deals every day, and MPG Lloyd’s special deals page (updated daily) lets you find deals by brand and/or discount percent.

Tip: bookmark Lloyd’s special deals page for use over the year! B&H is an authorized Apple dealer.

Lens Rentals

• Sale ends at11:59 PM CT Monday, November 30th.
• 10% discount on purchased equipment from LensAuthority will be applied in the shopping cart
• Use the code BLACKFRIDAY to get 25% off any single rental
• One use per customer
• Rental must begin by March 31st, 2016

Black Friday Deals at OWC and B&H Photo

OWC Black Friday deals. Deals run out when stock runs out, so buy early! Some deals will sell out quickly, some may run over the weekend too. Items that caught my eye:

• DIGLLOYD recommended enhancement bundle for 2013 Mac Pro only $1999.
• OWC Envoy Pro thumb drive 120GB only $99
• MPG favorite TRIPP LITE USB3 hub for only $49 (see MPG review).
• 64GB memory for late 2015 iMac 5K for $774.99.
• Bus-powered 3.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini Portable for $249.
• Apple EarPods for only $8.75 or Uniden Earbuds Stereo earbuds with Inline Remote and Mic $0.99.
• OWC 12 Port Thunderbolt 2 Dock with free Thunderbolt cable $219.

Build a 1.6TB enterprise-grade SSD box

Intel 100GB SSD for $29 and 300GB Micron for $79 and 400GB Micron SSD for $119.

WOW, the 300GB and 400GB are enterprise-grade with 28% over-provisioning!).

Stick 4 of the 300GB or 400GB SSDs inside a Thunderbay 4 Mini for 1.2TB or 1.6TB of SSD storage in a nice compact box (Thunderbay 4 Mini).

B&H Photo Black Friday Deals

Deals sell out when they sell out. Some like DealZone are good for only a day or a few hours.

Deal Zone Express: “Unbeatable Deals Throughout the Day”, new deals at 9AM, 12PM, 3PM EST. Scroll down page for more savings. Black Friday featured savings, Canon savings.

Deals that caught my eye:

• $450 off mid 2015 iMac 5K
• $700 off Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro Notebook Computer with Retina Display (Mid 2014).
• $80 off LG Google Nexus 5X 16GB Smartphone (Unlocked, Black)
• $50 off Apple Watch Sport Smartwatch (38mm, Space Gray Aluminum, Black Band)
• 50% off X-Rite ColorChecker Passport

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Turns out that a 15" MacBook Pro Retina makes a darn fine cutting board / lunch tray when out in the wilderness.

1152x1536 | 1728x2304

Lunch in a snowstorm

f2.2 @ 1/750 sec, ISO 25; 2015-11-27 11:21:12
iPhone 6s Plus + iPhone 6s Plus back camera 4.15mm f/2.2

The iPhone 6s Plus is terrific for close-ups in tight quarters that would be quite awkward with a regular camera. Too bad the iPhone camera placement is such a usability design failure (asymmetric placement of camera, just where fingers want to hold the phone).

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Bread and Cowgirl Creamery 'Mt Tam' for Lunch

f2.2 @ 1/400 sec, ISO 25; 2015-11-27 11:23:52
iPhone 6s Plus + iPhone 6s Plus back camera 4.15mm f/2.2

Get a Gorgeous 5K Display—with a Free Computer Included!

See also Apple iMac 5K: 8GB and 16GB Configurations can *ADD* Memory While Keeping the Two Modules You Already Paid For.

Meaning that the 14.7-megapixel iMac 5K display is a wonder to behold. A photographer must-have, amateur or pro, soccer Mom or casual snapshotter—for unprecedented detail, contrast and color, a total combination that has no peer for sheer eye-popping beauty*.

If the iMac 5K display were offered as a display only, say at $1629, it would be worth it. So why not get one, and with a free iMac computer included? But that computer just happens to trounce the fastest 8-core Mac Pro in many tests (the high-end model at least).

Why pay full price at Apple when B&H Photo is discounting the iMac 5K like this?

• B&H Photo discounts on brand-new late 2015 Apple iMac 5K.
• All iMac 5K models
• MPG’s recommended high end iMac 5K for power users.
• B&H Photo also has discounted iMac 4K models.

MPG recommends these accessories: OWC memory upgrades, OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock, TRIPP LITE USB3 hub, OWC Mercury Elite Pro external drives for backup, OWC Thunderbay for storage and/or backup.

* Not necessarily the best choice for professional image editing or color management however.

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Parents: Macs Under $1000, and Many More Mac Discounts

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

MPG Lloyd is lucky to have several older laptops from past use for kids, but most parents find even $100 a lot, particularly with several children:

MacBook deals under $1000 or Mac Mini deals under $1000.

A whole bunch of Apple MacBook Pros have discounts from $100 to $650 at B&H photo and most also have 4% rewards and free shipping. Biggest discounts are on the 15" MacBook Pro, and there is even $300 off on the MPG recommended top-end 2015 MacBook Pro Retina.

• Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13.3" up to $500 off
• Apple MacBook Pro Retina 15" up to $400 off
• Apple MacBook 12" Early 2015 up to $200 off
• Apple MacBook Air 11.6" up to $150 off
• Apple MacBook Air 13" up to $650 off

See also all deals on Macs at B&H Photo. <== bookmark this page

Cameras

Looking for a camera for someone special? Here are two deep discount deals on very fine cameras.

Canon Rebel T5i bundle (sorry this one-day deal is expired)

Great gift for anyone looking to get into photography.

$399 after rebate for Canon EOS Rebel T5i DSLR Camera with 18-55mm Lens & PIXMA PRO-100 Printer Kit.

Includes Canon Rebel T5i, 19-55m lens, Canon PIXMA Pro-100 printer. The printer alone has a list price of $399, though it is currently available at a deep discount by itself.

Sony A6000 deal

Some of the lenses are HALF OFF.

Save up to $300 when you Buy a a6000 and Bundle it with a lens

Click Add to Cart to get the bundle popup window and be sure to see all the choices at left (Feature, Photo Software, Mirrorless System Lenses), like this.

=> Peruse all deals by brand + discount UP TO 70% OFF <==

iMac 5K (Late 2015) with 64GB: the Key to Professional Usage

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.

OWC 64GB Memory kit for late 2015 iMac 5K

All prior models of the iMac 5K have long been handicapped by a 32GB memory limit, thus forcing professionals to the Mac Pro.

The late 2015 iMac 5K changes the game by accepting up to 64GB memory, which makes it far more viable for professional photographers like diglloyd, videographers, etc*.

For example, MPG digloyd’s everyday work cannot be done efficiently on a system with only 32GB memory, as the screen shot shows from work just last night.

Apple does not offer a 64GB memory option, but OWC has a 64GB memory kit that costs only a little more than what Apple upcharges for 32GB, making the iMac 5K an awesomely fast Photoshop or Lightroom workstation at a far lower price than the Mac Pro. If a full 64GB is not needed, add memory to what shipped with the iMac 5K.

* Some iMac 5K drawbacks remain, name only two Thunderbolt ports (on one bus), which is problematic for multiple displays in particular, but also for multiple high performance devices, or device-to-device copies (bandwidth restrictions). Also, the Mac Pro can go to 128GB for really huge jobs.

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Photoshop CC using 39.6 GiB of real memory, 7.8 GiB of compressed memory

View Adobe Deals Right Now

iMac 5K (Late 2015) vs Mac Pro: Real World Photoshop Performance

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist. MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.

Save money on 32GB or 64GB OWC memory (about $400 savings vs Apple!).

This test is as real world as it gets: it is your author’s most performed job, one that idles further activity while it runs*. The task is long-running, so it is the #1 bottleneck to your author’s photographic workflow, that is, preparing multi-resolution image series in a layered Photoshop document, typically aperture series or ISO series or similar.

Read more:

iMac 5K (Late 2015) vs Mac Pro: Real World Photoshop Performance

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Make multi-res output image series in Photoshop, iMac 5K vs 8-core 3.3 GHz Mac Pro

View Apple Mac Pro Upgrades at OWC

Apple iMac 5K: 8GB and 16GB Configurations can *ADD* Memory While Keeping the Two Modules You Already Paid For

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

MPG recommends the 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5).

Yesterday, MPG discussed the drop in price on the OWC 64GB memory kit for the late 2015 iMac 5K, and how you can get 64GB for only about 5% more (system cost) than 32GB.

If you bought an iMac 5K with 8GB or 16GB or memory, here’s the cool thing: Apple now configures that 8GB as 2 X 4GB or 2 X 8GB, thus leaving two memory slots open. For a long time, it was 4 X 2GB or 4 X 4GB, occupying all four slots, so whatever came with the iMac had to be removed, a bummer.

So here’s what’s cool: keep the two modules that come with the 8GB or 16GB iMac 5K, but add 2 X 8GB or 2 X 16GB:

2 X 4GB + OWC 2 X 8GB  ===> 24GB
2 X 4GB + OWC 2 X 16GB ===> 40GB
2 X 8GB + OWC 2 X 8GB ===> 32GB
2 X 8GB + OWC 2 X 16GB ===> 48GB

Many if not most users do not need a full 64GB; all of these options rock in terms of not throwing away what is already paid for.

OWC 64GB Memory for iMac 5K Now $675

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

MPG recommends the 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5).

OWC is dropping the price of its 64GB memory upgrade for the late 2015 iMac 5K.

Why pay another $600 for this model 32GB memory (versus this model) when you can do the same 32GB for $262? Or 64GB for $675.

The incremental cost with the high-end iMac 5K is a no-brainer: 64GB from OWC for $800 instead of 32GB from Apple for $600. Double the memory for $200 more on a $3000 machine is an easy choice. Memory is super easy to install.

32GB iMac 5K: $4099 (32GB Apple memory)
8GB iMac 5K + 64GB OWC memory = $4174 ($3499 + $675) <=== no brainer!

Installed

MPG installed the 64GB OWC Memory kit in the late 2015 iMac 5K.

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64GB OWC memory in late 2015 iMac 5K

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64GB OWC memory in late 2015 iMac 5K

995 | 1990

Photoshop performance prefs witih 64GB memory

View Adobe Deals Right Now

See also on the new iMac 5K:

• Best Choice for Color Gamut and Real Calibration is a Professional Solution
• $150 off the Brand-New Apple iMac 5K
• MPG’s Computer and Storage Wish List at B&H Photo
• The Apple iMac 5K ('Late 2015')
• Apple’s DCI(P3) Color Gamut Improves Upon Longstanding Marginal Gamut, Yet Makes Little Sense in Context for Amateurs or Pros
• New Apple iMac 5K 27" Supports 64GB Memory, OWC Has Kits Available
• New Apple iMacs Available for Pre-Order at B&H Photo + BUYING RECOMMENDATIONS

Late 2015 iMac 5K: Photoshop Filters vs Mac Pro

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

Save money on 32GB or 64GB OWC memory (about $400 savings vs Apple!)

MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.

The late 2015 iMac 5K sometimes beats the 3.3 GHz 8-core 2013 Mac Pro, sometimes is neck and neck, and sometimes beats the Mac Pro. It’s an impressive performance for the iMac 5K.

iMac 5K (Late 2015): Photoshop Filters vs Mac Pro

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Photoshop Filters
late 2015 iMac 5K 4.0 GHz, 1TB SSD, M395X vs Mac Pro

View Apple Mac Pro Upgrades at OWC

Late 2015 iMac 5K vs Mac Pro: Convert 50-Megapixel RAW Files to JPEG

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

Save money on 32GB or 64GB OWC memory (about $400 savings vs Apple!)

MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.

The 8 CPU cores of the 3.3 GHz Mac Pro give it an advantage in this test; Photoshop ACR processes multiple raw files simultaneously.

iMac 5K (Late 2015) vs Mac Pro: Convert 50-Megapixel RAW Files to JPEG

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Convert 52 Canon 5DS R 50-megapixel raw flies to max-quality JPEG
late 2015 iMac 5K 4.0 GHz M395X vs Mac Pro

View Apple Mac Pro Upgrades at OWC

Late 2015 iMac 5K: IntegrityChecker 'verify' (SHA1 hash)

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

Save money on 32GB or 64GB OWC memory (about $400 savings vs Apple!)

MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.

The rocking fast 1TB flash drive in the late 2015 iMac 5K absolutely trounces the 2013 Mac Pro on a real-world test that is I/O bound.

iMac 5K (Late 2015): Integrity Checker Verify

Wow. I want one of these flash drives in my Mac Pro. Between IntegrityChecker and 'git', this fast flash drive makes a huge difference.

1200 | 2400 | 3600

IntegrityChecker verify (SHA hash)
late 2015 iMac 5K 4.0 GHz M395X vs others

Late 2015 iMac 5K: diglloyd Photoshop Benchmarks

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

Save money on 32GB or 64GB OWC memory (about $400 savings vs Apple!)

MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.

The late 2015 iMac 5K runs neck and neck with a 3.3 GHz 8-core Mac Pro (faster than any Mac Pro that Apple sells). Impressive gains for the iMac 5K: looks like Photoshop jockeys have found the right machine: an iMac 5K with 64GB memory. At least if the tasks are not those oddball ones that actually use 8 or 12 cores.

iMac 5K (Late 2015): diglloyd Photoshop Benchmarks

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diglloydSpeed1 Photoshop benchmark
late 2015 iMac 5K 4.0 GHz, 1TB SSD, M395X vs others

View SSDs at OWC

Late 2015 iMac 5K: Rocking Fast Flash Drive / SSD

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

Save money on 32GB or 64GB OWC memory (about $400 savings vs Apple!)

MPG recommends this iMac 5K: 27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5) + 32GB or 64GB OWC memory.

MPG just received on loan the high-end config of the late 2015 iMac 5K, courtesy of B&H Photo. Thanks for buying your Mac at B&H using the links on this site.

Amazing.

Lloyd says: to think that for most of my adult computing life I used turtle drives that ran at 1/10 to 1/50 this speed.

The 1TB flash drive in the late 2015 iMac 5K is worth every penny for its performance. Some real-world disk-intensive tasks are running to 2X to 3X as fast as on the 2013 Mac Pro (early 2014 build, 2015 builds might be faster).

Late 2015 iMac 5K Flash Drive (SSD) Performance

Speeds in Mib/sec (mebibyte/sec). MB/sec is about a 4% higher number.

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Flash Drive (SSD) Sustained Transfer Speed for larger transfers
Late 2015 iMac 5K 4.0 GHz Radeon M395X vs 2013 Mac Pro 3.3 GHz 8-core D700 and 2014 iMac 5K

View Apple Mac Pro Upgrades at OWC

Disk Utility Has No RAID Support in OS X El Capitan but OWC Has SoftRAID Lite for only $34

See all OWC Holiday warmup software deals.

With the removal of RAID functionality Apple Disk Utility in OS X El Capitan, there is no other viable choice: MPG advises anyone using RAID to move to SoftRAID. Fortunately, SoftRAID is far better than Disk Utility ever was.

OWC has SoftRAID Lite for only $34—think of it is a Disk Utility replacement. That said, MPG suggests getting the full version of SoftRAID. Note also that SoftRAID comes with the OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID edition.

Wish Lists from Lloyd and Others

Wish lists at B&H Photo from myself and others.

I was asked to provide a Lloyd’s computing gear wish list for this promotion.

I’ve included the gear that I use myself and/or would buy if the budget allowed. Naturally, that includes the 2013 Mac Pro, the MacBook Pro Retina, the best iMac for photographers, the OWC Thunderbay 4, and various upgrades. Notes:

• I’ve annotated each item in the wish list with my concise thoughts.
• There is an Add All to Cart on the wishlist (scroll down). This is handy for seeing the actual price of items (actual price might not appear for some items until put into cart.)

1584x1644

 

Sony A7R II

View Sony Deals Right Now

Cool New Product: OWC Drive Dock Takes 2 Bare Drives (HDD or SSD) and is Thunderbolt 2!

Get OWC Drive Dock at MacSales.com for about $248.

MPG will be testing the OWC Drive Dock soon.

OWC Drive Dock

OWC has had various iterations of the NewerTech Voyager drive dock for years (USB2 and Firewire, then USB3). It was a good but not great product, and it only took a single drive.

Now the OWC Drive Dock arrives as a much higher grade offering and it’s both USB3 and Thunderbolt 2 (with 2 ports for daisy chaining Thunderbolt devices). And it has an internal power supply (no awkward external power brick).

The OWC Drive dock accepts either 3.5" or 2.5" drives—SSD or hard drives in either size. Bare hard drives and fast high-quality bare SSDs are the least expensive way to expand storage, since there is no enclosure (case) or power supply or cabling involved. With the OWC Drive Dock, just insert the bare drive and go.

Looking for something inexpensive? The NewerTech Voyager S3 satisfies. But it’s much more useful to have two slots, plus Thunderbolt is a big plus for performance with two drives simultaneously, particularly SSDs.

Need big storage at relatively modest price? Stick two 6TB HGSG Desktar NAS drives into the OWC Drive Dock. Or more—just swap as needed. With two slots in the OWC Drive Dock, it’s possible to do a dual simultaneous backup (make a RAID-1 mirror of the pair), or stripe the drives for double the speed (RAID-0 stripe). Or just use singly.

The Ultimate Drive Dock

Drive Dock is the ultimate, high-performance bare drive access tool. For creative workflows, backup, or other tasks requiring constant access to multiple drives, Drive Dock delivers a compact, easy solution with the exceptional performance of Thunderbolt™ 2 technology.

An Essential Workflow Solution.

OWC Drive Dock is the fastest way to access bare SATA drives. Hot swap, read multiple drives simultaneously, or boot from bare drives, all at the speed of the Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 interfaces. For video and audio content pros working with multiple bare drives on big projects, Drive Dock delivers extreme transfer speeds with amazing flexibility and convenience, making it an indispensible drive tool.

Designed to Accommodate Your Life

Drive Dock's unique design makes hot-swapping a breeze. Two drive bays accommodate both 2.5" and 3.5" drives and can access a drive in each simultaneously. Each bay features its own independent power switch, eject button, and LED activity monitor. Dual Thunderbolt 2 ports deliver extreme-speed data transfers, and support daisy-chain expansion with up to five additional Thunderbolt devices. Drive Dock also includes a USB 3.0 port for versatile compatibility and the auto-switching internal power supply is compatible with any dual prong cable.

Customized Flexibility

Drive Dock is flexible enough to use on almost any system. It works perfectly as an on-location backup solution, or for industry professionals using multiple bare drives. Featuring rugged aluminum construction, quiet, fanless operation, and complete with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt cables, the OWC Drive Dock is an essential component to any high-demand workflow.

SoftRAID RAID-4 / RAID-5 Performance with Heavy CPU load

Get SoftRAID at OWC.

RAID-4 and RAID-5 offer fault tolerance against a drive failure. This fault tolerance derives from the use of parity data, which must be computed when disk writes are done.

This parity calculation is performed by the CPU and so if the CPU is heavily loaded, things slow down for writes (parity is not computed for reads by SoftRAID).

Read more and see the results:

SoftRAID RAID-4 / RAID-5 Performance with Heavy CPU load

See also: Software RAID Performance with SoftRAID 5.

TRIPP LITE USB3 Hub: 'Bulletproof', now Using two of Them

OWC has the TRIPP LITE USB3 hub ON SPECIAL for only $52.90.

See the MPG review of the TRIPP LITE USB3 hub.

TRIPP LITE USB3 hub

I (Lloyd) just installed a second TRIPP LITE USB3 hub on my Mac Pro. I had my fill of unplugging stuff to plug in other stuff, so now two hubs are attached. They just sit there and work with never an issue (for well over a year now).

Count up the stuff that needs USB3 juice, 14 items:

• Two iphones and an iPad, simultaneously. +3
• SRM Power Control 7. +1
• Dual-slot card reader. +3
• High speed SDXC card reader: +1
• Two USB3 SSDs. +2
• NEC calibrator for PA302W wide gamut display. +1
• Keyboard +1
• Two spare ports for additional drives, camera USB3 cable, etc +2
• Printer (not me but some people).

The TRIPP LITE USB3 hub is fanless, so it’s silent. I don’t want a 16-port USB hub with a fan for charging iPads, as nice as it looks.

By the way, here’s a cool product for plugging up to 16 gadgets.

HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8: RAID-4, RAID-0, RAID-5 Scalability

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 or HGST 6TB Deskstar NAS hard drives alone or in the OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition.

See the MPG in-depth review of the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 enterprise-grade hard drive.

RAID-4/5 declines in write performance starting at 7 drives, even on an 8-core 3.3 GHz Mac Pro. Note that machines with fewer CPU cores and/or one Thunderbolt 2 bus (anything but Mac Pro) might do less well than shown here (TBD). It may be a good reason for professionals to stick with at least a 6-core Mac Pro.

