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This black cloud will not leave

QuickNDirty said:
You might try installing virtualbox (or any of a number of free alternatives) in order to run Windows inside a virtual machine which you can snapshot at a point in time that it's running with coldbore already pulled up. Nearly instant access to those windows things you care about, without the auto-update bullshit interfering. The CAD stuff might work, too, but if it relies heavily on the GPU your pass-thru options might not fit the bill. Worth a shot, anyway, if only to avoid ever having to rely on Windows as a primary OS for any reason.
Click to expand...

That isn't the problem. I don't like the overhead of a large virtual machine running all of the time. Doesn't matter what front end you use to provide the virtual machine function. When Windows goes active, you will get the UPDATE IN PROGRESS BS. You could turn off the automatic updates, which I do occasionally but it gets you later as a 20 minute upgrade now takes an hour.

Fuck Windows and FUCK Bill Gates as well.
 
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Nik H said:
That isn't the problem. I don't like the overhead of a large virtual machine running all of the time. Doesn't matter what front end you use to provide the virtual machine function. When Windows goes active, you will get the UPDATE IN PROGRESS BS. You could turn off the automatic updates, which I do occasionally but it gets you later as a 20 minute upgrade now takes an hour.

Fuck Windows and FUCK Bill Gates as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's nice to still be running the NT kernel 25 years after it was obsoleted, isn't it ? :rolleyes::unsure::whistle:
 
W54/XM-388 said:
I do this stuff for a professional living. Understanding and predicting hardware failure rates over time is a huge part of making money or loosing your rear end.

Then again I generally deal in systems with built in redundancy and failure tolerance designed for long term stability with rapid field replacement capability of all the parts. A 10 year service lifespan on systems across one or several owners is the norm. Machines in that range are more often than not replaced because something else can do more in the same space / power budget than them not working.

That being said when one depends on computers greatly, it is always advised to have redundant machines available and be running systems that can be rapidly repaired.

Apple stuff, especially much of the newer stuff is designed with a much shorter upgrade cycle in mind to maximize revenue.
Click to expand...


You do not do this stuff for a living, you do an entirely different thing which I appreciate it's just not the same level of hardware as you stated. Personal computers are a far cry from server rack in in a co-location with AC and no dust.

For a personal computer users who renders video, does code builds or other intensive processes on a personal computer can easily justify a new computer every few years. The performance increases compounded with the lost time and risk of data loss associated with a failure easily pay for a new machine. This is even more so if they can write off a portion of the cost or all of it as a business expense.

ALL NUMBERS ARE FICTIONAL


Hypothetically If you make 100K a year and your computer dies. It takes what 60 hours of lost work to pay for a brand new $3,000 machine. First you probably spend 4-8 hours messing with it trying to get it back. Next you spend another 4 hours getting a new machine, maybe you can buy it local, maybe not. 8-16 or more hours setting up the new machine, 4 more hours trying to get the data from one to the other. Maybe the data is not recoverable and you have to go redo 8 hours of shooting video and another 20 hours of editing.

(Your probably going, none of that stuff takes that long) Remember they only do it once every 6 years not every day. Shit ton of google and going, how the fuck did I do that last time happening here.

All said and done you can pretty easily burn a ton of money if a failure happens at say hypothetically 99% of the way into rendering a Desert Tech video.

None of this even takes into fact that the fictional person from above probably could have rendered the video in 50% of the time had they had 6 years newer processing power.

I build software for a living....on a personal computer.
 
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Nik H said:
That isn't the problem. I don't like the overhead of a large virtual machine running all of the time. Doesn't matter what front end you use to provide the virtual machine function. When Windows goes active, you will get the UPDATE IN PROGRESS BS. You could turn off the automatic updates, which I do occasionally but it gets you later as a 20 minute upgrade now takes an hour.

Fuck Windows and FUCK Bill Gates as well.
Click to expand...

Eh, the overhead is configurable, plus you don't have to run it all the time. Just restore from a snapshot whenever you need to use it. Windows fires up in just a few seconds right where you were when you took the snapshot. You ought to give it a try if you haven't already.

Weatherby_Eyebrow said:
Hypothetically If you make 100K a year and your computer dies. It takes what 60 hours of lost work to pay for a brand new $3,000 machine. First you probably spend 4-8 hours messing with it trying to get it back. Next you spend another 4 hours getting a new machine, maybe you can buy it local, maybe not. 8-16 or more hours setting up the new machine, 4 more hours trying to get the data from one to the other. Maybe the data is not recoverable and you have to go redo 8 hours of shooting video and another 20 hours of editing.
Click to expand...

