Read on for details on swapping a disk in a MacBook Pro, finding a great deal on the drive, and how to get Boot Camp and VMware Fusion to work again after you do it!  Surprisingly, this was the hardest part…

Now for some particulars and lessons learned:

• The MacBook Pro is not an easy machine to install hardware in!  Although the RAM is readily accessible, all other components are sealed inside that sleek silver case, and it was not meant to be opened.  It is certainly doable for most people, provided they have the right tools, but closing it back up again is tricky!  There are 19 screws, both Phillips #0 and Torx T6, and the correct screwdriver is a must-have.  Apple must use some serious gorilla snot on the LED/IR cable to attach it to the drive inside, as it took much fussing to cleanly remove it.  And getting the front tabs “clicked” took some fussing and more pressure than I wanted to exert!
• I chose a Verbatim SmartDisk 320 GB FireWire/USB Portable hard drive as a donor.  It contains a very nice Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVT drive that should be compatible with most mainstream notebooks since it’s just 9.5 mm tall.  This is a modern unit with two 160 GB platters, 3.0 Gb/s “SATA II” interface with native command queueing, and is fast and quiet.
• Why buy an portable drive instead of a bare hard disk?  Because Best Buy had the Verbatim on sale at $129, while the bare drive itself (sitting just down the aisle) was marked $179, that’s why!  Plus, the case can be re-used (see below).
• My MacBook had a 120 GB Fujitsu MH2120BH drive, which is a 2-platter 1.5 Gb/s SATA unit with modern perpendicular recording technology.  It fit nicely in the leftover Verbatim external drive case!  Sadly the case is flimsy compared to the very nice metal Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini I use on the PC side.  But at least the FireWire interface is fast.
• I used SuperDuper to clone the Mac’s internal drive and then booted with the FireWire drive just to make sure it worked.  Very nice!  Then I cracked the MacBook and swapped the drives.

Some notes in particular for folks like me who Boot Camp and VMware Fusion and upgrade their drives:

• I chose Winclone (an OS X app) to back up the Boot Camp partition prior to the drive swap.  Worked like a charm, creating a 22 GB image of my 55 GB partition.
• To keep everything “native”, you must use Boot Camp Assistant to repartition the new drive after the upgrade.  But Assistant requires you to use GPT to partition the drive, and Verbatim shipped it with APM, so I had to repartition it in Disk Utility before using it.
• I wanted to have two partitions - one for OS X and another for my Home directory.  This is standard storage industry best practice and what I do on my Windows machines.  But Boot Camp Assistant can’t handle this, and OS X doesn’t make it easy either.  So it’s all one partition now.  Boo!
• The new Boot Camp partition has to be as large or larger than the old one for Winclone to restore to it.  I wasn’t using all my space and wanted to reduce it but couldn’t.  So even though I “only” have 22 GB of data in my Boot Camp partition, I had to devote 56 GB to it.  I’ll resize it later if I can.  Either way, I’ve still got over 200 GB free in my OS X partition!
• VMware Fusion works great with Boot Camp partitions normally, but falls on its face when you replace the drive like I did.  Fusion kept trying to use an invalid configuration for the new Boot Camp partition, and there is no easy way to make it work again after you’ve changed it.  But I found the answer - you have to delete /Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp, reboot into Boot Camp, and restart OS X before Fusion will correctly detect and configure the partition!  This is crazy stuff, but it works now!

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Upgraded! 320 GB in a MacBook Pro!

I just solved the problem.  The old Apple Extended Keyboard, as revered by Apple fans as my IBM Model M, continued the function key mapping past F12, adding F13, F14, and F15 where Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause/Break is on an IBM 101-key layout.  Then they mapped F14 and F15 to dim and brighten the screen, respectively.  See the problem?  Yeah, the IOGear hotkey is “dim dim”!

It turns out that this is easy to fix.  Leopard’s Keyboard & Mouse Preferences panel includes a tab to remap Keyboard Shortcuts.  Down at the bottom of the list is “Display”.  Expand it and you’ll see the two mappings in question - just un-check them and you’re good to go!