RAID-0 striping shows a dropoff at 8 drives also. While there is one laggard in this batch of 8, this is probably not the issue. However, MPG will be retesting the 8-drive scenario with a replacement drive that is coming.

The differences between RAID-4 and RAID-5 are less than the normal variation having to do with drive behaviors, hence one cannot conclude (conclusively) that RAID-4 is faster. However, past testing has consistently shown a slight advantage for read speeds with RAID-4.

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Performance of HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 using up to 8 drives in RAID

View Drives at OWC

iMac 5K: Top-Line Config Now in Stock

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

Top of the line iMac 5K now IN STOCK at B&H Photo. This is the machine MPG recommends for high-end users going with the iMac:

27" Retina 5K Display, 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7 (Skylake), 1TB Flash, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU (4GB GDDR5)

Why pay another $600 for the model with 32GB memory when you can get 32GB for $264? Or better yet (Apple doesn’t even offer it), 64GB for $819? Apple memory is a huge profit center for Apple. Memory is super easy to install.

See also on the new iMac 5K:

• Best Choice for Color Gamut and Real Calibration is a Professional Solution
• $150 off the Brand-New Apple iMac 5K
• MPG’s Computer and Storage Wish List at B&H Photo
• The Apple iMac 5K ('Late 2015')
• Apple’s DCI(P3) Color Gamut Improves Upon Longstanding Marginal Gamut, Yet Makes Little Sense in Context for Amateurs or Pros
• New Apple iMac 5K 27" Supports 64GB Memory, OWC Has Kits Available
• New Apple iMacs Available for Pre-Order at B&H Photo + BUYING RECOMMENDATIONS

New Discounts on MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro at B&H Photo

MPG: TOP PICK for MacBook Pro

View Laptop Upgrades at OWC

B&H Photo is an authorized Apple dealer; this site gets credit when these links are used.

A bunch of Apple MacBook Pros just got discounts from $100 to $400 at B&H photo and most also have 4% rewards and free shipping.

Largest discounts are on the 15" MacBook Pro, and there is even $300 off on the MPG recommended top-end 2015 MacBook Pro Retina.

See also all deals on Macs at B&H Photo. <=== bookmark this page; it updates daily!

• Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13.3" up to $500 off
• Apple MacBook Pro Retina 15" up to $400 off
• Apple MacBook 12" Early 2015 up to $200 off
• Apple MacBook Air 11.6" up to $150 off
• Apple MacBook Air 13" up to $650 off

Add-ons: Pick up a sleek and fast 480GB or 1TB SSD for on the road backup as well as the Thunderbolt 2 Dock for extra USB3 and other ports. Add the Thunderbay 4 for big external storage.

10 Gigabit Networking Between Macs via Thunderbolt Bridge (Built-in!)

OWC offers high quality Thunderbolt cables in red/green/blue/black colors from 0.5 to 3.0 meters, as well as Thunderbolt optical cables from 10.0 to 30.0 meters in length.

Update 02 Feb 2016: further testing shows that Thunderbolt networking is not ready for prime time; performance drops well below gigabit ethernet speeds after only 10GB or so of transfers. See updated performance results (sustained heavy load).

MPG hadn’t actually ever set up Thunderbolt Bridge networking. But having the near daily photographic task of dealing with multi-gigabyte files, using a 2nd machine for script-driven operations meant that fast networking would be a big plus (Photoshop cannot be used for anything else while a script is running).

Multi-gigabyte Photoshop PSB files open about as fast as on a fast local SSD volume.

This might be the perfect use for one more more 8TB OWC Viper SSDs, e.g., sharing files among multiple Macs on a hyper fast and huge SSD attached to one Mac in a workgroup.

OMG.

Thunderbolt 10 Gigabit Networking: Setting Up Between Macs

Thunderbolt 10 Gigabit Networking: Real World Performance

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10 Gigabit Thunderbolt Bridge networking vs Gigabit Ethernet

View Thunderbolt at OWC

Apple OS X El Capitan Cannot Tell Time

Apple OS X El Capitan cannot tell time. The fact that this error is seen in the system log and in Carbon Copy Cloner almost certainly means it is broken at the OS level. Yet another Apple Core Rot bug, albeit a small one.

Is this the new “Apple Overtime” feature? Maybe it will come in handy when forcing employees to wait to have their bags searched after work (without pay).

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I need more than 24 hours in a day, so the new Apple Overtime feature is going to be really useful (24:03, 24:05, etc).

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Deals of Note at B&H Photo

Things that catch my eye. Some of these are photography related, some are computer, etc. Some deals expire Nov 15.

• GoPro HERO4 $100 off + $40 B&H Photo gift card = effectively $349 net price.
• Brenthaven BX2 Large Shoulder Bag $30 off now $39.95 (ends Nov 15, 21:00 PST)
• Apple Macbook Air and MacBook Pro up to 33% off
• Apple iMac 5K (late 2015) $150 off — it’s like getting a 5K display with a free computer! See also my overview of iMac 5K. Of course, you know you want this iMac 5K (but add 32GB or 64GB memory).
• Televisions up to 50% off (see my discussion of Sony 4K televisions).
• Top selling items and featured specials and single-day specials.
• BIG DISCOUNTS on PRINTERS, like 60% off the Canon PIXMA PRO-100 (excellent printer, I have it). 50% off Canon Color All-in-One Laser Printer. See also Scanners.

Cameras

• $500 off Nikon D810 + 2% rewards + extras (D810 still my #1 workhorse camera)
• $300 off Fujifilm X-T1 and $150 to $200 off Fujfilm XF lenses
• Deals on camera stuff: ZEISS, Sony, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sigma, LEICA
• Nikon and Canon APS-C DSLRs up to 40% off, Mirrorless cameras up to 44% off, Point and Shoot cameras up to 38% off.
• Deals on filters
• Deals on Hasselblad (admit it, you really want a glorified Sony at $8500 off). But check out the Hasselblad/Sony lenses which are up to 40% off.

=> Peruse deals by brand discount UP TO 70% OFF <==

“Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World ”, by Bruce Schneier

It is worth being informed. Highlighting added for emphasis.

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World is available at Amazon in hardcover, Kindle and Audible versions.

If you need to be convinced that you’re living in a science-fiction world, look at your cell phone. This cute, sleek, incredibly powerful tool has become so central to our lives that we take it for granted. It seems perfectly normal to pull this device out of your pocket, no matter where you are on the planet, and use it to talk to someone else, no matter where the person is on the planet.

Yet every morning when you put your cell phone in your pocket, you’re making an implicit bargain with the carrier: “I want to make and receive mobile calls; in exchange, I allow this company to know where I am at all times.” The bargain isn’t specified in any contract, but it’s inherent in how the service works. You probably hadn’t thought about it, but now that I’ve pointed it out, you might well think it’s a pretty good bargain. Cell phones really are great, and they can’t work unless the cell phone companies know where you are, which means they keep you under their surveillance.

This is a very intimate form of surveillance. Your cell phone tracks where you live and where you work. It tracks where you like to spend your weekends and evenings. It tracks how often you go to church (and which church), how much time you spend in a bar, and whether you speed when you drive. It tracks— since it knows about all the other phones in your area— whom you spend your days with, whom you meet for lunch, and whom you sleep with. The accumulated data can probably paint a better picture of how you spend your time than you can, because it doesn’t have to rely on human memory. In 2012, researchers were able to use this data to predict where people would be 24 hours later, to within 20 meters.

Before cell phones, if someone wanted to know all of this, he would have had to hire a private investigator to follow you around taking notes. Now that job is obsolete; the cell phone in your pocket does all of this automatically. It might be that no one retrieves that information, but it is there for the taking.

Your location information is valuable, and everyone wants access to it. The police want it. Cell phone location analysis is useful in criminal investigations in several different ways. The police can “ping” a particular phone to determine where it is, use historical data to determine where it has been, and collect all the cell phone location data from a specific area to figure out who was there and when. More and more, police are using this data for exactly these purposes.

Governments also use this same data for intimidation and social control. In 2014, the government of Ukraine sent this positively Orwellian text message to people in Kiev whose phones were at a certain place during a certain time period: “Dear subscriber, you have been registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”

Don’t think this behavior is limited to totalitarian countries; in 2010, Michigan police sought information about every cell phone in service near an expected labor protest. They didn’t bother getting a warrant first.

There’s a whole industry devoted to tracking you in real time. Companies use your phone to track you in stores to learn how you shop, track you on the road to determine how close you might be to a particular store, and deliver advertising to your phone based on where you are right now. Your location data is so valuable that cell phone companies are now selling it to data brokers, who in turn resell it to anyone willing to pay for it. Companies like Sense Networks specialize in using...

Schneier, Bruce (2015-03-02). Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (p. 2). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

— Schneier, Bruce (2015-03-02). Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (pp. 1-2). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

MPG: Heck, *I* would like to see a plot on a map of my whereabouts (and heck, maybe my teenagers too). I bet people would actually pay for such a facility.

With this technology (phones), we in the USA are only one step away from a chilling police state that the Stasi and KGB would have killed for. “Wartime powers” anyone? Only that little scrap of paper getting so much contempt these days stands in the way (The Consitution).

Don H writes:

While Bruce Schneier is certainly a preeminent authority on security, his book is hardly the first to call out the data-collection threat that we face. The first serious treatment that I’ve read is Database Nation : The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century by Simson Garfinkel (I assume you’ve heard of him from your PGP days):

I’m somewhat amazed and dismayed that in this decade most of the issues that he discussed have come to the fore, yet so few people know about this book. Read any online discussion and everyone seems to be just discovering what was predicted 15 years ago.

It’s too bad ‘Database Nation’ hasn’t been updated, particularly in a post-Snowden world.

HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 vs HGST 6TB Deskstar NAS, 6TB Capacity Utilization

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 or HGST 6TB Deskstar NAS hard drives alone or in the OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition.

MPG previously reviewed the 6TB HGST Deskstar NAS hard drive. In general, larger hard drives maintain better performance as they fill up. But what if a slightly smaller hard drive is faster to begin with (when empty)?

The HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 enterprise-grade hard drive falls off unusually much in performance as it passes the 6TB mark. Supposing one wants to store up to about 6TB of data, how does the He8 stack up against its much less expensive 6TB NAS sibling?

HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 vs HGST 6TB Deskstar NAS, 6TB Capacity Utilization

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Performance across 8TB capacity of HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8, 5 samples

TESTED: 1TB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD

OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD

View SSDs at OWC

View OWC Mercury 2.5" SSD lineup (60/120/240/480/1000 GB) as well as all OWC SSDs and SSD upgrades for all Macs.

