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Seagate Expansion HDD 3TB UnBoxing & Time Machine.

January 12, 2014 by TomBoyNI

A quick unboxing gallery of a Seagate 3TB Expansion Desktop Drive (USB 3.0).

For reference the drive is a mere 36.0mm thick and cost only £80.

As you can see from the last images I use this drive as a Time Machine. At this price it is a very affordable back up (Time Machine) solution. The speeds are good, and by that I mean I don’t notice them being slow. I can’t comment on how it operates as a daily drive however as a TM it has given me no problems, I haven’t even noticed it was there. Which makes it pretty much ideal!

Plugable USB 3.0 Powered Hub : The Good News is it Seems to like an iMac

October 21, 2017October 22, 2013 by TomBoyNI

I recently posted up a thread in which I explained how my previous USB 2.0 Powered hub didn’t seem to like my new 2013 iMac and it was subsequently returned, and that I was on the look out for a replacement…

https://tbni.blog/2013/10/18/d-link-usb-2-0-7-port-hub-unboxing-important-mac-related-notes/

Well after a little searching I felt I may have found that replacement, and at this early stage it does indeed seem that I have.

So if you are a late 2012 or late 2013 iMac owner who has had issues with USB hubs not being able to cope then one worth trying for you is the ‘Plugable’ Powered USB 3.0 HUB. I picked it up on Amazon.co.uk for about £30.

For reference I currently have a 500Gb Portable USB 3.0 drive, a 1TB Portable USB 3.0 drive, and a powered 3TB USB 3.0 plugged into the rear of my iMac along with this 7 Port Powered Hub. In the HUB I have had running without any issues whatsoever a 320Gb Powered Drive and a further 1TB Powered drive (These are both USB 2.0). I have also had at the same time my iPhone 5s and iPad (3rd Generation) syncing and iPhoto pulling photos off my Panasonic TZ30 digital camera as well as my GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition.

Now admittedly there is a lot going on here on here and much more than I usually would be doing at one one time, but it was a good way to test the hub. The results were ‘two thumbs up’ everything worked away doing its thing, without any drive drop outs or apparently power problems. (My previous HUB failed on simply having the 2 external drives plugged into it).

So all in all after over a weeks use the HUB is yet to experience any issues or give me any problems. A firmware update is available however it must be done from a Windows machine. I have not at this stage completed this firmware upgrade as things are working well, and as the man says, ‘If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.’

One little superstition I did carry out was before I plugged in any USB 2.0 devices into the HUB was I allowed each port to mount a USB 3.0 drive. I don’t know if this is a requirement, and to be honest I doubt very much it is, however it is something I and my colleagues always do with USB 3.0 ports – mount a USB 3.0 device first. The legend goes it lets the port know it is a 3.0 rather than getting locked in at 2.0 speeds.

So there you have it, if you are experiencing iMac related USB HUB issues this may well be the HUB worth trying, (one final thought is that the blue LEDs can be rather bright at night, so make sure you have some black electrical tape to cover them up).

Plugable USB 3.0 Powered HUB Unboxing Gallery :

Show hidden files Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion

October 21, 2013 by TomBoyNI

I have found that on ocassion you may need to see some of the hidden files and folders in OSX, mainly for troubleshooting. When enabled things can appear very messy and untidy so in my opinion it is best to make things visible, then when you are done, hide them again.

Good luck.

To enable hidden files/folders in finder windows:

– Open Finder

– Open the Utilities folder

– Open a terminal window

– Copy and paste the following line in:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

– Press return

– Now hold ‘alt’ on the keyboard and right click on the Finder icon

– Click on Relaunch

You will now see all the hidden files and folders. Once you are finished, perform the steps above however, replace the terminal command in step 4 with:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

D-Link USB 2.0 7 Port Hub Unboxing & Important Mac Related Notes

October 18, 2013 by TomBoyNI

Whilst I was still using my MacBook Pro I had also been using a USB Hub, although due to power restraints I had to upgrade to a Powered Hub. After a little research the D-Link 7 USB 2.0 Powered Hub seemed to be the way forward. I ordered it up and upon its arrival I plugged in it, stuck in in the MBP and now had an extra six USB 2.0 Hubs to play with.

On this machine it worked flawlessly, never missing a beat, my machine didn’t have USB3.0 so that wasn’t an issue and this hub happily powered four HDDs (2 of which were powered, 2 were portable). It also worked whilst syncing my iphone / ipad and camera. No complaints whatsoever on this machine.

This specific Hub also has two ports which are dedicated to charging. They are ports six and seven, and if your machine is powered down but the hub is still on (via the wall socket) you can use ports six or seven to charge your phone / tablet etc. It does not charge whilst the machine is in use.

For reference the machine this Hub was being used with was a Early 2011 MackBook Pro i7 2.2GHz (1Gb Graphics), 8Gb RAM, USB 2.0 with a Apple Cinema Display attached via Thunderbolt.

Then came the problems. I upgraded my computer to an iMac. It was at this point that this hub stopped working.

Again for reference the machine it was being used with was a late 2013 27″ iMac i7 3.5Ghz, (4Gb NVIDIA Graphics), 8Gb RAM, USB 3.0.

In this set up I used 3 of the 4 USB 3.0 ports on the rear of the machine to deal with three USB 3.0 hard drives (2 portable and one powered). The forth port was used to power the D-Link Hub. At this point only 2 hard drives were being used in it (both themselves powered desktop drives). This is when things started to fail. Both drives would mount momentarily, then disconnect with errors, mount -> disconnect and repeat! If you removed one drive the other mount successfully (either drive). Either drive would successfully mount via the USB ports to the rear of the machine.