Oh dear... It only takes me about 30 minutes to turn a brand new machine into a comfy workstation with all the bells and whistles I'm used to. Am I doing it wrong?
 
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QuickNDirty said:
Eh, the overhead is configurable, plus you don't have to run it all the time. Just restore from a snapshot whenever you need to use it. Windows fires up in just a few seconds right where you were when you took the snapshot. You ought to give it a try if you haven't already.



Oh dear... It only takes me about 30 minutes to turn a brand new machine into a comfy workstation with all the bells and whistles I'm used to. Am I doing it wrong?
Click to expand...

My general hypothetical situation was based on a full failure of the system leaving your backup unrecoverable unless you had it on another drive or the cloud. Clearly you are not the average person I'm talking about. The average photo, video, whatever professional barley gets all the software installed let alone planning recovery strategies. Often times those backups exclude the actual software and you can't even download all of the software in a half hour that most of them use. Worse yet they have a stack of discs and a new computer and are standing there like WTF do I do with these, the new computer does not have a coffee cup holder.


Also making a machine ready to jump onto a web meeting is not the use case. In my case I would have to install Adobe Suite, 2 VPN's, Java SE, MS SQL MySQL, Node.js, Python, Talend, Ant, Visual Studio plus all the little stuff like setting up email, getting a proper zip tool, proper text editor, finding that perfect background image that won't get me fired but comes to the edge of allowable. That alone could take hours of searching the internet.
 
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QuickNDirty said:
Eh, the overhead is configurable, plus you don't have to run it all the time. Just restore from a snapshot whenever you need to use it. Windows fires up in just a few seconds right where you were when you took the snapshot. You ought to give it a try if you haven't already.
Click to expand...

I will look into it
 
Weatherby_Eyebrow said:
My general hypothetical situation was based on a full failure of the system leaving your backup unrecoverable unless you had it on another drive or the cloud. Clearly you are not the average person I'm talking about. The average photo, video, whatever professional barley gets all the software installed let alone planning recovery strategies. Often times those backups exclude the actual software and you can't even download all of the software in a half hour that most of them use. Worse yet they have a stack of discs and a new computer and are standing there like WTF do I do with these, the new computer does not have a coffee cup holder.
Click to expand...

But you were "unfollowing"?
 
it was more annoying than anything else.

The bitch is, laptop did not have the same plugins for FCPX as the desktop, so I could not do the same levels of editing without starting over. The files, the library, etc are kept on external drives, but plugins are not.

I am backed up, and can work especially since I don't have my trashcan back yet.

My old laptop, a few years old Macbook Pro is connected to a monitor and acts like a back up. It actually allowed me the opportunity to set up things better and adjust the system to work better. I even fixed a minor error with my email on the new laptop.

Its probably for the better, video is changing and I am starting to feel under powered in the video graphics department. Horsepower wise I am good, it's graphics.

I wish the egpus we're better designed for the old models vs the new, they don't need it.
 
@Lowlight

Out of curiosity, what editing software are you using for video? I just got done using Camtasia for the first time last week, and thought it was some pretty neat software, with a very intuitive GUI. Anyways, because of that, I got to wondering what software it was that you used.
 
MarinePMI said:
@Lowlight

Out of curiosity, what editing software are you using for video? I just got done using Camtasia for the first time last week, and thought it was some pretty neat software, with a very intuitive GUI. Anyways, because of that, I got to wondering what software it was that you used.
Click to expand...

I'm sure he'll reply on his own too, but he's using FCPX (https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/).

I've played around with it. It's pretty nice actually. I dabbled in Adobe Premiere also, but it's a complex beast with a rather steep learning curve.
 
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Weatherby_Eyebrow said:
My general hypothetical situation was based on a full failure of the system leaving your backup unrecoverable unless you had it on another drive or the cloud. Clearly you are not the average person I'm talking about. The average photo, video, whatever professional barley gets all the software installed let alone planning recovery strategies. Often times those backups exclude the actual software and you can't even download all of the software in a half hour that most of them use. Worse yet they have a stack of discs and a new computer and are standing there like WTF do I do with these, the new computer does not have a coffee cup holder.


Also making a machine ready to jump onto a web meeting is not the use case. In my case I would have to install Adobe Suite, 2 VPN's, Java SE, MS SQL MySQL, Node.js, Python, Talend, Ant, Visual Studio plus all the little stuff like setting up email, getting a proper zip tool, proper text editor, finding that perfect background image that won't get me fired but comes to the edge of allowable. That alone could take hours of searching the internet.
Click to expand...