While you’re there, marvel at how none of the other function key shortcuts match up to their functions on the pre-2008 MacBook uses!  It’s a really bizarre oversight on the part of Apple to map bright/dim to F14/F15 and to F1/F2 on the same computer at the same time, depending if you’re using the built-in keyboard or not!  Apparently, the company shifted all the mappings around for the late 2007 desktop and early 2008 portables, too.

By the way, about that KVM - it’s pretty good, especially for the money.  I previously used a GCS62, which is a PS/2 in and out model with no audio, but the GCS632U is more suited to weirdos like me that like to use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse with a modern computer.  It takes PS/2 in but sends USB out to the connected computers, and includes audio, too.  It’s rock-solid, unlike the Belkin Flip I tried before, but I do wish the audio cable wasn’t captive to the video like it is - it’s just not long enough for the Mac.

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

How to Keep an IOGear KVM from Dimming Your Mac’s Screen

In this era of switchers, Boot Camp, KVM, USB, and virtualization, the question of how to deal with computer keyboard irregularities has become all the more important.  One of the most critical usability factors in cross-platform typing is the question of what to do about the so-called modifier keys: Control, Command, Alt, and the like.  See, each platform has its own key combinations for GUI shortcuts and common operations like copy and paste.  And although most are similar, they are different enough to frustrate even the expert user.

The Alt and Control keys found on most PC keyboards date from the first PCs, with so-called Windows and Menu keys introduced in 1995 and Fn or Function modifier keys found on laptops both before and after.  Combined with the Shift key (which pre-dated the personal computer) these are the most common modifier keys used today.

Most Windows commands use some combination of Ctrl, Alt, and Shift but the mapping is haphazard at best.  Generally, Alt-combinations control the GUI (switching windows and selecting menus) while Ctrl-combinations perform actions (copy and paste) but this is not always the case.  However, even though variations abound, the standard 101-key IBM layout dating from 1986 (shown at right on a 1987 IBM Model M) has dominated.  This places two “Ctrl” keys at the outermost position of the bottom row of keys with two “Alt” keys flanking the space bar.  The Windows, Menu, and (on notebooks) Fn keys are squeezed in between Ctrl and Alt.

The situation is quite different on the Macintosh.   Hardware-wise, the Mac inherited the Command (”open apple”/”cloverleaf” ⌘) and Option keys found on the Apple IIe of 1982, and added a Control key with the Mac II and SE to enable business-friendly terminal emulation capabilities.  As seen in the keyboard at right from my Mac SE, the Control key, as on the PC XT, occupies the space now associated with Caps Lock at left in the third row, while the Option and to-be-named Command key (with the Apple outline) sit roughly where the Windows and Alt keys would eventually live.

The popular Apple Extended Keyboard swapped Caps Lock and Control, settling the key layout of the Macintosh that has lasted through today, and added “Alt” to the Option key, clarifying its purpose.  In 2007, Mac fans were thrown into a frenzy as Apple made one more change, removing the Apple from the Command key and (finally) adding the word, “Command”, in its place.

If you’re a geek like me, you will find the history of these keys to be an interesting aside.  Wanting to add more functionality to their (integrated) keyboards, most early personal computer makers looked for ways of adding modifier keys without “breaking” existing programs, which were hard-coded for earlier layouts.  Most manufacturers settled on the so-called “Bucky bit” strategy, adding keys that modified the binary ASCII code from other keys. Alt set the eighth bit to 1, turning H (01001000) into 11001000, which could be a non-printable control character or one from another character set.  Similarly, Ctrl zeroed out the sixth and seventh places, turning both H and h (01101000) into backspace (00001000).  Apple took a different tack, literally wiring the open and closed apple keys to the joystick buttons on the Apple II.  Of course, nowadays keyboards merely send appropriate ASCII signals using a microcontroller, but these ingenious approaches certainly showed creativity!