For some reason when both drives were plugged into this port things failed. My only option was to bin the hub and try again with a new one. A quick Google search for USB hub problems with an iMac do tend to suggest that this is an issue with many hubs and the power they require as opposed to what they actually supply.

As expected customer service from Amazon was excellent and a new hub was ordered.

D-Link USB 2.0 Hub Gallery :

Late 2013 Apple iMac UnBoxing

October 17, 2013 by TomBoyNI

About 3 months ago I had a great setup for my computer needs, namely an early 2011 i7 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro with a Apple Cinema display for my desktop requirements.

As my requirements changed I decided it was time for a change in the computer. Now as any Apple user knows, ‘when you go Mac, you don’t go back,’ so it was time to upgrade. The rumour mill was going mad online of a new iMac coming at the end of August. I seen it is a good time to change. So towards the end of July I sold my MBP and Cinema Display set up and squirrel’d the money away to patiently wait on the imminent product refresh from Apple.

The end of August came, and no iMac refresh came. Then along came the iPhone announcement and its subsequent release on 20th September 2013. No new iMac. During this time life without a computer was pretty tough. I did get myself a Netbook to cope with the emergencies and the iPad was worked hard until 24th September 2013 when Apple announced the iMac refresh : http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/09/24Apple-Updates-iMac.html

Finally time to get my hands on this beast. I decided to bit of maxing out of the specs in order to get a long life out of it. As it was a custom build it had to be ordered online, the delivery time was given to me as some stage on 11th October 2013.

It was this date that it arrived. Delivered by UPS, whom I found to be bound down by red tape in relation to their deliveries but that is an entirely different story!

Anyway the iMac was here and specc’d as follows :

Specifications

3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X4GB
1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
Magic Trackpad
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User’s Guide
Accessory Kit

So with this spec I decided to max out the processor, the graphics and take on a Fusion Drive (some nifty technology that combines a standard spinning hard drive and some flash memory – the storage capacity of a HDD, with the speed of an SSD). I stuck with 8Gb of RAM as this is user upgradable, and much cheaper to do yourself than having it done in the factory.

Having only been using the machine for a week I am already hugely impressed, the Fusion Drive seems as capable as the SSD I had in my MBP, the speed of regular tasks is supreme, I have done a little video editing (for the FAKE Otterbox video posted 2 posts earlier) and the speed of conversion was breath taking in comparison to what I was used too. I have a couple of USB 3.0 external drives connected and they are super sharp in relation to the USB 2 speeds I had been working with. The 27″ screen needs no comment other than ‘STUNNING!’

As yet I haven’t really pushed any aspect of this machine, I am looking forward to playing about with some GoPro footage to see how the graphics card handles some HD editing. It was this sort of tasking that my old machine had started to splutter.

So in what is ultimately a very quick initial thoughts posting I am massively impressed with this machine, it was expensive, but I can see this being an investment that I will continue to enjoy for many years.

Oh and of course I got AppleCare, something I have never had to use thankfully, but anyone who I know that has can not sing its praises highly enough.

Still no Computer!

October 2, 2013 by TomBoyNI

I haven’t gone away you know!

I am still computerless however that is all about to end very soon. My Apple iMac has been ordered and should be with me by 11/10/2013. That will be pretty much two months to the day without a computer.

In that time I have gathered up a few things to comment on, my new iPhone 5s, a G-Form Extreme iPhone case, a Spigen Tough Armour iPhone case, a soon to be delivered Otterbox Defender for the 5s and finally you’ll be hearing my thoughts on the new 2013 Haswell iMac, which I am getting loaded with the i7 processor and 4Gb graphics card.

Full details will follow.

Hopefully you have had a decent end to the summer and I’ll be back and rolling forward again very soon!

Oh I just read that it is 84 sleeps to Christmas!

A week without a computer

August 19, 2013 by TomBoyNI

So it has been seven days since I sold up on my Mac set up. I have been ‘computerless’ for a full week and I have to say it is grim.

My set up consisted of an i7 MacBook Pro (early 2011) with an Apple Cinema Display (24″). The MBP was used in clamshell mode with an Apple wireless Keyboard and Magic Trackpad.

I had decided that I wanted to update to a new iMac as the portability of the MBP was something that I did not utilise.

2013 : Apple Rumours Already?

January 2, 2013 by TomBoyNI

Today is only the first day back to work for the majority of the world after the Christmas break.

Even so, having been doing a little bit of light browsing on the net the rumour mill is already going mental with predictions of what Apple will be throwing out to us this year.

To save you the trouble of checking out all these rumours at such an early stage here is the summary.

Lets see how many of them turn true over the next 12 months.

1. iPad Mini with retina display (99% likely).
2. iPhone 5s (40% likely).
3. iPhone 6 (59% likely).
4. Coloured next gen iPhones (65% likely).
5. iOS7 (99% likely).
6. iPad 5 (99% likely).
7. Some AppleTV upgrade. Most likely a huge upgrade.
8. A6 processor. (99% likely. Also 99% likely that Samsung won’t be making it).
9. Different iPhone screen sizes. (10% likely).

Hopefully this little list will quench your thirst for rumours. I’m interested in watching how they develop.

Specifications

Disclosure :