In your full failure of the system, the question becomes what exactly is the failure and how comprehensive/recent/decent are your backups.
The short of below, is that If you have done the correct setup and are doing the correct backups, you could be back up and running in as little as 10 minutes exactly as you were before it failed, or at worst, exactly as you were running before the last backup, if you have a similar system handy.

For you specifically, since you mention how much work it would be, do you have a good backup from bare metal plan setup?
You might need it in the event of ransomware even if you didn't have a full system failure.

If for example you run one of the many commercially available programs that does full image backups that can be restored to bare metal and have it saved onto an external device (You should have at least 2 so you are never overwriting your only backup), or drive. Then you grab another PC with similar hardware (storage controller being the most important point), and boot up from the USB or DVD recovery media you should have handy, then tell it to do a full image restore from the backup. When done, reboot the system and presto you are back where you were pretty much exactly.
Total time taken will depend on the storage media you are using for the backup and the connection method and the total amount of data. Probably 30 minutes to 2 hours for a fully loaded system with lots of data.

If you run redundant drives in a Raid 1 array (most decent PCs can and even some laptops, unless you are using NVMe drives), you could also from time to time, shut down the system, pull one of the drives, set it aside, put in a new one, power up the PC and let it rebuild onto the new drive in the background and keep the other drive aside for a failure, so in the case of a problem, just pop that drive in your replacement system and you are booted up to where you were at that point in time & then you can restore incremental backups from there.

This also works as a great way to do an upgrade on a hardware system to a newer generation without having to do all your setup all over again.
I my case, I used the full image backup / restore as well as the raid rebuild restore to move a single installation of Windows 7 across 3 upgrade generations of workstations for my own use and several different raid controller card upgrades. Moving between spinning drives, SATA drives, SAS drives, SATA SSDs, SAS SSDs etc. All without having to do a re-install.

In each case my down time for a complete system swap out was anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour depending on how I was doing it.

Next fun will be attempting to move that same installation of Windows 7 to the 4th workstation upgrade with the Xeon Scalable processors and get it to boot off Optane NVMe if possible, otherwise I'll just go with another SAS raid card and SAS SSDs, but I've actually gotten Windows 7 copied over to a testbed running Xeon Scalable and Optane NVMe so I have hopes it will work out. Then next year, I plan to move over to Linux as the mainstay OS for work and home when windows 7 support ends.
 
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So deos Apple...called AHT (Apple HW Test). Macs usually let you know something funky is up when they boot. If you hear three beeps at boot up, run AHT
 
Apple has a hardware test built in too

But it did not report the issue, and in fact he had to do something outside the normal to get it to fail

You can do a basic hardware test holding down D on start up
 
Lowlight said:
Apple has a hardware test built in too

But it did not report the issue, and in fact he had to do something outside the normal to get it to fail

You can do a basic hardware test holding down D on start up
Click to expand...

The D gets you basic diags. In the HW section of AHT, depending on the age of your Mac, there is an extended diagnosis test option which takes a while to run. It usually shows all errors but nothing is perfect. RAM errors are usually pretty catastrophic and will hang the machine but every instance is different.
 
Ya,

They yanked it and funny, when I asked them about replacing it there, the guy said, No way, hit macsales.com

So I went and replaced it with more ram because it is so cheap. I have 64gb, now 48gb, and by the weekend I will have 128gb

I still want a video upgrade option, the eGPU options is still appealing, but the shoe horn way to get it to work bugs me. I still cannot believe they have an eGPU for a new Mac but nothing for a Thunderbolt 1 or 2, you have to use Thunderbolt 3 or hack the system. The funny part is, the hack pages say straight up, we might break your system and you have to start over.

it would be nice for an upgrade path, but nothing off the shelf exists I can find
 
Yeah they don't support HW component sales at the store and macsales.com is way overpriced. I buy from Amazon and do everything myself.

I have converted a couple of the older ones from mechanical hard disks to SSDs and they are way more usable. I have updated RAM as well...and way more usable. All cheap to do and they are all still running strong. I hand them down to the kids.

I always have one Mac that is relatively new as that runs my CAD stuff. My wife does video stuff like you and she has a new iMac 27" which is a damn nice workstation
 
I can do the 27" iMac but they limit the video card,

In order to go big on the card I have to go Pro

I spoke to Apple and I can trade in my older ones, and get a credit towards the new one, which I may do after my trip and then potentially keep the Trash can to run the podcast vs the 2014 MBP I am set up with now.