This brings us to today.  Although both the PC and Mac feature a key called Control on the left, the Mac places Alt/Option next, followed by Command.  On the PC, the center spot is taken by the Windows key and the Alt is on the right.

This mapping problem is compounded by the fact that these keys do different things.  Command on the Mac takes on the GUI and action duties from both Control and Alt on the PC.  Alt and Ctrl stay true to their original uses, modifying the result of other keypresses and sending control codes, respectively.  None of this was much of an issue in the days of incompatible keyboard protocols, but today’s USB devices can be used with either platform, and virtualization and remote control have made rapid switching much more common.

Consider my case:  I use an IOGear USB KVM switch to control both my Mac and PC from a single keyboard (that ancient IBM) and mouse, as well as to output audio and video to a single LCD monitor.  I find myself switching rapidly between Vista on the PC, OS X on the Mac, and Vista in VMware Fusion, throughout the day.  And when I unplug the Mac and set it on my lap (in “Better Energy Saver” mode to keep from burning myself), I am suddenly using a Mac keyboard for OS X and Vista as well.  So sometimes the key combination for “copy” uses the key all the way to the left and sometimes it uses the one closest to the space bar, and this variation does not necessarily follow the OS I’m currently using or the keyboard I’m currently typing on.

OS X thoughtfully allows you to change the mapping of Control, Option, and Command in the Keyboard and Mouse preferences panel, and even lets you set different customization for different keyboards.  Lots of ex-Windows users use this to swap Command and Control with Control and Windows on a Windows keyboard, which harmonizes many familiar DOS/Windows command shortcuts.  And if you’re as insane as some Apple fans users, you could also use this panel to move Caps Lock and Option back to their original locations.

But is it a good idea to mess with the keyboard settings like this?  I think not.  Eventually you will need to use a “correct” keyboard, whether you are using a Windows or OS X computer, and crutches like this just serve to frustrate your efforts to acclimatize.  I think it’s best to simply live with it - to get used to using the right key combinations, no matter which input device or operating system one is using.

Of course, there’s one more problem for me.  See that keyboard layout up at the top?  My primary keyboard is, as I’ve mentioned, a 1987 IBM Model M.  Despite possibly being the best keyboard ever made, it is a 101-key model, not the more modern 104-key Windows unit.  I’ve gotten used to using Ctrl-Esc for the Windows key, and even Shift-F10 for the menu.  But I’m having a real problem with OS X because I simply do not have a Command key, and no amount of “getting used to it” will change this fact.  So for now I had to remap Control to Command, and I will have to live without a Control key in OS X.  Anyone have a better idea?

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Command and Control: The Clash of Keyboards

Although Hitachi was first to announce and ship a 2.5″ 500 GB drive, theirs used four platters, pushing thickness to 12.5 mm - too much for most laptops and external enclosures.  So Samsung’s announcement of their 9.5 mm two-platter SpinPoint M6 disk was greeted with enthusiasm, but it has taken months for actual drives to ship.  

All that looks to be changing, however, as at least one vendor is currently offering SpinPoints for sale in the United States, and OEMs are rapidly raising their hands.  Earlier this week it was familiar name Verbatim, who announced a 500 GB addition to their SmartDisk line.  Today it is Mac-friendly LaCie with a dual-drive bus-powered RAID 0 unit delivering a massive terabyte in a palm-sized package.

All this mobile storage goodness will continue pushing cost down and capacity up in the hot mobile market.  Where 120 GB was exciting last year, today we are seeing 200, 250, and even 320 GB drives in affordable notebooks and portable enclosures.  I missed snapping up a 320 GB Verbatim unit last week at Best Buy for just $139, but I expect to see a lot more at this bargain price over the next month or so.  That company claims their 500 GB drive will start under $300, and I expect it will drop 1/3 off that price on sale right off the bat.

