Standard Podcast [ 57:32 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today , I cover via audio how to trim down the amount of space that Garage Band files take on your hard drive. I also interview the founder of PadPivot a unique iPad stand, and finally George Starcher and I talk about Gmail’s new two factor authentication. Enjoy the show.

Show Notes:

PadPivot

Kickstarter Project

Garage Band file reduction TMUP blog post

OWC 128GB SSD

DiskRadar

symbolic links

SymbolicLinker

Introduction to Two Factor Authentication

Gmail’s Two Factor Authentication

Screencasts On Line

I’m getting ready for a new MacPro that is coming in next week. One of the things that I’m going to do with this MacPro is run an OWC 128GB SSD as the start up volume for OS X. While preparing for this tasks  I needed to clean up my current 300GB HD and get rid of everything I don’t need in order to be able to have my boot drive as lean as possible.

I ran DiskRadar in order to find where my largest files were ,and found that the Garage Band Loop Library (including all the Jam Packs) was over 37GB. By default, Apple’s loops are stored in the start up volume and must be there in order for Garage Band to work. However, as you accumulate more and more loops , the disk space required by these loops increases, and if you buy or have all the Jam Packs it’s almost 40GB.

So, how run Garage Band but have the loops located in an external hard drive. Since Garage bands expects to see these loop file in  the folder  ~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Jam Pac .., if we simple move the Apple Loops folder to an external drive Garage Band won’t be able to find the loops. When you try to select one you will get an error that it can’t find the loops.

How can we fix this? Well the way that I’ve done it is to use symbolic links in order to fool OS X into thinking the loops are in the ~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/ folder.

I used a great  script called SymbolicLinker. As is described on their web site “SymbolicLinker is a tiny contextual menu plugin (for Puma through Leopard users) and software service (for Snow Leopard & later users) that, once installed, allows any user to create symbolic links to files inside the Finder. SymbolicLinker does this by adding a contextual menu item to the Finder that generates symbolic links to the selected files”

So here are the steps I took

NOTE: Please make sure you back up your entire hard drive before attempting this. I did not run into any problems, but proceed at your own risk.

1. I copied the entire folder called /Apple in the path ~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/ to one of my external drives

2. I then moved the ~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple to my desktop (temporarily)

3. From there I went into the folder and used SymbolicLinker to make symbolic links of each of the Garage Band Jam Pack folders (see picture below). Notice how SymbolicLinker renames each folder and adds ‘symlink’ at the end of the name (see below)

4. Now copy the symbolic link folder and put it back where Garage Band expects to see it in your main hard drive ~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/

5. Now highlighted each symbolic link folder and press enter. Rename the folder by removing the “symlink.” For example change “Apple Loops for GarageBand symlink” to “Apple Loops for GarageBand”

6. Now when  you go to Garage Band , you should be able to use loops as you normally would.

7. If everything is working you are now safe to go to your desktop and trash the the/Apple folder that contained all your Garage Band loop. Your start up drive will now be a lot skinnier

update: I was also able to use this same process to get rid of an additional 17GB that was being used in GB  ~/Library/Application Support/Garage Band/Instrument Library folder

When it comes to data reliability, being portable,  efficient, and having high availability is paramount. OWC sent me their Mercury Elite-ALPro 1.5TB portable hard drive to test out and do some benchmarking. Below are my results.

Benchmarks

For testing the Firewire 800 write and write speeds of the Mercury Elite-ALPro mini, I again used the AJA system test and sent a 1GB payload using a video frame size of 1920X1080 but only a 256MB payload.

The speed of the FW interface was less than half that of the eSata interface. In this case the average write speed for the Drobo S was 13.0 MB/s, and the average read speed was 12.4 MB/s. The Mercury Elite-ALPro on the other had clearly took the lead using FW880 with average write speeds of 48.1 MB\s and average read speeds of 34.6 MB\s.

The Bottom Line

I highly recommend this drive if you are a person that needs to have speed, large disk space, and the reliability that I have found comes form OWC product. This drive delivers and it does so in a small form factor. Go out and get one, you won’t regret this purchase.

Standard Podcast [ 40:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today we learn how to use the console to help us troubleshoot. George Starcher talks to us about using multiple Macs with Final Cut Studio, and I tell you about my decision on a new desktop and different ways you can decide on your next Mac.

Show Notes:

New Mac Pro

OWC MacPro memory

OWC SSD solutions including MacPro

Macintosh Performance Guide on how to install and SSD into a 2009-2010 MacPro

Discussion on identifying crashes in Console

Reading OSX messages without Console (via CNET)

Georgestarcher.com

Standard Podcast [ 1:04:17 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the last of the Macworld 2011 show floor coverage. Hope you enjoyed it.

Show notes:

Product Pictures taken by George

Standard Podcast [ 23:32 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

George Starcher and I turned on the recorder on the way home from San Francisco and talked about our Macworld 2011 experience.