If I trade in the old Silver Tower and the MBP I can offset the cost and bring it closer to a iMac in price
 
Lowlight said:
Ya,

They yanked it and funny, when I asked them about replacing it there, the guy said, No way, hit macsales.com

So I went and replaced it with more ram because it is so cheap. I have 64gb, now 48gb, and by the weekend I will have 128gb

I still want a video upgrade option, the eGPU options is still appealing, but the shoe horn way to get it to work bugs me. I still cannot believe they have an eGPU for a new Mac but nothing for a Thunderbolt 1 or 2, you have to use Thunderbolt 3 or hack the system. The funny part is, the hack pages say straight up, we might break your system and you have to start over.

it would be nice for an upgrade path, but nothing off the shelf exists I can find
Click to expand...

Pretty screwed on internal GPU's. A, the power supply is only 450 watts and B, they are soldered-in proprietary units.

TB2 should give enough bandwidth for a single 4K monitor @ 60 Hz (17.8 Gbps encoded stream to the card, TB2 provides 20 Gbps). Of course the raw signal to the monitor is a different classification of bandwidth in itself. The problem is that rating is usually in a EM-shielded laboratory with a cable about 6 inches long. TB3 doubles that up to 40 Gbps!

All of the PCIe GPU's are still stuck on the PCIe 3.0 spec, just because it doesn't help to feed them any more than what they can handle currently.

Let me know when you want to build one of these beasts ? (my main workstation):

7074308
 
Lowlight said:
I can do the 27" iMac but they limit the video card,

In order to go big on the card I have to go Pro

I spoke to Apple and I can trade in my older ones, and get a credit towards the new one, which I may do after my trip and then potentially keep the Trash can to run the podcast vs the 2014 MBP I am set up with now.

If I trade in the old Silver Tower and the MBP I can offset the cost and bring it closer to a iMac in price
Click to expand...

Yes but be glad you didn't. I almost bought a PRO but the next gen will be the one to get. Lots of $$$ but if you need the power, there really won't be anything close unless you have a true workstation with multiple blade processors. I configured a machine for work to allow multiple users running independent sessions of an electromagnetic simulation tool. That was $50K. We use it for fluid simulations as well. Never seen graphics performance that was as nice but the 2 NVIDIA accelerator cards were $8K each.
 
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They are saying a new one is gonna be out in June so I am gonna wait to see what they release

I am not a big iMac fan, but for me the iMac Pro is the only route I would want to take to replace this one.

June is right around the corner if I hold off until then, I maybe okay, not the memory upgrade will help any with video but I just tried rendering the DT Video and it worked no problem.

Gonna do a clean install now, made a Mojave boot drive so it's easy.

With about 100TB of drives here I have plenty of back up space, so no worry there, just don't want to lose my LUTs to be honest. The rest is easy

I have considered building a Hackintosh but it seems very component dependent.

I need someone who likes doing it to upgrade my Silver Tower, use that box and just replace the guts to something better.

That had two PCI graphics cards including an $2k NVDIA one, but it's old.

I can build them, but feel too lazy right now, even thought it's not really lazy just time, but taking that silver tower and giving it a refresh would be fun.
 
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dont know what the hell this means but if it makes you happy I am happy for you.

Lowlight said:
They are saying a new one is gonna be out in June so I am gonna wait to see what they release

I am not a big iMac fan, but for me the iMac Pro is the only route I would want to take to replace this one.

June is right around the corner if I hold off until then, I maybe okay, not the memory upgrade will help any with video but I just tried rendering the DT Video and it worked no problem.

Gonna do a clean install now, made a Mojave boot drive so it's easy.

With about 100TB of drives here I have plenty of back up space, so no worry there, just don't want to lose my LUTs to be honest. The rest is easy

I have considered building a Hackintosh but it seems very component dependent.

I need someone who likes doing it to upgrade my Silver Tower, use that box and just replace the guts to something better.

That had two PCI graphics cards including an $2k NVDIA one, but it's old.

I can build them, but feel too lazy right now, even thought it's not really lazy just time, but taking that silver tower and giving it a refresh would be fun.
Click to expand...
 
Lowlight said:
They are saying a new one is gonna be out in June so I am gonna wait to see what they release

I am not a big iMac fan, but for me the iMac Pro is the only route I would want to take to replace this one.

June is right around the corner if I hold off until then, I maybe okay, not the memory upgrade will help any with video but I just tried rendering the DT Video and it worked no problem.

Gonna do a clean install now, made a Mojave boot drive so it's easy.

With about 100TB of drives here I have plenty of back up space, so no worry there, just don't want to lose my LUTs to be honest. The rest is easy

I have considered building a Hackintosh but it seems very component dependent.

I need someone who likes doing it to upgrade my Silver Tower, use that box and just replace the guts to something better.

That had two PCI graphics cards including an $2k NVDIA one, but it's old.