A very fine performer, the new 1TB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD delivers high performance on both compressible and incompressible data within a tight performance envelope. It looks eminently suitable for RAID use.

Review: 1TB OWC 1TB Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD (Late 2015)

While OWC has offered the 1TB Mercury Electra 6G 1TB for a good while and it is a fine performer (MPG uses one for an external backup), the EXTREME Pro 6G line had been maxed out at 480GB for several years.

As of late 2015, the EXTREME Pro 6G now has a new high-capacity part, the 1TB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD. At about $429, it offers excellent value with its 5-year warrant and 30-day money back guarantee.

Suitability: MacBook Pro (non retina), 2009-2012 Mac Pro, external enclosures, OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini, drive docks, etc. Of course, it also works in any PC with a 2.5" compatible drive bay.

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Sustained transfer speed of 1TB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD (late 2015), across entire capacity, mid 2012 MacBook Pro

View Laptop Upgrades at OWC

Apple Core Rot: How Many com.apple.audio Helper Processes Does One Need, Exactly?

Get high quality memory with a lifetime warranty at OWC.

OS X El Crapitan is a steaming pile from a constipated elephant after 50 gallons of laxative.

So many new bugs. Is Tim Cook hanging out in a cave somewhere? Well, it doesn’t run on iPhone, so no big deal, eh?

Here’s a good one: I don’t even listen to music on my computer, and yet there are 113 com.apple.audio related processes hanging around. That’s a crowd.

Each of these “me too” processes consumes 5.7MB of Real Memory. There are 113 of them. I’ll discount two (2) as needed, which means about 111 * 5.7 = 633MB of real memory are being sucked up by some new Apple OS X El Crapitan bug. This might not be a big deal on a machine with 64GB of memory, but an 8GB machine is going to feel the effects. Apple surely has not the A-team, not the B-team, but the C-team at work on OS X these days. Your goose is Cooked.

These process exist (not just a display fart in Activity Monitor as it is wont), as ps -ef shows.

Update: this is a nastier bug than it first seemed. Later, over 100 Topaz InFocus processes appeared (it’s a sharpening tool). Using Terminal, I was able to “sudo kill -9” a long list of processes by PID (using ps-ef and some text processing to extract the PIDs). I’d rather reboot, but with about 50 large files open in Photoshop, it would mean reselecting a lot of images for prep.

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113 com.apple.audio helper proceses (OS X El Capitan)

OWC Announces SoftRAID 5.1, and SoftRAID Lite

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive or OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

MPG has been using SoftRAID 5.1 for all the recent tests with the HGST Ultrastar He8. Once done with the tests, diglloyd (MPG) will be using SoftRAID with those 8TB drives in a 3-volume topology for main storage.

In OS X El Capitan, Apple removed RAID functionality in Disk Utility, shamefully and unprofessionally leaving RAID users hung out to dry. See, for example, the fun game of using a Terminal command to check RAID status: Checking RAID-1 Mirror Status in OS X El Capitan (now that DiskUtility is toast for RAID). Enjoy, courtesy of Apple geniuses.

Accordingly, MPG advises SoftRAID for all RAID users on Apple OS X.

Note: as of early January 2016, SoftRAID cannot yet existing Disk Utility RAID volumes to SoftRAID format. That feature is planned. To convert these existing RAID volumes, backup (at least two copies!), recreate the RAID with SoftRAID, then restore the contents.

OWC Announces All-New SoftRAID Lite and SoftRAID 5.1

Other World Computing announced today the availability of two new versions of SoftRAID, the revolutionary software RAID solution.

SoftRAID Lite is a streamlined software RAID solution supporting RAID 0 and RAID 1 and includes powerful drive health monitoring.

OWC also announced that SoftRAID 5.1, an enhanced version of the full-featured SoftRAID 5 solution, will now be included with the ThunderBay 4 RAID 5 Edition.

SoftRAID Lite

Until the release of Apple OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), Mac users who wanted to create a software RAID had been able to do so by using the Disk Utility application included with OS X. However, El Capitan removes that functionality from Disk Utility. Unless they have SoftRAID Lite, El Capitan users will now need to create and manage software RAIDs by using Terminal commands, a more tedious process than what was possible through Disk Utility.

SoftRAID Lite brings back RAID creation and management in an easy-to-use utility, and it serves as a professional utility for establishing and managing RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays. SoftRAID Lite provides these key features:

Create and manage software RAID 0 and 1 arrays
Enterprise-class drive health monitoring
Predictive disk-failure analysis
Certification of drives prior to setting up a new array
Desktop notifications of drive health and status.
SoftRAID Lite users will also have access to the SoftRAID Forum, a new knowledge base that will be the primary source of technical support for SoftRAID Lite.

SoftRAID Version 5.1

More advanced functionality, including the creation and management of RAID modes 4, 5, and 1+0, and e-mail status alerts, is available in the latest version of SoftRAID 5, version 5.1. SoftRAID 5.1 combines advanced RAID modes, high performance, enterprise-class monitoring, e-mail notifications, and fast rebuild capabilities that only a software RAID can deliver.

OWC ThunderBay 4 + SoftRAID = Otherworldly Performance

OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID and ThunderBay 4 mini RAID, OWC’s flagship production four-bay drive RAIDs, are powered by the revolutionary SoftRAID 5 engine and utilize Thunderbolt 2 technology for extreme capacity and performance that enables workflows without limitations. The ThunderBay 4 is optimized for HDDs with up to 32TB, while the ThunderBay 4 mini is optimized for SSDs with up to 8TB.

“We’re constantly evolving, always working to give our customers the most advanced solutions,” said Larry O’Connor, OWC Founder and CEO. “SoftRAID Lite and SoftRAID 5.1 build on an already amazing product to further enhance the revolutionary SoftRAID engine, and combined with the OWC ThunderBay 4 line, our customers will experience outstanding performance, reliability, and flexibility.”

Availability

SoftRAID Lite is available at eshop.macsales.com/item/SoftRAID/SOFTRAIDLDVD/.

SoftRAID version 5.1 is available now for same day shipping from eshop.macsales.com/item/SoftRAID/SOFTRAID5RTL/. SoftRAID version 5.1 is an update, and is available to all registered users of SoftRAID 5.x at no charge.

SoftRAID version 5.1 is included with ThunderBay 4 RAID and ThunderBay 4 mini RAID. The products are available now for same day shipping from OWC.

Real-World Drive Speed with 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive (DiskTester fill-volume)

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive or OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

Previously posted with write results only, now the graph below adds read speeds in green.

As explained in Reader Question: Drive Speed of 6TB vs 8TB Hard Drives, real world hard drive speed is primarly a function of capacity utilization.

In fact, capacity utilization dominates the performance equation and is thus the only realistic metric for transfer speed when real-world peformance considerations come into play. Other benchmarks are largely context-dropping irrelevancies. Moreover, if a drive is partitioned to use a volume on the fast part of the hard drive, seek time across that volume also drops (because the physical distance is tighter, the drive heads have less distance to travel).

The consistency seen is impressive: less than 2% variation among five samples across the entire capacity.

Read more: HGST Ultrastar He8 Performance: Speed vs Capacity Utilization

The 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 declines in performance by nearly 50% as it reaches capacity, unusually poor in this regard. so how does it compare to its 6TB HGST Deskstar NAS sibling over the first 6TB of capacity?

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Performance across 8TB capacity of HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8, 5 samples

Beware of Apple Mail Photo Quality: Resizing of Outgoing Images

Something to be aware of when sending an image: Apple Mail may mangle the image you sent, recompressing it while greatly reducing it in size. One consulting client kept sending me screen shots that were so tiny so as to be unreadable.

It wasn’t obvious what the problem was, so here is the answer: check the Image Size control in the mail window. Consider that with the new iMac 5K and a 3:2 image, an image has to be around 12 megapixels to fill the screen pleasantly.

Alas, one more thing to waste time, as it did with me and my client. The problem with OS X and iOS is that dozens of such things creep into the interface, making it more complex—full of land mines for simple tasks. My iPhone regularly tricks me into doing something unexpected; in iOS land I suffer since I don’t know it as well and I am no teenager.

Image Size control for outgoing images in Apple Mail

View Apple Deals Right Now

What I have not yet figured out is that I have sent full size images to some people, who then receive a mangled downsampled version (my outbox has the full size image, so full size was surely sent). In that case it seems as if the mail server of the receiver is mangling the image.

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OWC Price Drop and Deals: 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 and TRIPP LITE USB3 Hub

Please support the work on this site by buying your gear through OWC (MacSales.com) and new Apple Macs and cameras through B&H Photo. See also Lloyd’s computer gear wish list.

OWC has price-dropped the 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 to $535 for MPG readers. See the in-depth review of the 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8—fantastic hard drive singly or in RAID and/or in the OWC 32TB Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition. More deals below.

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HGST Ultrastar He8 only $535 for MPG readers

USB3 hubs

• Also for MPG readers, the TRIPP LITE USB3 hub is now $52.80. See MPG review of the TRIPP LITE 8-port USB3 hub.
• There is also a high power TRIPP LITE 16-port hub with enough power to charge 16 iPads—up to 2.4 watts per port. And all ports are data ports—wow! But it’s not cheap; like its 8-port sibling it is a first rate product.
• Alternative: the OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock and OWC USB-C dock.

Real-World Drive Speed with 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive (DiskTester fill-volume)

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive or OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

As explained in Reader Question: Drive Speed of 6TB vs 8TB Hard Drives, real world hard drive speed is primarly a function of capacity utilization.

In fact, capacity utilization dominates the performance equation and is thus the only realistic metric for transfer speed when real-world peformance considerations come into play. Other benchmarks are largely context-dropping irrelevancies.

Moreover, if a drive is partitioned to use a volume on the fast part of the hard drive, seek time across that volume also drops (because the physical distance is tighter, the drive heads have less distance to travel).

Read more:

HGST Ultrastar He8 Performance: Speed vs Capacity Utilization

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Hard drive performance vs capacity utilization over 4TB partition (4/5/6TB hard drives)

View Drives at OWC

Reader Question: Drive Speed of 6TB vs 8TB Hard Drives (VIDEO USERS: some neat tricks here for guaranteeing high drive speed)

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive or OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

Alan G writes:

The HGST He8 6TB version (the new He8 version) does not list it’s supposed max transfer rate to be able to compare it to the 8TB version you reviewed. I called HGST and they have no idea.

