Hey Charles,

Welcome, glad to see you here.

Good question.  Lightroom is actually a combination of a browsing program and a Cataloging program, and I was using mostly its browsing features to replace Bridge CS3 (which as you know is an image browser only, and CS3 had some serious issues which is why I wanted to try LR in place of it), and then moving my files out of Lightroom completely after I had converted to DNG, and importing them into Expression Media 2 for cataloging.  Lightroom is trying to be an all-in-one solution, and for a number of reasons, isn't quite there yet.  See this post for details on that: http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=3534.0.

Hope this helps.  Cheers, Josh

Hey Peter,

Had figured out the space bar for preview, but didn't catch the +/- keys for zooming, very nice.  You can also click your mouse to engage 100% views in Preview, then scroll the mouse ball to zoom in and out between 100% and 800%, very nice indeed.

Had a question for you about Caches in Bridge (feel free to move this topic if you think it should be).  They have obviously improved things much with the caches, but I am wondering about whether the 100% previews come along with the caches when they are exported to the image folders.  My first impression is they do not...  When I am working on the same folder of images on two different machines, it does not appear to need to rebuild the thumbnail and Monitor-Size previews each time I open the folder on a new machine, but needs to build the 100% previews.  Am I correct in this?  It seems as though the 100% previews are stored in the local cache, and everything else is exported to the caches in the folder(s).  Also, does the preference for creating Monitor-Size previews need to be turned on if I'm using 100% previews?  It seems a bit redundant to do so...  It also seems odd to have this option buried in the preferences, when all the other options related to thumbnails and previews are right in the main part of the Bridge workspace.

Cheers, Josh

Update:

NewEgg is replacing the box with the dead power supply.  As Peter said, hopefully this is just a string of bad luck.  The second box is still going just fine.

Also, I got to the bottom of the dropping drives issue.  It seems that I must boot up the server, AND power up the eSATA box BEFORE connecting to the server from ANY workstation.  I had been booting up the server, connecting to it over the network, then powering up the eSATA box, and this was causing only one drive to show up.  Everything appears to be running smoothly now, and I'm looking forward to getting that second box back in action to make sure everything is backed up.

Cheers, Josh

Just thought I'd post here to update...

Since my last post, I've upgraded to CS4, and have moved back to Bridge (CS4) instead of using Lightroom for browsing/rating/RAW adjustments etc.  I was really enjoying many of the features of Lightroom, especially the ability to use two monitors, and the integrated workspaces, but in the end, the lack of the ability to use/open LR catalogs from a network volume sealed its fate for me.  If I were working on my own, I would probably have stuck it out, but I work with an assistant who also processes some of my files, and the constant uploading/downloading of catalogs to the workstations from the network volume was getting to be a real PITA, even over our gigabit network.

I must say that Bridge CS4 is a big improvement over CS3, especially the caches, and the 100% previews (take a while to load, but make editing so much faster!).  The new interface is really customizable and easy to navigate.  I've just installed Peter's RapidFixer, and that has already sped up my edits...

Cheers, Josh

Hey Dan,

Just thought I'd see if you ended up getting this software.  I've been looking at it for a while, and was wondering what you thought of it.  I'd be using it for agency submissions, as well as on my own Photoshelter-powered stock site.

Cheers, Josh

You said it.  I'm sure my blood pressure is way above the recommended limit at the moment...

I'm also having issues with my eSATA connection randomly dropping drives.  It happened before on my cheaper Norco eSATA card and I thought that was the problem, but I just had my first instance with the Sonnet X4P card also.  All the drives in the eSATA box show up on the desktop of the G4 Server, but only one drive (always seems to be the one closest to the bottom (physically) of the drive box) shows up on any networked machines.  A couple of reboots usually fixes it, but it is super annoying.  Anyone else seen anything like this?

Cheers, Josh

Update: It appears the power supply in one of the boxes just died this afternoon...  Came back from lunch and it was off, and will not come back on.  Have a call in to Rosewill Customer Service and will keep you guys posted.  Hopefully a one-in-a-million issue (maybe the savings over the MG boxes wasn't really worth it...), but certainly glad I had two drive boxes here or I'd be up the creek.  Just swapped the trays from the dead box to the working one and now back at it, though my backup workflow is a bit hooped until I get a replacement.  Thanks for suggesting using 2 smaller boxes instead of one large one in the first place Peter.

