LittleRachael

Thanks so much Brian! This is helpful. I think I will explore some new drive brands and see if there is any issues with the USB ports!

Hey Brian! I did a quick search for my question and couldn't find this topic, but please direct me if I missed it somehow. Backstory - I have been working of pairs of two external hardrives for years. Essentially I copy my Raws to both harddrives at the start of a project (labelled for example, 1A & 1B, 2A/2B - and so on and so forth...I'm on Harddrive 8A & 8B now). One drive of the pair (A) gets a little more use than the other, as I edit off of it. Once the project is completed I copy the final files over to the B harddrive of the pair. And so on and so forth. No idea if this is a good technique, but it's kept my macs running well as I'm able to keep the harddrives mostly clear. In the last 2 months I've had two brand new-out of the box WD 2TB harddrives fail straight out the gate. I was able to format them both using Disk Utility. I setup as Mac OS Extended as I normally do (maybe that's a poor choice??). After a few minutes of initial use they would crash and any files I copied to them would be corrupt. My question is, could this just be a weird coincidence or could it be time for a file management process update? Perhaps there is a better way to do this than working off of portable harddrives? I purchased my iMac based on your specs years ago and it runs very well. It's a 27" iMac, 2019, 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, with 64 GB memory. I'm still running Catalina 10.15.7. Thank you in advance if you can point me in the right direction on this! This User Group has been an incredible resource for me over the years! Rachael

Thanks Brian. The computer still hasn't arrived yet (projected July 17th) wow, so when it arrived I'll download the scanning tool and try. I will likely do the 32 kit because I'm saving so much by not paying the apple tax! Thanks again! R

Thanks so much Brian! I wondered if Covid would have anything to do with it. Hope you're keeping well and thank you very much for your guidance!

Hi Brian! So excited to have finally purchased my new iMac. I just finished ordering it a few minutes ago. I followed your specs in the thread you wrote: 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display With the following configuration: 3.6GHz 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory 1TB SSD storage Magic Mouse 2 Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad - US English Accessory Kit So I followed your link to purchase the RAM from B&H and I saw that it's out of stock. I went direct to the crucial site and it was out of stock there, too. Is there another option available, or will do I just wait this out? https://www.crucial.com/memory/ddr4/ct2k16g4s266m https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1497334-REG/crucial_ct2k16g4s266m_32gb_kit_16gbx2_ddr4.html Thanks so much for your help. Can't wait to get this computer in my hands.

Brian, this is excellent! Thank you so much for sharing this with me! I am going to run some numbers tonight - leaning towards the first option!!

Hi Brian! First I wanted to say thank you! Years ago I purchased a 2011 21.5" iMac because it was all I could afford. Your clear instructions allowed me to purchase + install RAM from crucial and I've been running my photography business from this iMac since 2013 without any issues. You saved me so much money being able to extend the life of this computer (at a time when I needed to save every penny). It is now time for me to upgrade to a new model as my OS is not upgradeable, which is causing me all sorts of problems with browsing and using web based programs. Despite that, the computer itself is fast enough for my use! I saw in some other threads that the 21.5" is not an option. What would you recommend for running PS...maybe Lightroom (we shall see), and browsing? I can see I had an unrealistic budget, but hoping I can keep it under $2500 CAN? Thank you so much for your help! Rachael