Hey,

My 2004 G5 Power mac has treated me very well for 3 (almost 4) years...But all good things come to an end.

I love it and want to continue using it for awhile longer, but its starting to run slow, and have problems that it never had before (locking up/freezing etc). ( I don't do anything too intense with it-no graphic design, no movie editing) i mostly use it for photo & music storage & internet stuff. What can i do to make it run more smoothly? some of the problem is probably that i have over 10,000 photos & an equal amount of songs stored on it.

Any ideas on how to clean it up and make it run just a bit smoother until I can shop for a replacement? Any software or upgrades that might help? Thanks!

i would make sure that your music, photos and everything else is backed up somewhere before you start messing with it.

yeah i'm working on that. the photos are killing me. i wish i knew a better way to back up 10,000 photos than discs! eek. i might have to get an external hard drive, but i was hoping not.

external HD are cheap. especially when you consider how much time you waste burning discs. plus its much more eco friendly to not use discs.

how much hard drive space do you have free and how big is the hard drive?

what OS are you using?

and how much memory do you have on it?

i was afraid you'd ask this. i'm not at home now, so i'll have to get back to you. i'm posting from work. just looking into some options though for storage or upgrades (other than buying a whole new computer)

i'm using OSX and i'm pretty sure i'm still running Panther. (i will check this all when i get home.

Yeah, using a backup hd is definitely the way to go (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-0749007-5210000?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=external+hd&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go). I would also strongly consider downloading "Superduper" (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html) to easily make a bootable image (or clone) of your current hd to said backup hd. This helps in not only quickly backing up all of your current data with little to no fuss, but aftwerwords you can then wipe your g5's hd clean while installing a fresh copy of OS X (preferably Tiger), allowing you to then use "Setup Assistant" (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/setup/) to copy back over (from your backup HD image) all of your desktop and screensaver preferences, photos, documents, programs, etc. that you want in one easy step that takes on average about 20 minutes time. If you screw something up, you can always boot directly from your backup hd, and image it back to your g5 and start all over again. Good luck.

Missy,

Try one (or both) of these utilities:

Yasu:
http://jimmitchell.org/projects/yasu/

Onyx:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20070

They both do similar things, but i've ran them in tandem and they seem to work well together.

I gave my g4 the treatment and the difference was like night and day.

Another thing to try is diskwarrior. It seems to speed things up too.

this may sound dumb, but cant you load them on flicker or photobucket too, and no disc's. But ex hardrive is good.

like I said, there are 10,000 now, and more to come, and i wouldn't necessarily want them all online (family photos etc)

but thanks for the suggestion.

External hard drives are super cheap these days, you can back up a lot that way. Word of warning, never buy the cheapest, always the second cheapest... that way if it fails, the level of cheapskate regret is one degree less!

Yeah, I like Western Digital and LaCie's. If you want to totally geek out and go with the best, you can get a Drobo! It's like having your very own R2-D2 to protect your data!

http://www.amazon.com/Drobo-DRO4DU10-SA ... B000PDLZ1A

mainmenu is also good and free and easy to use for automated maintenance/batch tasks.

http://www.santasw.com/

I really like superduper too (for cloning and backup), but I've always been too cheap to use the paid version.

superduper is rad too... I need to spring for the full version.

i too have the three year curse haunting me; the freezing demons are the worst. rebuilding the itunes library after an unexpected freeze is so wack!

ok, here's my deal:

I'm running OSX Version 10.3.9 (outdatetd, i know)

Processor 1.6 GHz PowerPC G5
Memory 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM

Hardware Overview:

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.6 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.25 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.5f0

HD Space:
76.32 GB/23.2 GB Free

do you have the system disc(s) still? if so, boot off the cd (start while holding down the c key) and once it is up launch the disc utility app that is in the utilities folder. select your hard drive then run the "verify disk permissions" option under first aid first...then run "repair disc permissions" after that. reboot NOT of the cd again and see what's what. this is a good start.

your system should be able to push all of that media...though you should start dumping them off to dvds...

as for the freezing and slowness...try repairing your permissions (in disc utilities) before you do anything...have you ever done that in the first place? It does wonders.

yeah, what he said...ha! I didnt' even read DB's post before I typed mine...

LOL

one thing to do is move your itunes music library to an external
once you do open itunes>preferences then click on the ADVANCED tab
from there point your itunes to look for you library on your external...
then dump the internal library in the trash AFTER you have gotten all your music to show up and play in itunes...


you can do the same thing with iPhoto but only if you are using iphoto 06 and you will have to hold down OPTION when you start up iphoto... it will ask you to make a new library which you can choose off of your external once you have moved it there...