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27″ iMac: Advice loading more ram & Thunderbolt question
I bought the new 27″ iMac and took the advice I received from helpful posters on this forum and bought the least amount of memory from Apple and got the 32GB set from Crucial. Now it’s time to put it in and I am very scared I will screw it up. I found some YT tutorials but a not sure I can be certain I have no static electricity in me since it is the dry winter here. What if I wear latex surgical gloves? No danger of static right? Is this as easy as it looks?
Next question: I’ve been editing onto the internal fusion drive but a very high end editor I know says it will be faster if I edit to an external Thunderbolt hard drive. How is this possible? What I really care about is speedy exporting. I’m using FCP7 and going through QuickTime Conversion to make the clients their final videos. I’d like to avoid the expense of buying a Thunderbolt plus there’s only 2 TD ports on the iMac. I need one for my additional monitor and I need the other to go to a hub for the 800 fire wire and USB drives I use.
So, since Apple has provided us with only 2 ports, how do I use a Thunderbolt drive, an additional Cinema Display monitor plus have USB and FW800 hubs?
Many thanks for your advice,
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
10 Replies
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[Ned Miller] “Next question: I’ve been editing onto the internal fusion drive but a very high end editor I know says it will be faster if I edit to an external Thunderbolt hard drive.”
A single drive external Thunderbolt enclosure? That probably won’t be faster. A multi-drive Thunderbolt RAID drive might be. It depends — the SSD component of the Fusion drive is very fast, but if you have a lot of media most of it will inevitably be on the hard drive component. What formats are you working with? With more compressed formats, you’re not going to really see faster exports with faster storage anyway, since the bottleneck with be processing, not reading/writing footage.
[Ned Miller] “So, since Apple has provided us with only 2 ports, how do I use a Thunderbolt drive, an additional Cinema Display monitor plus have USB and FW800 hubs?”
As with FireWire, many (not all) Thunderbolt devices have a second Thunderbolt port for daisy chaining.
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Go to macsales.com
Excellent install videosanickt
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Hey Chris,
I am using AVCcam & P2. I have very little on the internal drive since it is new.
I guess I will have to do the daisy chain method but if experts like you say it’s not faster then why bother buying one?
Thanks
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Installing the ram is very easy. surgical gloves will help as would touching something metal. and if it is a static filled environment get this:
lay your unplugged mac down on a clean towel at a good height on a solid surface.
you don’t need the tool kit mentioned in the video but you will need a plastic something to push open the ram door. a pen with cap will do. the kit owc sells is a good kit and can come in handy but not needed for this job.
to install watch this:
https://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/imac_27inch_late_2012_mem_h/
if you are not using the original apple ram then save it for trouble shooting down the line.
store it in one of the cases that came with the new ram.
You want to store your media on an external raid.
Sure SSD would be the fastest but at this point in time very expensive.
A raided thunderbolt enclosure will be plenty fast and if it can swap out drives you have almost unlimited storage.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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And to put all that Ram to good use you really should get FCP X, since FCP7 can just use a small portion of it.
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[Ned Miller] “I bought the new 27″ iMac and took the advice I received from helpful posters on this forum and bought the least amount of memory from Apple and got the 32GB set from Crucial. Now it’s time to put it in and I am very scared I will screw it up”
Well I managed it without a problem and I’m not that technically adept. It’s a very straightforward little job.
The OWC video that Craig Alan provided a link to is excellent.
With Thunderbolt you’ve just got to bite the bullet and invest in a few, not that expensive external devices. For me that was a Lacie TB Esata Hub, a Matrox Thundebolt adapter and a Gtech Thunderbolt external drive. Apart from the Matrox adapter both the other devices have two thunderbolt ports.
So my set up is that one of the iMac Thunderbolt ports drives an additional 27″ Samsung monitor and the other connects to the Lacie Esata Hub. From that I daisy chain onto the GTech Drive and from that I daisy chain onto the Matrox adapter for MX02 mini that drives a HDMI monitor.
[Jari Innanen] “And to put all that Ram to good use you really should get FCP X, since FCP7 can just use a small portion of it.”
That’s good advice.
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Thank you everyone!!! I will be today’s project.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
[Ned Miller] “Thank you everyone!!! I will be today’s project.
“Well, better have some other projects scheduled, since swapping the RAM will take you all of about 3-5 minutes. 🙂 It’s really easy.
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
Best reason for putting stuff on external raid is security. RAID 1 will mirror the media on 2 drives, and RAID 5 will give you more speed and will also spread the backup across all 4 (or more drives) so any 1 drive can die and the media can be rebuilt.
Have a drive die one day with the cool iphotobook of your honeymoon, and you’ll change your ways. I now only keep a small internal for OS and apps. My iPhoto library is on an external mirrored raid with all he kids photos. I also keep video masters on there, and any files of importance. Recently my external mirrored raid filled up, so I copied it to a new larger one and gave each of the other ones to a different relative for safe keeping. As we move from tape to and all digital world, I feel more of this is the future. At some point it will all go online I suppose.
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Yep. One may not be a fan of X, but there is no argument that 7 is an inefficient dinosaur at this point.
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