Where does this leave supposed bargain NAND flash drives?  They’re not looking as attractive, with even the cheapest consumer units priced over $400 for a usable 60 GB.  Until vendors start hitting massive volumes, NAND will continue to command ten times the price per GB of old fashioned “spinning rust”.  With similar power requirements, expect NAND to remain a niche product for another few years at least.

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Big Little Disks Are On The Way

• The MacBook Pro is much sturdier than the average PC notebook, and even somewhat better than the high-end machines I’ve used (like my replacement Dell XPS M1330)
• The machine is hot on the bottom when using it a lot, and even pretty hot on the top!
• The fan is really loud - much louder than I was expecting
• The MagSafe power cord is cute but very delicate - I’m not surprised at all that they break and burn right and left!
• The screen is gorgeous - I got the matte model rather than the glossy since I hate the bright reflections I always fight with on my other machines
• I wish the 15″ model I got had more than two USB ports - I just know I’m going to be swapping a lot more than I used to.  But the new Dell has only two ports, too - my old XPS M1210 had four!
• Since I got the older model, it included the Apple remote, which is cute
• Everything about this machine is classier and more elegant than any PC I’ve ever used, from the packaging to the case to the documentation to the power cord
• I hate the auto-dimming screen - it reacts WAY too fast, constantly dimming and brightening as my shadow falls over the left-side speaker grille. This was the first Mac feature to be disabled!

• Anyone who complains about UAC on Windows should try OS X - it interrupts just about as much but forces you to type in your password, too!
• I love the packaging system - everything is self-contained so you can just drag and drop or delete
• It took me the longest time to figure out how to be able to shut the lid and use the computer with an external monitor - turns out it always sleeps when you shut the lid but then wakes up again when you click the mouse or type on the keyboard
• The included applications look much more useful than the ones that ship with Vista, which themselves are far better than anything Microsoft bundled in the past - I can’t wait to use iMovie and Garage Band, and iPhoto seems just as good as Google’s Picasa
• I’m loving the included UNIX utilities - ssh and scp should be part of every operating system out of the box!
• It’s ridiculously hard to change the hostname - apparently you have to edit /etc/hostconfig by hand!  Do they expect that no regular people want to name their computer?!?
• Network setup beats Vista hands-down!  It correctly suggested that my wireless router was filtering based on MAC address, while Vista just said “can’t connect”
• I already installed Boot Camp and VMware Fusion with a Windows Vista partition - talk about easing the transition!

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Switch Day 1: This Mac is Hot!

How did it come to this?  It’s not really Microsoft’s fault.  I use Vista every day for work, and have come to terms with it (most of the time).  And much of my work revolves around Server 2003 and other Microsoft server and storage technologies, which I have come to respect.  No, it’s not because of Microsoft’s software; it’s all about hardware.

Attrition was the instigator.  My home machines have been slowly dying, killed off by old age.  Last to go was my home-brew Celeron 4-powered desktop, which recently ate its second power supply, and the fact that my work laptop kicked the bucket last week.  This left me with an ancient Pentium III laptop to struggle with, until Dell fixed the work lappie (it cooked its CPU!).  But I like to keep work separate from pleasure, so I saw this as a sign that I had to get busy and get a new home machine.

But what to get?  I do lots with the home PC - video editing, photo manipulation, web work, and writing.  I’ve always relied on a desktop for these things, and have built a series of them from components over the last decade.  But I’ve become less interested in tinkering with hardware lately and more interested in having something that works.  And while there are certainly hundreds of choices for sweet pre-built and supported rigs, I finally admitted to myself that I would use a laptop more than a desktop, so the field was narrowed.

But what laptop to get?  There’s such a variety these days, from the ultra-light to the budget/mainstream to the workhorse to the crazy.  I’ve always liked my Dells, but the XPS M1210 I rely on for work hasn’t been as stellar a performer as I had hoped.  I used to be an ultra-light aficionado, with original HP OmniBooks (300 and 800CT) and Toshiba Portege 3010 haunting my past, but this class could never keep up with demanding apps like video editing and encoding.