I can build them, but feel too lazy right now, even thought it's not really lazy just time, but taking that silver tower and giving it a refresh would be fun.
Click to expand...

People that advocate Hackintosh machines don't rely on them as much as you do. You have a business and livelihood to run. The last thing you want is a "custom" approach. If you didn't have the genius bar to help, what would have happened this time? I think Apple solutions are worth the extra many and the minor compromises.

My wife has the latest iMac as she does a ton of video/photography and animation. She swears by it but she says the Mac PRO would be better.

I say a new optic would be better...
 
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AIAW you need to upgrade from that corsair 900D to a caselabs case alot more room and better set up.

Montrose
 
MJB13SRT8 said:
AIAW you need to upgrade from that corsair 900D to a caselabs case alot more room and better set up.

Montrose
Click to expand...

Hahaha, if draining and removing those pumps and radiators wasn't just a huge PITA I'd love to! Water-cooling is cool until you have to work on something that requires draining or re-routing tubing, then it's a messy ethyl glycolic mess.
 
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hahahaha yea I know what you mean I have 3x480mm HW labs radiators and two D5 pumps in my caselabs STH10 and I moved it from a 900D.

Montrose
 
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A radiator cooling system on a computer?

Next you new fangled pussies will be advocating for commie mil based scopes, say Leupold isnt the best, and tell me that a 4” group at 100 yds isnt good enough to go blast at some running deer at 400 yds.......

You queens prolly wear girl Levis and rainbow Converse.....
 
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powdahound76 said:
A radiator cooling system on a computer?
Click to expand...

Fairly common in the hobby community.... then you go for sub ambient cooling which is where the real fun begins.
Not usually practical on actual "work" systems usually, but fun to play with.
You can go way far down that rabbit hole till you are all the way at the bottom with liquid helium cooling.
 
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LOL! We run close looped water cooled systems for our cusotmer (mainly because they hated the noise of the fans in CIC). Dual Xeons running warp factor snot puts out a lotta heat...so the water cooled systems helped a lot with MTBF of some components.
 
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Yep, mine is very quiet for such a beastly machine. A few fans running their ass off at 3000+ RPM or a bunch of slow fans (10 in my case) at 1500 RPM pushing lots of air over the radiators. One loud fan is all it takes to break what I was going for. Considering it's two dedicated loops also, it handles anything thrown at it pretty well. 14 cores overclocked to 4.5 GHz (y)

The pumps are "louder" than the fans, and these PWM controlled D5 pumps are pretty quiet when the core temps are low. I do have them configured to gradually ramp up around 60C or so.
 
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I get it.
Especially in a big corporate stack systems. The bank of that stuff we have at our IT base for my company is insane.
Running IT for over 21k employees who ALL use a computer at some part of their day.

Im not a computer guy except for work and depend on the IT guys to give me the right stuff and keep it going. And they do.
 
MarinePMI said:
LOL! We run close looped water cooled systems for our cusotmer (mainly because they hated the noise of the fans in CIC). Dual Xeons running warp factor snot puts out a lotta heat...so the water cooled systems helped a lot with MTBF of some components.
Click to expand...

You're overclocking them correct? They don't need liquid cooling if not. Never understood this unless you are a gamer and can't afford what you really need to reach the performance you're looking to get.

Doing it on a business machine makes no sense to me. Liquid cooling is just not worth it. Too many issues. Aggressive overclocking is also dubious as system stability is always compromised.
 
I wouldn't say we're over clocking them per se, we're just stressing them a bit. These machines don't have a spare square centimeter of space inside them (everything is crammed into a brief cased sized box for portability up/down the ladder wells and hatches). These machines routinely receive 8 or more live video streams (HD) and several high velocity data streams (BFT, IBS, etc) and are also expected to serve up a fused COP feed (track correlation and fusion engine running in the back ground) to multiple consumers. Even then, it's not some much the speed, as it is the lack of airflow (based on the needed dimensions). We literally can not get enough airflow over the second Xeon (it was getting fried from the heat), so we went water cooled. Problem solved. This system couldn't exceed 28" in any dimension (which coincidentally is just small enough to fit through a submarine hatch or other vessel's small hatch. That's a tall order with three fold out HD screens, a crap load of storage and a server grade backplane with processors... To give you an idea of how dense these machines are, they weigh 85lbs each, but fold up into a little cube to meet the dimensional requirements.

Portable-computer-MilPAC-C4ISR-1024x576.png


They don't look like $30k+, but they are, and they get the job done...
 
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Not to mention you can drop them from a 6ft height, and they'll continue to run (should have seen the one that went through shock and vibe testing; looked like a bomb had gone off next to it...but it still ran).
 
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