I’m not sure if that means the He8 6TB version is a bit faster or a bit slower than the 8TB one. What would you guess? Not sure why Hitachi didn’t list the speed for this version. I could see it going either way for different reasons. Real world is probably not much, but I was just curious.

Hard drive performance vs capacity utilization,
speed varies by circumference of drive tracks

View Drives at OWC

MPG: Manufacturer specs are of no real-world value. They typically involve burst rate or bus speed. What is so impressive about the 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 is the extremely consistent data rates as well as consistent sample-to-sample performance. In a RAID, performance scales linearly. MPG has never seen such an impressive performer in this regard (consistency + scalability).

There are also other performance attributes that come from caching, the number of platters, resistance to vibration, etc. Simple specs do not help here.

Far more significant is actual speed with some amount of data on the drive—in the real world, we buy hard drives to store out Stuff, not to run tests on the fastest part of an empty drive. So hard drive (HDD) speed is actually about actual speed at some capacity utilization. For SSDs/flash drives this does not apply, but some SSDs can be slower with incompressible data, so even with SSDs the question is not so simple.

As data fills out a hard drive, it first occupies the outer and faster tracks (at least on OS X). Thus data rate (MB/sec) is a direct consequence of C=πD for track circumference. See the multiple articles in the Drive Capacity and Speed section, in particular 4/5/6TB Hard Drives: Higher Capacity Boosts Real-World Performance.

In general, hard drive speed declines as much as 50% from empty to nearly full (because of data rate as per C=πD). Hence a drive capable of 200MB/sec on the faster outer tracks may deliver only 150MB/sec when half full, and a lousy 100MB/sec when nearly full.

This leads to various tricks if one wants peak HDD performance:

• Always buy the largest capacity drive, even if anticipating using much less than the full capacity. You’re buying consistent high performance (high sequential transfer rate as well as minimizing head seeks).
• Partition a hard drive into two (or more) volumes to guarantee that the first volume is on the fastest part of the drive. With Disk Utility or SoftRAID, the partitions utilize the outer (faster) tracks first. The simplest form of this is to create only one volume on the drive, and simply not using the result, e.g., make a 4TB or 6TB volume on an 8TB hard drive, and simply not use the remaining 4TB or 2TB (don’t make another volume).
• Erase the volume, then reserve the fastest portion by (1) writing a large temp file with DiskTester create-files* (thus occupying the fastest blocks of the HDD), (2) copying over old data, (3) deleting the temp files. In effect leaving a “hole” of the desired size which is the fastest area of the volume, so that files that anything new gets laid down in that faster area.
  * Create a 2TB file: disktester create-files --num-files 1 --file-size 2TB volumeName

These performance tips and tricks above also appy to all types of RAID volumes.

As shown below, hard drive performance for the first 4TB is fastest when using a 6TB drive. It would be even better using an 8TB drive. And that is the point: who buys a 6TB or 8TB drive in order to store 500GB? Much more likely is that 3/4/5TB or more will be filled, with the remaining space far slower than when empty.

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Hard drive performance vs capacity utilization over 4TB partition (4/5/6TB hard drives)

View Drives at OWC

OWC Ships New 1TB Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD

View OWC Mercury SSD lineup (60/120/240/480/1000 GB) as well as all OWC SSDs and SSD upgrades for all Macs.

MPG expects to have the new 1TB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD in for testing soon. This model is just out but not yet formally announced.

1 TB = 1000 GB = 976 GiB

While there has been a 1TB Mercury Electra 6G SSD available for some time, this new 1TB Extreme Pro 6G model utilizes a higher performance design. MPG has learned that in particular, the new 1TB model maintains full performance even for incompressible data.

MPG hopes that the new 1TB model will become an option for the bus-powered OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini, but this is unclear as yet.

Several MPG MacBook Pro 13/15-inch servers utilizing OWC 480GB SSDs will be upgraded to this new 1TB SSD just as soon as testing is completed.

• No Risk, No Hassle 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
• 5 Year OWC SSD Limited Warranty
• Controller: Silicon Motion SM2246EN Series with 7% Over Provisioning firmware.
• Tier 1 Asynchronous MLC NAND Flash
• Qualified for single drive and multiple drive production workstation RAID 0/1/10/0+1 and SPAN usage.

For mission critical applications that require the utmost in speed and reliability, Mercury EXTREME™ Pro 6G SSDs deliver performance you can count on.

The Mercury SSD line features a suite of industry leading controller technologies for performance and reliability:

• Global wear leveling algorithms automatically distribute data evenly and manage program/erase count, maximizing SSD lifespan.
• StaticDataRefresh technology manages free space, gradually refreshing data across the SSD over time, limiting data corruption
• Hardware BCH ECC corrects errors up to 66-bit/1KB for superior data retention and drive life.
• Best-in-class power consumption: Average 60mW
• Advanced security protocols support 128/256-bit-AES and TCG Opal full-disk encryption

No Risk, No Hassle 30-Day Money Back Guarantee — For more information on OWC return policies, click here.

This internal 2.5" SATA SSD delivers outstanding transfer speeds, endurance, and reliability. With sustained reads up to 500MB/s and writes up to 450MB/s, the OWC 1.0TB Mercury EXTREME™ Pro 6G SSD line delivers unbeatable performance. A 7% over provisioning set-aside further ensures exceptional long-term reliability, performance consistency, and durability with an amazing 960GB of visible storage capacity after over provision. Built to Perform, Designed & Supported in the USA and backed by a 5 Year OWC SSD Limited Warranty.

High Performance Internal Storage — Replace your conventional hard drive with a reliable solid state drive. Unlike traditional hard disk drives, OWC SSDs have no moving parts, resulting in a quiet, cool, highly rugged storage solution that also offers near instantaneous system response.

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Testing Hard Drive Consistency for a RAID

diglloydTools

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Among its many features, diglloydTools DiskTester offers a run-area-test command that can be used for relatively fast characterization of drive performance across its capacity. The results can be graphed to get a good idea of the drive performance.

For example, suppose a high performance RAID is envisioned: one laggard can cut the performance, since the slowest drive determines the peak speed.

As shown below, 8 samples were tested, and one of those eight is a significant laggard; this slower drive is best set aside as a cold spare or backup drive.

While DiskTester can test any number of drives simultaneously (via command line), testing should take care not to saturate the bandwidth; for example four fast hard drives can demand almost all of the Thunderbolt v1 bandwidth, and other devices on the bus could suck up bandwidth, disturbing the results.

Click for larger graph.

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diglloydTools DiskTester: performance across volume capacity for eight drives
disktester run-area-test --iterations 5 --test-size 4G --delta-percent 5

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DiskTester fill-volume — more detailed evaluation

For production RAID, MPG strongly recommends testing each drive individually with DiskTester fill-volume, to weed out any laggards and/or any drives with performance oddities. The fill-volume test takes a long time, since it has to write and read the entire drive. That’s 16TB for an 8TB drive, so at an average hard drive speed across the capacity of ~150 MB/sec, the test cycle will take about 29 hours.

The DiskTester fill-volume writes 1000 files that fill the capacity of the drive, and then reads them back, generating output data that can be pasted into the supplied spreadsheet for a graph that shows performance in detail across the entire capacity. Any glitches such as ranges of bad blocks, drive behaviors such as pauses for recalibration, etc. Another good use is for comparing drives; see 4/5/6TB Hard Drives: Higher Capacity Boosts Real-World Performance. As an added benefit, actually writing the entire drive can flush out problem drives that have a range of bad blocks (most hard drives ship with untested media!).

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Hard drive performance vs capacity utilization over 4TB partition (4/5/6TB hard drives)

View Drives at OWC

It is possibly to test any number of drives simultaneously with DiskTester, one per Terminal window, but beware of bus bandwidth limitations, particularly with SSDs, or too many drives will compete and all will be slowed by the others. For example, Thunderbolt 2 maxes-out at about 1350 MB/sec and all Macs except the Mac Pro have only a single Thunderbolt bus.

Shown below is DiskTester fill-volume being run in five Terminal windows on five HGST Ultrastar He8 hard drives. The HGST He8 enterprise-grade hard drive is unusually consistent sample-to-sample as can be seen by the "File #" and “ClockAvg” (MB/sec) column for each. The fill-volume test takes about 14 hours to write the data, and 14 hours to read it back, so it is a long running test.

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Running diglloydTools disktester fill-volume on five HGST Ultrastar He8 8TB hard drives
disktester fill-volume

Get diglloydTools

Some of the capabilities in diglloydTools

Aside from testing hard drive or SSD or RAID performance and reliability with DiskTester, data integrity with IntegrityChecker is a must-have workflow tool for anyone with important data:

• Detecting Corruption / Validating Data Integrity Over Time and Across Drives and Backup/Restore
• What an Impaired SSD Looks Like
• How to Safely Transfer Data or Verify Backups
• Example of Verifying Data Integrity.
• Are Your Backup Drives Still Functional? Are Your Files Subtly Damaged?
• How to Automate DiskUtility Verification of Mounted Volumes.
• Selling that Computer? Wipe Out Personal Files First
• Search for diglloydTools articles.

Apple Core Rot Remains in App Store : OS X Sporadically Fails to Update Apps

Apple Core Rot now extends its tentacles into the OS X software updater: if the software update mechanism itself is unreliable, can anything else be trusted?

Back in October, I wrote Apple Core Rot now featured in App Store : OS X Cannot Update Itself Properly. For that, I had do do a complete reinstall of El Capitan.

Well it turns out that the App Store remains broken at times on my MacBook Pro Retina: it won’t update any of the iWork apps, or XCode. Clicking Update for any app results in “Waiting”, then that disappears and nothing happens. No download, no install, nothing (no network activity at all). Click, click, click, ad nauseum—nothing. Tried it for 10 minutes without satisfaction.

Finally the God of Bugs relented after a while, and the App Store functioned and update the apps.

It appears to me that there was some kind of transient problem, but the App Store app doesn’t bother with niceties like reporting errors, nor does it bother to write anything to the system log. Apple Core Rot is alive and well.

This type of thing along with negligent Apple security planning is not acceptable for a gazillion dollar company, or even a billion dollar one. SpamSieve author Michael Tsai writes No One Minding the Store. It seems that Apple Core Rot is rampant in every area of the Apple franchise except perhaps hardware—though pro users might argue strongly that the dumbing-down of the Mac Pro and MacMini is of the same nature.

iMac 5K: the Top-Line Config + Save On Memory by Getting the Memory Separately

Get the new iMac 5K at B&H Photo and see the MPG computer gear wishlist.

MPG will be testing the OWC 64GB memory kit for the late 2015 iMac 5K sometime soon (waiting for the full-loaded iMac 5K to arrive).