Yes, it had to be a powerful “desktop replacement” machine with fast storage, lots of RAM, and good video hardware.  Hello, MacBook Pro!  Not being totally insane, the 15-incher would have to do.  And not being made of money, I was looking for a good deal.  Although Apple just updated the line in February, the modifications were slight - a smaller and cooler Penryn CPU, a larger hard disk, and that weird too-small multi-touch trackpad.

So I decided to pick up an “outdated” mid-2007 model instead, saving 20% in the process and still getting a killer machine.  I went with the 2.2 GHz model, betting that the 4 MB of cache in its Merom core would bring it close to the performance of a 3 MB-equipped 2.4 GHz Penryn, and would certainly be good enough for my use.  I don’t think I’ll miss the additional 128 MB of VRAM in the new ‘Books either, and the old model still has the 800 MHz Santa Rosa chipset and LED backlight.

Looking around, I found that Mac Connection and Amazon both had good prices on older gear, but MacMall had the lowest price (after a $150 rebate) and wouldn’t charge sales tax.  They talked me into a $100 RAM upgrade (to 4 GB), though I balked at their $40 installation charge.  It may be harder to swap a hard drive in a Pro, but RAM is simple to install.  I’ll live with the 120 GB 5400 RPM hard drive for a while.  But I’ve already got a 160 GB drive on the shelf, and might even skip that in favor of a 320 GB or even 500 GB Samsung at some point.

And Mac OS X?  Well that will be a learning process for me. I like the idea of UNIX internals, being an old-school UNIX-head, but am concerned about just how good the OS integration is.  Is it lipstick on a warthog like so many other “desktop UNIX” systems?  It sure looks pretty, and I love the bundled applications, so we shall see.

And I can always run Vista or XP, since the machine will definitely be a dual (or triple or quad) booter.  I went ahead and picked up VMware Fusion at the same time, hedging my bets on the state of Mac applications.

So tune in over the next few months and I’ll let you all know how it progresses.  At the very least, I got a killer new laptop!

Note to subscribers:  If you’re not interested in Macs, iPhones, home media servers, and such, you can subscribe to my Enterprise Storage-only feed.  Alternately, if you’re interested in the tales of a switcher more than Fibre Channel and iSCSI, you can subscribe to my Terabyte Home feed instead.

Macintosh PowerBook Pro image courtesy of Apple.  Macintosh SE image from Wikimedia Commons, taken by Danamania.

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Switch! or How the Mac (Finally) Won Me Over

I was surprised this morning with an email from Amazon touting “five albums for $5″ on the MP3 store.  Turns out, it’s five albums (today only) for $5 each.  And it’s a great set, too - I already own and love two of them, bought a third, and suspect most folks already have the fourth:

1. R.E.M.’s new album, Accelerate is just great - short, snappy, easy to get into
2. Radiohead’s In Rainbows is an album I’ve written about before…
3. I’d been enjoying songs from She & Him lately, including their appearance in Paste magazine, so decided to pick up Volume One for five bucks.
4. Does anyone not know Hotel California?
5. Finally there’s Dreaming Out Loud from OneRepublic, which I’m not familiar with.

Also, if you like the Black Keys, you can get their new Attack & Release for $2.99…

Like I said, I’m not trying to advertize this.  I’m just happy to see some great music offered legally and without DRM for low bucks.

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Amazon MP3 Friday 5

Here’s the situation:  You are tired of iTunes syncing whenever you drop your phone into the dock, so you uncheck “automatically sync” in the iPhone Summary page.  While at your local Starbucks, you decide to download the latest from KT Tunstall.  Yup, it downloaded, and you can listen to it.  Later, you place your phone back in the dock and go about your business.  But, surprise surprise, Katie’s song is now gone from your world!  Somewhere, somehow, the iPhone deleted it!

