[CUBE] Novice advice

[Allan Hise]

On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, Mark Plunkett wrote:

> Happy Holidays to all:
>
> I know this has been covered extensively in the past, so it might be
> best to reply directly to me off the list.

not a problem.

>
> I am about to replace my HD ( a 30GB Quantum fireball) with a new
> Seagate 80GB (I lust for silence)
>
> 1)do I want cable select or master?

Master.

>
> 2)I have a OWC mercury FW enclosure for the old drive. Any pearls there?

That's the enclosure I have. It's nice. & Quiet. The blue light is awfully
bright...

>
> 3) I want to upgrade to Jaguar from 10.1.5  I am totally confused about
> whether or not to partion the drive or not?  I am a home user.

If you boot into OS 9, I would. Then you can use the option key at startup
to select your boot OS. If you are going OS X only, I would just leave it
as one chunk. That's just me, but I can never manage my space well, so I
end up filling one partition while another sits virtually empty. At least
with one big chunk, that doesn't happen.

>
> 4) I want to put my extensive music library on it for use with my iPod
> and I also have a pretty big iPhoto library. How should I best do this
> with my new (old) FW Drive?
>

For iTunes/iPod, just make a library folder with all your MP3s. Make sure
the preference in iTunes is not selected to copy the files over to your
Music folder. Then just drag the MP3 folder onto iTunes and it will chug
away for a while (depending on how many files you have). When it finishes,
all the songs will be available to you in your library. Make playlists as
needed.

I had problems when I plugged the iPod into my OWC FW enclosure. Mya have
been the one-time fluke, but maybe not.

Can't help with th eiPhoto thing, since I rarely use it.

> 5) My kids have a older iMacDV that I would like to airport so they can
> look up their e-mail on their computer. Do I still need the airport
> station now? And how many airport cards?

The airport station is not needed if you have an airport card in your cube
and it connects to the internet. But if you use the cube in this way, it
has to be on whenever the iMacDV needs to connect. And you have to re-turn
on internet sharing on the cube after every reboot. So using the airport
basestation is a bit easier, especially if you have young or not techy
kids that want instant access to their email.

Hope this helps,

Allan