The high-end iMac 5K configuration is best purchased as the 4 GHz / 8GB / 1TB / M395X config. That’s right—a paltry 8GB memory in order to save money on memory or to go to 64GB memory, which Apple does not even offer. Of course, the needs of many users are served perfectly well at a far lower price for the iMac 5K. See

B&H Photo has many models of the Apple iMac 5K desktop computer in stock. Thanks for buying at B&H through links on this site so we get credit.

For 32GB, Apple charges $564 just to upgrade to 32GB memory, whereas 32GB OWC memory is only $264. Saving about $300 has never been easier. With a lifetime replacement warranty and excellent support, OWC memory is a no-brainer versus the exhorbitant cost of Apple memory. (All MPG Macs have OWC memory in them, bought over years of use, it’s solid stuff).

Or max-out your iMac 5K with a full 64GB memory.

Also on the new iMac 5K:

• Best Choice for Color Gamut and Real Calibration is a Professional Solution
• $150 off the Brand-New Apple iMac 5K
• MPG’s Computer and Storage Wish List at B&H Photo
• The Apple iMac 5K ('Late 2015')
• Apple’s DCI(P3) Color Gamut Improves Upon Longstanding Marginal Gamut, Yet Makes Little Sense in Context for Amateurs or Pros
• New Apple iMac 5K 27" Supports 64GB Memory, OWC Has Kits Available
• New Apple iMacs Available for Pre-Order at B&H Photo + BUYING RECOMMENDATIONS

One of the Most Confusing Finder Preferences

Finder Preferences — General

What’s the most confusing OS X setting? It might be hiding volumes so that they don’t show up on the desktop.

Plug in a backup drive—where is it? Huh? With External Disks hidden how exactly do you know the drive is connected or not?

When Apple first foisted this idiotic default behavior on us, I thought I had lost all my SATA external drives after I updated the OS. It gave me quite a scare.

These days, the setting remains. Hiding volumes makes the landscape opaque and thus confusing (among other things, no navigational clues that tie into the Open/Save dialog), but that is a sub-point to this simple one: plug in a backup drive or open a DMG—and “nothing happens”.

For systems with only one volume, what’s the harm? And for systems with many volumes, seeing the volumes is essential. So the preference serves only to confuse; it never helps anyone to hide volumes. Your stuff should be tangible so you know where it is, to where you’re saving your files, and what files to backup.

Yesterday I consulted for a client who was baffled by a DMG installer; nothing seemed to happen when he double-clicked it: the DMG was being mounted, but because the Finder was set not to show volumes, nothing appeared to happen! I’ve seen this sort of confusion before with people I’ve worked with—defaults that baffle and confuse should be evaluated for design sanity.

It’s design insanity to obfuscate things by hiding them.

So configure the Finder preferences as shown. See also Set Finder Preferences.

How to Use 32TB or 40TB of 8TB Hard Drives?

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive or OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

Performance is covered in the MPG in-depth review of the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 hard drive. But what are the best ways to utilize and backup such storage?

Four different ways to use such storage are now published:

• Using High Capacity Drives Singly (non-RAID)
• Using High Capacity Drives in a RAID-0 Stripe Volume
• Using High Capacity Drives as Single Large RAID-4 / RAID-5 Volume
• Using High Capacity Drives as RAID-4 / RAID-5, Multiple Volumes

960 | 1980

Three huge volumes, all RAID-4 fault tolerant using SoftRAID, from five HGST Ultrastar He8 8TB hard drives

View Drives at OWC

OWC Viper: 4TB or 8TB of Ultrafast SSD via Thunderbolt 2

See OWC Announces the 'Viper', a Capacious Blazingly Fast SSD for High-End Video and Similar Demanding Uses.

 TB = 1000^4 = 1,000,000,000,000
TiB = 1024^4 = 1,099,511,627,776

Soon to arrive for testing is an 8TB OWC Viper. The Viper will be available in 4TB or 8TB capacities configured as a hardware RAID-0 stripe or as a software RAID-4. For initial testing, the RAID-0 stripe version will be utilized.

Testing will of course use DiskTester, part of diglloydTools.

• Configured as an 8 TB / 7.2 TiB stripe, OWC Viper performance will be throttled by Thunderbolt 2; it should redline at the maximum bus bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2.
• Configured as a 7TB / 6.3 TiB fault-tolerante RAID-4, OWC Viper performance is likely to be the same, because of the same Thunderbolt 2 bus throttling. The RAID-4 version will continue to operate even if one of the eight flash modules in it fails.

Thunderbolt 3 needs to arrive sometime soon! When devices are outstripping the bus bandwidth, it’s time for Apple to get its technology act together and deliver Thunderbolt 3 with its unified USB-C and HDMI 2.0. That changeover did not happen with the late 2015 iMac 5K.

REVIEWED: HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive, Singly and in RAID

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive or OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

32TB RAID-4 from 5 X 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8

View RAID Solutions at OWC

Now up is scintillating coverage of the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive:

• Overview of HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive
• HGST Ultrastar He8: Sample Variation
• HGST Ultrastar He8: Performance vs Transfer Size
• HGST Ultrastar He8: RAID-4 and RAID-5 Compared 3/4/5 Drives
• HGST Ultrastar He8: RAID 0 Striping
• HGST Ultrastar He8: RAID 1+0

RAID performance of all flavors with SoftRAID is impressively scalable in the superlative OWC Thunderbay 4, which is wonderful since Disk Utility is no longer a realistic option*. SoftRAID is included in the purchase of the OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition.

* With the lobotomy that Apple performed on Disk Utility in OS El Capitan, shamefully and unprofessionally leaving OS X RAID users hung out to dry, SoftRAID is the only realistic choice for RAID on OS X today since Disk Utility won’t even show RAID status any more.

1200 | 2400 | 4800

Scalability of 3/4/5 HGST 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 in RAID 4 and RAID 5 configuration

View RAID Solutions at OWC

960 | 1980

Three huge volumes, all RAID-4 fault tolerant using SoftRAID, from five HGST Ultrastar He8 8TB hard drives

View Drives at OWC

1728 | 2276

SoftRAID topology for three RAID-4 volumes, made from five HGST Ultrastar He8 8TB hard drives

View Drives at OWC

Clone Backups on Steroids

As preparation for a changeover to 8TB hard drives once MPG testing of Hitachi HGST 8TB He8 hard drives is done, I wanted to bring a bunch of my external backups up to date.

For backups, I use a clone backup strategy. With this many backups going at once it is amusing to see much of the CPU power of an 8-core Mac Pro is utilized by the 'rsync' process! A 4-core or 6-core Mac Pro would have been borderline unusable during the backups.

Such activities are definitely non-mainstream, but they are one reason I favor an 8-core 3.3 GHz Mac Pro. It is also a reason that I like to make my primary storage at least a 2-drive striped RAID, if not a RAID-5: so that multiple simultaneous backups from can run simultaneously at reasonable speed.

In this case speed is hampered by some contention on the backup drives (partitions), but I wanted to go ride my bike while the backups completed. Still, write throughput in total was around 700 MB/sec.

1600 | 2400

$150 off the Brand-New Apple iMac 5K

Notes:

• Overview of Apple iMac 5K ('Late 2015').
• Buying recommendations for power users.
• MPG will be reviewing the high-end iMac 5K soon.
• Discounts cited here end Nov 15 according to B&H.

B&H Photo has a bunch of late 2015 iMac 5K models in stock, including $150 off the 3.2 GHz / 8GB / 1TB HDD model = $1649. At that price, it’s like getting a gorgeous 5K display with a free computer included.

Update: see also the $100 off the 3.2 GHz / 8GB / 1TB Fusion model The Fusion option is $50 more than the plain HDD model, but should speed up performance nicely.

For high-end power users the above entry level model is not the right choice, see the discussion.

Do you really need “faster” stuff?

In so many uses, a “faster” CPU and GPU don’t result in any significant gains. So for most users using the iMac 5K as a mixed-use machine, these “low end” models offer most of the utility without a big bump up in price. Power users, pro photographers, etc will of course want bumped up high end models, such as discussed. The best high end deal is the $3499 4 GHz / 8GB / 1TB / M395X model along with OWC memory for iMac 5K added after purchase.

Obvious going with a faster CPU and faster GPU and all flash-drive model is ideal, but the price escalates rapidly all the way up to $4100 or so—and that is the point of this post; a very nice machine with more than ample performance for many users. For example, this iMac 5K with 32GB is $600 more! Which is not a good deal, since 32GB OWC memory is only $264 ($134 for 16GB which is ample for most users).

Suggestions:

• The internal hard drive is good for a hard drive, which means not very responsive: use a relatively inexpensive USB3 SSD for the boot (startup) drive, 120GB SSD or 240GB SSD or 480GB SSD. Or consider the slightly more expensive 'Fusion' model.
• Add a capacious external hard drive or multiple hard drives via Thunderbolt for more storage and/or backup and/or Time Machine.
• The memory for iMac 5K can be upgraded later if needed. Note that OWC memory for iMac 5K offers a large savings over Apple pricing when going to 32GB or more and that OWC will even rebate-back something for memory being replaced.

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OWC Deals: 4TB and 6TB Hard Drives, 32GB Memory for Mac Pro 2009-2012

Memory

For 2009-2012 Mac Pro, MPG recommends going to 48GB for 4/6 core machines, and 96GB for 8/12 core machines, rather than mixing and matching.

Due to some unusual circumstances, OWC memory for Mac Pro has dropped a lot in price, but this is likely to be a short-term thing:

Big price drop on memory for 2009-2012 Mac Pro: 32GB for under $200!

Hard drives

Not everyone needs 8TB hard drives which MPG is soon to test.

These drives can be used in the older Mac Pro internally, or can be used as external storage or backups in a NewerTech Voyager or OWC external USB3 enclosure or in an OWC Thunderbay 4. And similar.

Why buy drives at OWC? OWC adds-on a 90-day *replacement* warranty, meaning that a problem drive will be replaced with a NEW drive within 90 days. This is a BIG DEAL if you are making a RAID or depending on the drives; sending a drive in for warranty essentially means another one has to be purchased to fill the hole—not so with this OWC 90-day guarantee.

TIP: use DiskTester fill-volume to test/verify new hard drives.

• 4.0TB Toshiba X300
• 6.0TB Toshiba X300
• 4.0TB Seagate Desktop SSHD

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JPEG Batch Output in Photoshop and Lightroom: Rainbow-Beachball Hang Requiring Force Quit

Update: Adobe says:

Known issue. Will be fixed in update coming out next week.
Roll back to prior update of Lightroom 2015.1.1 until then.