Cheers, Josh

Hey Bill,

Glad to help.

Agreed, they focus much of their marketing and specs on the RAID options, and don't say much about JBOD setups.  I am indeed using both boxes just as JBOD's.

The 2TB limit as I understand it is a function of Windows, not the hardware itself.  Windows has imposed a 2TB limit on any given volume.  This means no individual drive can be larger than 2TB (to my knowledge, the maximum size of individual drives available today is 1.5TB, so this shouldn't be a problem).  You will run into problems if you do decide to RAID your drives (either RAID 0 or RAID 5), as these can easily get over the 2TB limit.  Peter, and many others here including myself, recommend avoiding RAID, as the additional speed gained doesn't offset the potential problems and data recovery issues you may have if a drive were to fail.

Just to clarify, if you put five 1TB disks in one box, connected by just the one eSATA cable, and set them up as JBOD, windows will see all five of them no problem and you can use all five drives.  If you were to RAID 0 all five 1TB disks, you would actually have a 5TB volume, but Windows would only be able to see/use 2TB of that (if it were to allow you to use it at all, I don't know as I'm not a windows guy!).

The Mac I'm running as my server only has PCI (I can also use PCI-X, as it is backwards compatible), not PCI-e (a newer, faster connection).  The bundled cards with the Rosewill boxes are PCI-e, so I was not able to use them.  I knew this at the time of ordering, and actually ordered a Norco brand 4-port PCI-X eSATA card that supports Port Multiplication and RAID.  I was having some issues with it, and realized it is not recommended for G4 Macs, and is best used in a PC.  I then decided to order the highly recommended Sonnet X4P card from Macgurus which is working flawlessly.

Note that you will never see the 300MB/s speed with JBOD.  You will need RAID to make that happen, as the limitation is the speed that the disks can write the data, not the speed of the cabling and interfaces.  Read up on RAID at Wikipedia.  That said, I run a Gigabit network here in the office, and am quite happy with my transfer speeds.

These enclosures are hot swappable (though I don't know about this if using RAID).  You just unmount the disk you want to swap, then pull it out, and swap in a new disk which auto-mounts.

Feel free to shoot back any questions.  Cheers, Josh

Hi Peter,

I tried 4 different software options including FileSalvage, I'll give you the Coles Notes version on the other three here:

Boomerang: Seemed like really excellent software, and it looked as though it was actually going to be able to recover my folder structure along with filenames, something none of the other software was capable of doing.  It did not have the option to add custom file types, which I needed for my accounting data, so this was a non-option for me.  The other bummer about this software is that your software license is actually based on the amount of data recovered, not just a one shot deal.  Prices range from $40 for 100MB to $280 for 1TB.  Seemed like a bit of a rip off to me, personally.

StellarPhoenix: Wasn't overly impressed with this, especially after reading some nightmare reviews on the web.  It has also just been updated to version 3.0, and they still left the Panther-era brushed metal look to the GUI.  Doesn't make me too confident about what it'll do to a Leopard file structure.  These guys certainly have their SEO done well though, they show up everywhere - to the point that it actually got annoying when I was searching for alternatives!

Data Rescue: While all of the software listed here provide a functioning demo, only Data Rescue provides a Demo that allows you to actually recover a file (albeit only one, with a 5MB limit).  I was generally impressed, and the only reason I didn't opt to use it was that it does not allow for searching for custom file types.

The big downside I see to all DR software is the scan times (Loooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg is a good way to put it.) and the lack of custom file types.  My scans took between 6 and 12 hours for a 500GB drive (You can see why it took about a week after attempting to try all of the software - you should really only run one at a time when scanning a disk!).  Most of these programs allow you to save the results of a scan so you can continue with Data Recovery at a later time which is nice.  As mentioned above, only FileSalvage allows for Custom File Types.  It would also be nice to be able to recover the filenames and folder structure, but I'm sure this is much more difficult than it sounds!

Anyways, hope this helps.  Cheers, Josh

Thought I'd post what I ended up doing in case anyone was looking at their options in the future...

I ended up buying two Rosewill brand 5-bay PM-capable eSATA boxes from NewEgg for less than half the comparable MacGurus boxes, and ordered a Sonnet Tempo X4P PCI card from Macgurus to go in the G4.

