Category: General

OS X 10.7 Lion + OWC Data Doubler (SSD + HDD) + Filevault Encryption

I just picked up a new Macbook and wanted to share my experience with getting Lion and Filevault working with the OWC Data Doubler.

The Data Doubler1, my dear reader, is a frame with a SATA connector that fits in place of the internal optical drive (The floppy of the ’10’s!). It holds any 2.5″ hard drive like a normal HDD bay would. Why would you want to do this? Well you get the speed of a SSD and the capacity of a HDD at the cost of not being able to read/write DVD’s and CD’s.

My setup was as follows:

SSD
OS X and Applications on partition 1
Windows 7 via Boot Camp on partition 22

HDD
OS X User directory (Documents, Movies, Music, Photos, etc.)

Note: I wasn’t that interested in encryption, but I’ve included instructions never the less. I played with it and found it to be limiting.

 

Ingredients

I purchased the Macbook with the upgraded 128GB SSD ($90 increase over stock), nabbed an inexpensive traditional HDD on Newegg (500GB WD 7200 RPM Scorpio Black) and picked up the Data Doubler from OWC. The Data Doubler came with a nice little tool kit for opening the Macbook. I followed the always handy guide over at iFixit to take it apart.

If you’re also thinking about upgrading your RAM (Never buy from Apple, pick it up cheaper from Crucial or else ware.) now is a good time to do it as you’ll have the case open and RAM exposed.

 

Note on Boot Camp

First, don’t remove the optical drive just yet! At least, if you want to install Boot Camp and to run Windows you’re going to run into trouble. Once the optical drive is removed and if you try to use an external drive to install Windows you’ll get a blinking cursor upon boot and won’t be able to continue the install.

Note: These directions are assuming you’d want Boot Camp on the SSD. If you’re looking to have Windows live on the HDD,  you’d have to put the HDD in an external enclosure and install from the internal optical drive.

 

Setup a Secondary Account

Your first step is to boot into Lion and setup an account. This account should not be the name of your primary account, but an admin account you can use for…administrative purposes.

If you’re looking to install Windows, launch the Boot Camp Assistant, step through the guide, partition a chunk of your SSD/HDD for Winders’ and install.

Once complete you should be able to install the Data Doubler. I suggest putting the HDD in the internal hard drive bay and the SSD in the Data Doubler. The optical drive bay that the data doubler will occupy does not have the sudden motion sensor that the default hard drive bay would. SSD’s don’t need the sudden motion sensor – traditional hard drives do.

 

Without Encryption

That new (and large) HDD you’re going to store all of your stuff on probably didn’t come formatted. Open Disk Utility and Erase the drive/partition. Use “Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Give it a good name. I called mine “Macintosh HDD”.

So now boot into OS X, login to your admin account and setup a new user account. This will be your day-to-day account with all of your documents, music, etc. Open System Preferences, select “Users & Accounts” and click the little plus button toward the lower left. (You may need to unlock the control panel with your admin password.)

Once you create the user via the System Preferences, “control + click” on the account and select “Advanced Options…”.

From here you can select where the “Home directory” lives. I pointed mine to a manually created folder on the HDD under “/Users/username”.

Now you should restart, login to your new day-to-day account and get to work!

 

With Encryption

If you want to encrypt just the SSD, go right ahead and use Filevault. Be warned however that Boot Camp doesn’t appear to work nicely with the full disk encryption.3

The GUI for Filevault does not support encrypting secondary or external drives. To encrypt the HDD with all your documents, boot into OS X , login to your secondary admin account and launch Disk Utility. You’ll want to erase the HDD and set it up as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted).

Note: You can also do this via the command line. Open Terminal and run “diskutil list”. Make note of the IDENTIFIER for the HDD. Then run “diskutil cs convert diskidentifier -passphrase yourpasswordhere” (If you don’t provide a password you’ll be prompted to do so. Be careful when typing!)