As we all know, Apple doesn’t allow multiple downloads of purchased content.  So what should you do if this happens to you?  Do what I did when “I’m Shipping Up To Boston” vanished:

1. Open a copy of iTunes that is authorized and linked to your iTunes Store account
2. Click “iTunes Store”
3. Click “Account” and log in
4. Click “Purchase History”
5. Click the tiny grey arrow in a circle next to the purchase in question
6. Click the “Report a Problem” button
7. Click the words “Report a Problem” next to the track in question
8. Select “I didn’t receive this song” and explain yourself in the box provided
9. Apple will re-authorize the song(s) in a few days
10. Then, in iTunes, select “Store” and “Check for Purchases” and the missing tracks will be downloaded
11. Pray that this doesn’t happen again!

Seems like a weird problem, all told.  One would think that Apple would not allow this kind of weird interaction, lest it discourage people from using the Wi-Fi Music Store!

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Watch Out When Buying From the iTunes Wi-Fi Store!

Before: Everything looks like a generic external book type thing.

But I’ve stumbled on a great method to create easy to locate the right drive using free software and the power of Google.  I create a custom drive icon that looks like the physical drive in Windows, so I can see which is which at a glance.  Here’s how!

After: Aah, now I can see which removable drive is which.  Shame about that iPhone icon, though…

1. Install a copy of Icon Sushi, a small, free icon editing application.
2. Locate a nice image of your drive and save it to your Pictures folder.  I use Google’s image search function and key in the brand name for the drive in question.  I’ve usually been able to locate a good white-background oblique shot in no time - the manufacturer or a reseller like Amazon.com or Buy.com often has just the right picture.
3. Convert the picture to a PNG file using the built-in Microsoft Paint program.  Open it in mspaint and immediately select “File”, “Save As…”, drop down the list and select “PNG (*.png)” as the type, and click “OK”.



4. Fire up Icon Sushi and open your new PNG file.  The menus are kind of confusing, but follow along here and you’ll be fine.



5. Make sure the first line on the left (under “Icon”) is selected.  Under “Edit”, select “Edit transparency mask”.
6. In the “Edit transparency mask” window, select the color dropper (third from left) and click the background of the image. This will select most of the background (as seen below) and might even be enough for your image.



7. If your picture is like my example, there are still lots of off-color areas in the transparency mask.  You can get rid of many of these easily by selecting “Use color picker continuously” and clicking on each area in turn.  Use the crayon (far left icon) to select individual pixels if you need to.
8. Once the background is cleaned up to your satisfaction, click “OK” to return to the main window.



9. Now we will save the icon to the target drive.  Under “File”, select “Save as Single Icon(s)…”  Locate your removable drive (it is connected, right?) under Computer and save the file with a descriptive name.  I like to use the model name, so in my example, I saved it as “H:\Coolmax CD-311.ico”.
10. Now we tell Windows to use this icon for this drive.  Fire up Notepad and enter the following text, substituting your own drive icon name for mine:

[autorun]
icon = .\Coolmax CD-311.ico

11. Save this as “autorun.inf” in the root directory of the removable drive.  In my example, this would be “H:\autorun.inf”.  If there’s already an autorun.inf on the drive, take a look at it and see if you can add the “icon” line to it.
12. Now eject the drive and re-insert it.  You should see your new icon in “My Computer” - much better, don’t you think?

I’ve had great luck using this with thumb drives, memory cards, and removable hard disks.  But it doesn’t work with iPods, digital cameras, and other such things that show up with bogus icons.  I’d love a suggestion if you know how to modify these!

Also, note that the icon goes with the drive.  If you’re a psycho like me that swaps bare disk drives in and out of an enclosure, you might want to use an icon that identifies the drive.  I’ve added a big numeral for the capacity on top of the enclosure image for my bare drives.

Finally, don’t buy that Coolmax CD-311 USB/FireWire/e-SATA enclosure I used in my example.  The FireWire is flaky.  It’s going back to Fry’s!

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Custom Icons Keep Removable Drives Straight