I opted for keeping the G4 & going eSATA for a couple reasons:

- I wanted to keep a machine as a server, that could be on 24/7 and do file maintenance overnight (Backups!)
- I wanted to keep access to drive SMART data as Peter mentioned above
- I wanted to stick the G4 and the drive boxes somewhere cool & out of earshot (they're under the stairs now)
- I opted for two 5-bay boxes instead of one 8-bay also for the reason Peter stated above (basically a backup case in the event that one goes down)

Bought six 1TB SATA drives, plus the existing 2.25TB already in the G4 means I now have room to grow and room to make sure everything is backed up.

Cheers, Josh

Craig,

I agree wholeheartedly with Peter, lots of confusion and compatibility issues surrounding eSATA PM boxes and cards.

I run MAC, and just bought 2 Rosewill brand 5-bay PM-capable eSATA boxes from NewEgg for less than half the comparable MacGurus boxes, and they are (now) running great.  I originally skimped on the eSATA PCI card to go in my older PowerMac G4 MDD tower, and ran into issues with it.  I bought the Norco brand card from NewEgg, as it said it was a PCI/PCI-X card, PM capable, and worked in a Mac.  Had dropped drives happening, and general inconsistent behavior (plus this card did not pass on SMART data from the drives, and the drives curiously showed up in System Profiler as SCSI drives instead of SATA?!), so I finally ordered a Sonnet Tempo X4P from Macgurus (those guys do really know their stuff) for about 3x the price of the Norco card and things are running great.  Stable, and now the drives are showing as SATA w/ SMART data.  With this setup I can run 5 drives on 1 data cable, and with 4 ports on the Sonnet card, I could run 20 drives in total (4 boxes with 5 drives each, each box connected with only 1 cable).

Hope this helps.  Cheers, Josh

Disaster averted, I was able to get almost all of my data back intact, though not without much work and a major headache.  I haven't been able to identify any missing documents, though some of them I hadn't looked at in a few years so I'm not sure I'd miss them...

I was able to get back my accounting database file (Moneyworks Gold is a great option for Mac accounting software BTW), but unfortunately, they use a custom file type that most data recovery software is not pre-programmed to look for when rescuing data.  The one program I finally got to recover it is called FileSalvage.  You give it 10 examples of the file type you'd like it to look for, and it does the rest.  It successfully found my accounting file, though not without also finding a slew of other files it thought were accounting files that were not...  While this program is also supposed to rename your files as it recovers them, it crashed while doing so, twice.  This did not affect the recover, just the filenaming.  As a result, all of my files were batch named like 123.pdf, 124.pdf, etc.  I was able to use EM2 to help sort some of it out, but I have been doing some manual renaming as well.  Tedious at best...

Anyways, hope this helps someone else down the road, I really hope I don't need to put these newfound skills to use again.  A week of sleepless nights & wasted work, don't let it happen to you!  Backups are now running nightly, and have both my new 5-bay eSATA boxes running well off my G4 MDD.

Cheers, Josh

Peter,

Well said, and thanks for the kind words.  I did not write zeros to the disk, just a basic "Do not erase data" format.  The part that gets me the most is that I am usually so on top of it with my backups both general data and my images.  Between moving homes this summer, running out of drive space, and being on the road too often this year to really get a chance to update my hardware and processes, it just fell to the back burner and this is the result....

Don't let it happen to you!

Cheers, Josh

(Also trying out Data Rescue II, I will post my results once I have sorted everything out.)

Hey Everyone,

Long story short: I accidentally formatted a 500GB hard drive on my G4 Powermac that was my fileserver.  I was in the middle of adding two 5-bay eSATA boxes, and had transferred all of my image files off of the drive, but forgot to move all of my important business files (contracts, accounting program data, etc) before formatting.  To say I'm mad at myself is an understatement...  I did not have a backup, as I had run out of drive space (hence the new 5-bay boxes).

Anyone have a recommendation for good drive recovery software for Mac, or a personal recommendation on a reputable Data Recovery company?  I am trying out FileSalvage, Stellar Phoenix and Boomerang as I write this...  I also know not to write any new data to this disk.

Thanks for any help.  This will not happen again.

Cheers, Josh

If at first you don't succeed, update your software.

Problem solved. I always do that.

Thanks Peter.

Cheers, Josh