Recently I tried batch-outputting from RAW to JPEG using Photoshop CC 2015. The export hangs with a rainbow-beachball 100% of the time, requiring a force quit of Photoshop.

Photoshop CC 2015 hangs immediately,
while batch converting raw to JPEG

View Adobe Deals Right Now

I reported the issue to Adobe a few days ago. Today a consulting client of mine reported that he is seeing his Mac Pro hang with exactly the same type of issue, and in both Photoshop and Lightroom CC 2015:

However, I have noticed that downgrading to "LRCC2015 Camera Raw 9.0" works. Just exported 93 JPEGs (from a Canon 6D) smoothly, whereas the same 93 images hung the newest version of LR several times in a row.

The same 93 JPEGs also hung PSCC2015 (newest version) when exporting via CameraRaw dialog, but downgrading to "PhotoshopCC2015.0.0 Camera Raw 8" got the job done no problem.

So it doesn't seem to be Camera Raw 9, it DOES seem to be something in the newest CC releases of LR and PS.

This rules out anything on my system; same hang when batch-exporting to JPEG from raw files.

The bug presumably is in the ACR engine, which is shared by Photoshop and Lightroom. Strangely, Photoshop CC 2014 also hangs, so it may be an OS X El Capitan problem. Or it may be that the same bug was inserted into the ACR engine for Photoshop CC 2014.

Jerry Y writes:

I have had the same problem with lightroom 6.2.1 stand alone version on Yosemite. It worked for two selected files but no more. Solved by downgrading to 6.0.

MPG: good confirmation.

Andre writes:

This is not an inquiry, but just venting and commiseration.

The latest Lightroom CC is the most god-awful piece of crap software I have used from Adobe, and perhaps ever for anything I actually paid money for. The product manager and QA manager should be fired for letting this dog escape from their offices.

Even if you could put up with their new, wrong-headed import dialog design, it doesn't work reliably. On OS X Yosemite on a fully-upgraded Mac Mini 2012, more than half the time, it refuses to import my D810 RAW files, saying there are no photos to import! It feels like stepping on eggshells any time I try to import images, and the import worked perfectly reliably in the immediate previous version of LR CC 2015, before the new import dialog.

Of course, one solution is to downgrade to the previous version, but because of the equally craptacular design and engineering of the CC manager software, I can only do this on one machine. For some reason, if you have an off-the-shelf copy of LR installed (from before I subscribed to CC), the installer will not let you downgrade to the previous version of LR CC2015.

So one machine now has the last functional copy of LR CC 2015, while the other is stuck with the latest copy of LR with its dysfunctional import dialog and a copy of LR5, which can't read the latest catalog.

Wasn't the whole point of LR to give photographers something that was easy to use and transparent to their workflow? It was a revelation when it came out, but now it's larded with stupid design decisions and half-baked features.

MPG might or might not agree with any particular reader comments/claims/statements, but unsolicited and unedited reader comments capture the pulse of what’s out there. The frustration is evident, and from MPG point of view, it is analogous to Apple Core Rot—users with real work to do can’t stand such issues.

Perhaps software vendors should proactively offer a notification email list for outstanding and pending bugs and their resolutions/fixes. It might save users a lot of time and aggravation in tracking down issues that are actually known bugs.

Coming Soon for Testing: HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive or OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

MPG has previously reviewed capacious hard drives for performance:

• 4/5/6TB Hard Drives: Higher Capacity Boosts Real-World Performance
• HGST Deskstar 6TB NAS Hard Drive
• Toshiba 4TB MG03ACA400 vs 3TB DT01ACA300: Is Cheaper Faster?

Along comes the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8. To be reviewed for single-drive performance as well as RAID-5 and RAID-4 in the OWC Thunderbay 4. See the HGST Ultrastar He8 datasheet.

The HGST Ultrastar He8 is filled with helium and is a sealed drive:

The less dense atmosphere inside a HelioSeal HDD virtually eliminates turbulence, allowing read/write mechanisms to track more precisely and reliably over storage media, enabling higher recording densities.

Less internal turbulence also makes it possible to add more disks and heads to achieve even higher capacity per HDD. This is how HGST delivers industry-leading 8TB capacity and beyond in a seven-disk design.

Disks spin more easily in a helium-filled environment, resulting in less power usage—even with additional platters. Less power consumption means cooler operation and lower cooling requirements, reducing both energy costs and carbon footprint. Many air-filled drives use a breather filter leading to reliability problems when used in environments with high levels of carbon in the air. This problem does not exist with sealed drives.

At about $599, the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 enterprise-grade drive is not for everyone (OWC has also has some factory reconditioned ones at $475). But at some point for photographers and videographers, storage capacity pushes up against limits, and capacity has to be increased.

At present, a key primary volume of my photographic master images now approaches its 5TB capacity in my photography work, so it is now time to move to larger drives. After testing these 8TB HGST He8 drives, they will be put into my “production” use as three 8TB RAID-5 volumes (partitions); see RAID-5 / RAID-4 Can be Partitioned to Suit. Essentially, this will be a 32TB OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition.

I like the fact that the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 consums only 5.1 watts when idle (HGST specs says 60% more power efficient per GB as compared to the 4TB Ultrastar 7K4000). So four of them in a RAID-5 will consume only ~20 watts while idle. Not bad for 32TB of storage (24TB usable in RAID-5 mode)!

Buying suggestions

Note that OWC has a 90-day replacement warranty, meaning that a problem drive will be replaced with a NEW drive within 90 days. This is a BIG DEAL if you are making a RAID or depending on the drives; sending a drive in for warranty essentially means another one has to be purchased to fill the hole—not so with this OWC 90-day guarantee.

When purchased as part of an OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition, another level of support comes into play—MPG suggests buying a complete solution for that reason (e.g. don’t try to build your own with high-end drives like these).

Details on HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive

Industry-leading capacity — 8TB capacity and 23% lower energy consumption. That's the power of helium. Meet Ultrastar He8, HGST's second-generation hard drive based on the widely accepted and proven HelioSeal™ platform. With 8TB of capacity, Ultrastar He8 goes beyond what any other HDD can do using air and raises the standard for capacity and power efficiency in cloud and hyperscale data center environments.

Industry-leading quality — Data centers face growing pressures. Volume is expanding, Operating costs are rising while budgets remain flat. Lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) has become the focus of data center architects. Through HGST's patented HelioSeal process, the Ultrastar He8 features the industry's highest capacity of 8.0TB; a low idle of 5.1 watts; a reduced weight of 650g; and a temperature that runs 4-5°C cooler than other drives in its class.

Industry-leading reliability — Cooler and quieter with industry-leading power efficiency (Watts/TB), the Ultrastar He8 lays the foundation for future growth in massive scale-out environments.

1486x1730

Specifications for HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive

Reader Comment: “DiskTester is awesome software as it detects irregularities before they become relevant”

DiskTester is part of diglloydTools. Read more about the capabilities of diglloydTools.

Gerrit V wrote MPG a few days ago:

I’m using disktester to check a striped array of two disks (raid-0) in my Mac Pro 2009. Both disks are HGST Ultrastore 7K3000 2TB and have run about 2month in a data center.

To my surprise DiskTester tells me about sluggish write values from time to time, see below in red:

DiskTester 2.2.5c 64-bit, diglloydTools 2.2.7b1, 2014-06-08 09:56
Copyright 2006-2014 DIGLLOYD INC. All Rights Reserved
Use of this software requires a license. See http://macperformanceguide.com/Software-License.html
OS X 10.11.1, 12 CPU cores, 16384MB memory
Samstag, 7. November 2015 um 14:13:19 Mitteleuropäische Normalzeit
disktester test-reliability —xfer 1M —iterations 3 Daten
TEMP FILE: /Volumes/Daten/disktester-test/DiskTester-Temporary-Test-File
Test size: 3.62TB
Free space untested: 22.3GB
Fill with: all
Testing reliability of volume „Daten“
Volume „Daten“: using 3.62TB test file, write/read/verify 1.50GB portions at a time using a 1MB memory buffer…
Begin iteration 1
.
.
.
427.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (0)       152MB/sec … 152MB/sec
427.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (1)       152MB/sec … 291MB/sec
427.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (01)      150MB/sec … 186MB/sec
427.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (10)      155MB/sec … 181MB/sec
427.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (random)  148MB/sec … 184MB/sec
429GB: 1.50GB/1MB (0)       151MB/sec … 182MB/sec
429GB: 1.50GB/1MB (1)       151MB/sec … 290MB/sec
429GB: 1.50GB/1MB (01)      122MB/sec … 291MB/sec
429GB: 1.50GB/1MB (10)      150MB/sec … 182MB/sec
429GB: 1.50GB/1MB (random)  152MB/sec … 181MB/sec
430.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (0)       152MB/sec … 286MB/sec
430.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (1)       154MB/sec … 190MB/sec
430.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (01)      152MB/sec … 181MB/sec
430.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (10)      11.9MB/sec … 184MB/sec
430.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (random)  150MB/sec … 256MB/sec
432GB: 1.50GB/1MB (0)       170MB/sec … 182MB/sec
432GB: 1.50GB/1MB (1)       164MB/sec … 182MB/sec
432GB: 1.50GB/1MB (01)      163MB/sec … 179MB/sec
432GB: 1.50GB/1MB (10)      162MB/sec … 292MB/sec
432GB: 1.50GB/1MB (random)  162MB/sec … 183MB/sec
433.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (0)       151MB/sec … 181MB/sec
433.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (1)       140MB/sec … 181MB/sec
433.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (01)      151MB/sec … 178MB/sec
433.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (10)      152MB/sec … 290MB/sec
433.5GB: 1.50GB/1MB (random)  153MB/sec … 182MB/sec
435GB: 1.50GB/1MB (0)       152MB/sec … 182MB/sec
435GB: 1.50GB/1MB (1)       150MB/sec … 181MB/sec
435GB: 1.50GB/1MB (01)      151MB/sec … 153MB/sec
435GB: 1.50GB/1MB (10)      153MB/sec … 179MB/sec
435GB: 1.50GB/1MB (random)  151MB/sec … 290MB/sec

MPG (Lloyd Chambers) replied in email as follows:

Any number of factors could cause such a delay, such as Spotlight trying to index something, an area of bad blocks, a new OS X glitch, etc.

If you break the RAID into two single drives / volumes, you can see if one drive has a performance issue. This can be done simultaneously in two Terminal windows, one invocation for each volume.

