IT – Ian’s Thing

My seven-year-old Mac Mini has been running slower and slower of late. It had got to the point of making me wait just too long. Hanging and freezing is not a way I like to work. I didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong with the hardware (save that it’s rather old and somewhat slower than the new generation of these little boxes).

Anyway, On Saturday morning, I took the plunge. I already have most of my data on an external drive, so I can keep the 1TB fusion drive relatively free for the swapping that this only having 8GB of RAM demands these days. Oh, I remember when 8GB of RAM was the stuff of dreams, and not that long ago either!

I also have another 4GB external drive for Time Machine. On top of that, I use Backblaze for my remote backup solution. All in all, if something did go wrong with this exercise, I would still have the documents, diary entries, photographs and videos that I’ve amassed over the past couple of decades.

I did a final check for anything I might need in the future that was lurking in a corner. I had a few things on the desktop, so I moved them off and rebooted in recovery mode.

So far, so good, as I had not yet deleted anything. Then I started the process, erased the internal drive, and everything was gone. Then I re-installed the OS, in this case, Monterey.

That was relatively quick, but now came the primary choice. Do I individually download and install each program, or do I restore from Time Machine? I wimped out, and I did the latter. I was surprised that it took several hours. That gave me time to get off my butt and do a few overdue tasks around the house!

Eventually, Time Machine did its job, and the system was ready to use. I’ve had to wait several times as I fire up software for the system to verify it, but that’s a one-off. It’s certainly made a difference, and it’s given the old box a new lease of life. Everything is running smoothly again, and I’m not freezing unless I open the windows!

I intend to get one of the new M1 powered Mac Minis later in the year, but this has been a cheap, quick fix for now. It was much less painless than I thought it might be, and I’d certainly recommend it if your old machine is moving like a snail.

[ad name=”Banner 728*90″]Starting today I’ve got thirteen days off the day job. I don’t know why I call it the ‘day’ job, as it’s all hours of the day and night. In fact the only time I don’t work is all the way thru the night.

I got up this morning with plans to get some work done at the computer, but my plans have been somewhat frustrated by issues with the desktop.

I really need to do a clean install of Windows 8.1, so first up was an order for a 120GB SSD, so I’ll have a new, fast, drive on which to re-install a hopefully somewhat faster booting OS. At the same time this leaves all my data intact on the existing 1TB hard drive that’s now the boot drive within the machine.

Installing the drive when it arrives tomorrow (I do love Amazon’s free next day delivery option with Prime – even though it’s increased in price with video streaming added).

In my experience, the hardware install is almost always the quick, easy, part. It’s the OS re-install that takes the time.

Another job I’m undertaking is converting all my RAW photo files to DNG. I’ve already had a few issues in the past with read issues when Camera Raw has been updated, and it was unable to read the RAW format from my mew Canon 70D. That issue is sorted now, but it was another time-wasting problem while it lasted.

Once they all converted I’m going to move them all from the hard drive to an external drive. That not only frees up space on the desktop’s hard drive, but it allows me to have the added portability of working with Lightroom and Photoshop on my laptop when I want to.

I currently have my RAW files backed up in the cloud on Google Drive, but I’ve decided to move to Backblaze as it’s a better price point, and allows for unlimited backups at no extra charge, including the aforementioned external drive(s).

Other computer related tasks in the next few days include sorting out my untidy collection of mp3 files, and getting those properly catalogued, and then synchronizing them in iTunes Match.

After all that I might get time to get a bit of gardening done, and sink a few pints of good craft beer. In fact, it’s almost beer o’clock as I type, so I think that could be my very next task. Now, where’s my scarf, it’s cold outside.

Tag: IT

Factory Reset

Day #1 of 13