+- MacResource (https://forums.macresource.com)
+-- Forum: My Category (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: Tips and Deals (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Thread: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? (/showthread.php?tid=54874)
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - Golfer - 05-14-2008
[quote Seannie]I currently have 2.5 TB of storage and about 350 GB left. Mostly photos, designs, logos and video.
How much space is on the drive you boot from? Once you get below 10-15% off free space on the primary boot drive you can see all sorts of problems, being sluggish would be one of those.
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - WHiiP - 05-14-2008
I would like to point out that depending on how "old" your other Macs are, there is usually a penalty associated with keeping up with all the System Updates and not increasing your RAM or taking into account how much bigger the newer Systems get.
Max your RAM on your other machines and see . . . . Also agree on the rebooting occasionally . . . you do need to keep the fragmentation down from starting and quitting applications all the time. Not valid if you open several apps and they just stay open.
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - DP - 05-14-2008
What Golfer said about hard drive space. Also, welcome to the forum and yes, there are some posters who can be "tough". Ignore them.
That said, I just had a virus cleaned from some Word files called "W97M.story". The funny thing is that I have no idea what the "virus" was supposed to do; I didn't notice any issues whatsoever. The only reason I noticed it was when I went to attach a Word document to an email and Yahoo said it couldn't attach it as it had an "uncleanable virus". I ran Norton and it's done. It cleaned seven files, all Word docs, but again I had no issues other than it being discovered.
iMac 2.0 Core Duo 2GB running OS 10.4.11
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - DP - 05-14-2008
Addendum: I forgot to mention that I didn't get the virus from online. I have the same Office that my school has and it apparently came from some school docs. The school ran Norton too and all is well there.
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - modelamac - 05-14-2008
Make yourself "greener" by shutting down the Macs instead of sleeping them.
Two benefits: maintains the performance and less power used
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - GGD - 05-14-2008
Can anyone quote any documentation from Apple that states that you need to leave 10-15% of the space on a drive free, and the reason why.
With a 20 GB Drive you're saying that it's OK to get down to 2 GB, but if you took that same data and copied it onto a 1 TB Drive you're saying that now the exact same system needs 100 GB - 150 GB free. Where is 100 GB of data going to come from that will suddenly fill up the drive?
I agree that running it down to zero can be bad on any OS, but I'd like to know where Apple says 10% to 15% free that is so widely quoted on this forum as a requirement.
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - Seannie - 05-14-2008
Hi, I'm okay with freeradical's jabs. I bought my first of many Mac in 1987 after first owning an Amiga I think I've owned most models made, but the truth is I've always worked them by the seat of my pants because I was always too busy to be a deep learner, nor do I have the brain for it....and that's the beauty of Macs, they let you get away with that and the generosity of fellow Mac users have got me out of the very rare jams. I remember being so excited at my first Powerbook... because it had a whopping 105mb hard drive and 33mhz... first one on the market and cost more than the powerful machine I'm fixin' to buy now... but it was the basis for my career back then which took me all over the country to major computer trade shows to create onsite emergency graphics for the corporate giants at MacWorld, NAB, CES, Comdex, etc. I'm sorry... obviously my ego wants to tell you all I've been a strong MacFamily member for 2 decades in hopes of being welcomed.... but yeah, I read a lot more than I post on various forums. I know my limitations. I did break down and buy a used PC notebook to install a firmware update to my Summa DC3 and at first I got all excited and thought I'd try out Vista.... but I ended up going Windows on a $200 unit, turned on the machine, downloaded and installed the firmware and haven't had it on again since. From what I've heard about Vista, it may have been a good choice.
Back to the subject... I have heard it was good to keep the machines on overnight without sleep because of performance maintenance that happens in the wee hours... so I only put the monitors to bed.
My PowerMac has 8GB ram and the iMac has 1.5GB... and I've kept up with the system updates. I'm also running a G4 on OS9 (required to run a particular type of printer) but I haven't been able to get it to network wirelessly despite many attempts so I gave up and ftp files to it through fetch. Gets me by. On the G5, I've dumped most of my files on the spare hard drives so the apps could run from the main drive.
Thank you, Golfer, for the reassurances about the router. This will be my first Mac Pro... good to know that it's holding up to Mac tradition re: spyware, viruses, etc. It's very exciting to look forward to the new machine and run the CS3 suite.... and reflect on how far the capabilities have come.
And thank you M A V I C, ztirffritz, mikebw, sekker, DP, Bill, Article Accelerator, Don Kiyoti, macnut, modelamac, WHiiP, jdc.... your comments have all been appreciated.
Sincerely,
Seannie
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - mrlynn - 05-14-2008
GGD, it's my understanding (meager though it may be) that many applications need space to write temporary or 'scratch' files, and a drive with too little free space will cause that process to slow down.
Back in the pre-OS-X days, I can remember folks saying that you needed to leave at least 10% of a drive free, or you'd experience slowdowns. Then we used to use utilities like Norton to defragment drives, too—not necessary with OS X, apparently; does the OS handle that automatically?
Seannie, you can protect your Macs from hackers trying to get into the wireless network by using strong encryption on the router, or by eschewing wireless and using an Ethernet wired network. With built-in Mac gigabit capability (you'd need a gigabit router) your network will be MUCH faster than a wireless one, especially if you are transferring or accessing large files over the network.
/Mr Lynn
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - M A V I C - 05-14-2008
If you have a soho router connected to a single IP DSL connection, it's not the router's firewall that protects you. Those firewalls are pretty much all open by default anyway and you have to close the ports yourself. What protects you is the Network Address Translation (NAT.)
Otherwise the computers' addresses are directly accessible from the internet.
Re: how risky is it to have Macs online these days? - C(-)ris - 05-14-2008
[quote GGD]Can anyone quote any documentation from Apple that states that you need to leave 10-15% of the space on a drive free, and the reason why.
With a 20 GB Drive you're saying that it's OK to get down to 2 GB, but if you took that same data and copied it onto a 1 TB Drive you're saying that now the exact same system needs 100 GB - 150 GB free. Where is 100 GB of data going to come from that will suddenly fill up the drive?
I agree that running it down to zero can be bad on any OS, but I'd like to know where Apple says 10% to 15% free that is so widely quoted on this forum as a requirement.
It isn't Apple that states this. It is the nature of hard drives. The more data you put on the platters the longer it takes to find free space and read or write files. When the drive gets more than 10 or 15% full it has a very hard time finding free space and has to search through a lot of information.