Gerrit responded today with:

I broke the RAID and ran the reliability test again on both drives. One went through without a glitch, but the other one stopped after a few GB. Now the controller doesn’t even recognize the drive.

Disktester really seems to be an awesome software as it detects irregularities before they become relevant.

Thank you very much for your support.

MPG recommends first using the DiskTester fill-volume command to graph performance of new drives before putting them into production use, and especially before putting them to use in a RAID (of any kind). Often there is a 10% or even 15% variance between same-model samples. Also useful for ferreting out sporadic problems is running DiskTester test-reliability.

For some brand SSDs, the DiskTester recondition SSD command can flush away performance issues.

Best Choice for Color Gamut and Real Calibration is a Professional Solution (iMac 5K not so great)

Get NEC PA displays at B&H Photo.

The NEC PA302W color gamut is much broader than the new late 2015 iMac 5K. The clear choice for those who take color seriously is the NEC PA302W or similar wide gamut display, not the late 2015 iMac 5K.

See my blog post and article on display calibration over at diglloyd.com:

Calibrating NEC Displays with SpectraView II

 

Color gamut of NEC PA302W as calibrated to 6500°K / gamma 2.2

View NEC Displays

Apple’s DCI(P3) Color Gamut Improves Upon Longstanding Marginal Gamut, Yet Makes Little Sense in Context for Amateurs or Pros

Apple has blown its own horn loudly on support for the new DCI(P3) color gamut in the new iMac 5K. That is, the display in the late 2015 iMac 5K can reproduce all or nearly all of the DCI(P3) color gamut. I applaud Apple for finally improving the dismal color gamut of one of its products (the late 2015 iMac 5K). More to follow I hope, particularly in the laptop lineup.

Does DCI(P3) really benefit consumers? Consider the actual state of affairs for the masses, who have never heard of color gamut or raw images or ProPhotoRGB:

• iPhone and ipad shoot in sRGB*, so DCI(P3) means nothing for iPhone photos. Those photos taken by iPhone/iPad that have a gamut beyond sRGB are already permanently mangled.
• 99% of the world shoots (heavily compressed) JPEG in sRGB. Which is 8-bit with all settings baked into the JPEG.
• Facebook and its ilk often mangle images and force to sRGB.
• Many programs still ignore color space, thus display anything but sRGB incorrectly.

Which means that DCI(P3) offers absolutely no value to 99% of the market. At least for now. Still, I’m very glad that Apple has implemented a display with a better gamut (hopefully more of the same to follow in laptops too), because it means that my readers will see my images more true to life than before.

Will an iOS update let my iPhone shoot in DCI(P3) color space? Better yet, choose the color space dynamically for the tightest fit to the actual subject matter**?

Another theory: DCI(P3) is also known as “Digital Cinema”. Might the DCI(P3) change, which is meaningless to the 99%, in fact be related to a forthcoming Apple move towards something bigger in VIDEO?

* AKA “sad rgb” for its severely truncated gamut (range of colors).

** sRGB can actually be an excellent choice so long as everything is in gamut, because it gives finer gradations of color (smaller range for 8 bits to cover). The idea is to use the smallest/tightest color space that contains the gamut in the actual subject matter, on a per-image basis.

DCI(P3) is better than sRGB, but it is not a wide gamut

In my DAP publication, see material on why color space matters for photographers.

The rest of this discussion is aimed at professionals and those who take color seriously in their photography. DCI(P3) is a good thing, because it means that more and more users will be able to see color properly on the internet (60% of my photography blog readers are on Macs). I’ve long published my photographs on the web in the AdobeRGB color space, because I cater to professional photographers.

Modern digital cameras can deliver images with colors well beyond the gamut of AdobeRGB or DCI(P3), that is, for certain subject matter. Images with wide gamut suffer mightily from inappropriate color space and bit-depth choices, because detail and nuance are squashed right out of the image.

That said, one might shoot all day and never make an image that is out of gamut even in sRGB. But you might also shoot all day with intensely saturated flowers or fabrics or whatever, and be out of gamut on every image. It all depends on subject matter: the gamut required for proper color rendition depends on the subject matter.

Then there is viewing the image. As shown below, I calibrated my NEC PA302W today. The gamut plot shows that the calibrated PA302W greatly exceeds the gamut of the DCI(P3) color space aka “Digital Cinema (DCI)”. In other words, working in DCI(P3) means chopping off a big chunk of greens and red and blues*. Colors of intensity that add extra pop to an image when present. This is why I do all my work in 16-bit ProPhotoRGB: its gamut is even larger than that of the NEC PA302W, thus letting me see everything the display is capable of (because the image has not been mashed and mangled to fit into a smaller range of color).

Examples with wide gamut images would be best, but I have yet to obtain the DCI(P3) ICC Profile to show an example vs sRGB and ProPhotoRGB.

BTW, the NEC PA302W is a fabulous wide gamut display currently discounted.

* The color area below is the gamut of the NEC PA302W, as calibrated. The outlined triangle overlay is the DCI(P3) gamut. The PA302W can’t fully reproduce a small portion of the green/yellow area of the DCI(P3) gamut, but it substantially exceeds DCI(P3) in greens, reds, blues, magentas and cyans.

1490

Color gamut of NEC PA302W is far larger than DCI(P3)

View NEC Displays

30-bit Color Support in OS X El Capitan with Dual NEC Wide Gamut Display + 32-bit Color

First, to clarify 10-bit vs 8-bit color, and what 30-bit color means:

• 10-bit color means 2^10 = 1024 distinct values per color channel (red/green/blue) whereas 8-bit color means 2^8 = 256 bits values per color channel (256 gradations).
• 10-bit color has 4X as many gradations (1024 vs 256). This is a BIG difference: gradients and smooth tonal transitions do not exhibit stepping artifacts (transitions between adjacent color values are invisible to the eye, assuming a high quality display).
• 30-bit color refers to RGB (red/green/blue) having 10-bits for each color channel (24-bit color means 8 bits per color channel). 10 + 10 + 10 = 30 bits.
• If the image is grayscale, then 30-bit color means 10-bits (1024 values) of gray (since the R/G/B values are the same for gray). That’s assuming the display can actually render all 1024 shades, which is unlikely for most displays, particularly for near black. Few displays can render a perfectly neutral grayscale of 256 values, let alone 1024 values; color displays would have to perfectly balance all three R/G/B subpixels to be completely neutral at 1024 brightness levels. Some non-linearity is always there. The best displays will tightly control this performance (within 1 delta-E), and can be considered neutral.
• 32-bit color = 24-bit color + alpha channel. It is not 30/10-bit. See note at end.

Depending on context, one may see “30-bit color” or “10-bit color”. The former refers to total bits for an R/G/B pixel (10 + 10 + 10); the latter refers to the bits per pixel per color channel.

Do not confuse color gamut (the range of colors a display can reproduce) with 30-bit color. A display can accept a 30-bit signal and yet display a far smaller range of colors than those 30 bits describe. Even a wide gamut display has “holes” in its gamut or limits with some colors; the “billions of colors” idea is marketing nonsense derived from 2^30 math. What really matters is just how good a display can reproduce its claimed gamut, and whether it can be truly calibrated (not just faux calibrated) as well as its accuracy (delta-E), consistency over time and temperature, its true gamut at various brightness and contrast levels, etc. So “billions” is marketing-speak. Still it’s a reasonable way of capturing the huge improvement possible with a high-end wide gamut display versus using 24-bit color—huge when grayscale or color gradient come into play, such as the continuous-tone of a sunset or sunrise sky, or the brightness and/or color gradient of a cloud or fog bank or shallow to deep water.

Adobe Photoshop support for 30-bit color

My contact at Adobe responded to my question about 30-bit color support:

Apple added 30-bit support for 10.11. It only works on certain displays and it works better on their 5K displays (even better on the latest generation iMac).

The next update for PS will support 30-bit color on Mac.

I followed up by asking “Why would it not work on any display supporting 10-bit input, e.g. any display that on a PC takes 10-bit?” To which my contact replied:

Apple supports 30-bit output on iMac 5K under 10.11, while other devices get dithering with that option checked.

I’m scratching my head on that one: why would a 10-bit capable display be sent dithered output? I’m hoping to hear more from Adobe to clarify this point.

NEC PA series

Important note for professionals that need precision color: with Apple displays, it’s not clear whether there is any API for true calibration. Nor is it clear that 10-bit can be used for faux calibration of Apple or other brand displays. True calibration as offered by NEC and Eizo is a professional solution.

The NEC PA series displays have long been 10-bit panels with internal 12 or 14-bit true calibration. So I assume they’ll work great, but the Adobe “dithering” comment has me concerned that Apple has degraded things for non-Apple displays.

Shown below is a 2013 Mac Pro driving both a 2560 X 1600 NEC PA302W and a 3840 X 2160 NEC PA322UHD in 30-bit color (30-bit = 3 X 10-bit, the R/G/B color channels).

Apple bug: one of my reasons for being skeptical of System Profile as a reliable tool for graphics is that a 3840 X 2160 UltraHD display (PA322UHD) is listed as 1920 X 1080. The resolution of the display is 3840 X 2160 and the display scaling factor is 2:1. This is a bug not seen with a native display. For example, a MacBook Pro Retina is listed as “2880 X 1800 Retina” (not 1440 X 900). And so the NEC PA322 UHD ought to be listed as “3840 X 2160 Retina” or similar.

32-bit color

Some Macs may say 32-bit color. 32-bit color means 24-bit color + one 8-bit alpha channel.

It is curious that 30-bit/10-bit color does not support (or at least does not indicate) the availability of an alpha channel for “40-bit color”.

For example, the screen shot at right is from the late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina. It means that this model does not support 10-bit color, either on its internal retina display or on the external NEC EA244UHD 4K UltraHD display (shown erroneously as 1080 X 1920 but is really 2160 X 3840, portrait oriented setup).

David K writes:

My system profiler (nMP, Mavericks, Eizo 303) shows me even 32-Bit color for my 2560 X 1600 Eizo 303W.

MPG: OS X Mavericks 10.9 does not have 30-bit support. 32-bit color means 24-bit color plus support for an alpha channel (24-bit + 8 = 32 bits). For similar 10-bit support, it ought to show 40-bit color. But this sort of confusion-generating presentation is yet another reason System Profile needs some rough edges addressed.

MPG’s Computer and Storage Wish List at B&H Photo

The computer and storage stuff that I would buy for my own use, particularly for photography and/or video.

Lloyd Chambers Wish List at B&H Photo