Change your mind about encrypting that secondary hard drive? Use “diskutil coreStorage revert diskidentifier”. Disk Utility will then decrypt the drive. This might take some time, so to check the progress type “diskutil coreStorage list”. Look for the line mentioning “Conversion Status” to see how far along the encryption or decryption is.

 

A Note on Encryption and the Keychain

After encrypting the HDD and trying to login to the day-to-day user account (that lives on the HDD) I would get an error and not be able to login. I could login fine with the secondary admin account as it lives solely on the SSD. Apparently this is a bug (or feature!) with how the password for the encryption is stored in the keychain. The secondary admin account has access and doesn’t rely on the password to mount its user directory. The day-to-day account does rely on the password to decrypt the HDD, but doesn’t know the password (as it’s stored in the keychain of the user that created it.)

The solution is to login to the secondary admin account and run this utility. It’s called Unlock and performs magic to allow the system to authenticate the HDD upon boot, not user login.

 

Conclusion

At 1,000 words this is probably my longest blog post – ever. I hope it helps those brave few who want to turn a Macbook Pro into a super-charged Macbook Air. Well, kinda. The power of the SSD, large screen real estate and superior graphics! It’s ALIVE!

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Thanks to the chaps and chapettes in the following communities for their assistance in figuring this out.

MacRumors

Apple Support Communities

StackExchange’s Super User

 

Update: After this was posted this hint showed up over on Mac OS X Hints. There might be a few nuggets of wisdom for you there regarding FileVault and secondary drives.

Update 2: Hello Googlers. There’s been another great hint shared over at Mac OS X Hints that might prove useful to those wanting to encrypt the HDD where your user data resides.

The Speed of Things

First, a prediction. This generation of hand-held consoles will be the last.4

How can the multi-year spans between console releases compare to the yearly improvements of devices like the iPhone and iPad? Apple claims that the iPad 2 is 9x more powerful than it’s predecessor. In benchmark testing Anandtech confirms – yeah pretty much.

While it’s early in the life of both the iPhone and iPad, it’s hard to imagine that future incarnations would not continue this increase in graphical prowess.5

Year after year the iOS devices continue to improve while companies like Sony and Nintendo are in a cycle of releasing a device and then supporting it for a few years. The DS was released in 2004 and just this month is being replaced by its successor, the 3DS. The PSP has also been around a while with an original release in 2005. Its successor, the Next Generation Portable or NGP, is planned for a late 2011 release.6

According to this article from Business Insider the iPad 2 is “equal to NGP in terms of raw graphical horsepower”. Wait, that can’t be right. Sony’s much heralded next-generation portable that won’t be released until November is only equal to a device that is in consumer’s hands right now?

I’m not trying to over-emphasize graphics, there are many other factors when it comes to an enjoyable gaming experience. You can ding the iPad for lack of physical controls or the DS for not having many mature games. While smart intelligent readers such as yourself realize this, there are tons of consoles bought due to graphical fidelity over gameplay or library selection.

—

The genesis of this post came to me while laying in bed this evening. I was playing Real Racing 2 on my iPhone 3GS and was struck by a few things. 1) How well this game looked on a 2-year-old phone. 2) How smoothly it ran – no stuttering and load times were all but nonexistent. 3) How well the controls worked on a device without buttons.7

Next to me were a Nintendo DS and a Sony PSP, both loaded with a few top-notch games. Yet, here I was playing a racing game on my cell phone – a game that was about $25 cheaper than similar titles on its console brethren.

So the iPad 2 is as fast as the NGP, which won’t ship for another 9 months and the old cycle of developing a console and waiting a few years to improve is dead. Or dying. Develop, a website about game development noted that next-gen handheld console budgets have tripled. How much are the games going to cost? $50!?

I’ve been able to play the same games over the last 4 generations of iOS devices with out a hitch. In some cases the games are even improved on newer hardware. Meanwhile DS games are fuzzy on the new 3DS and all of my UMD games for the PSP will have to be re-purchased when the NGP is released. :-/

From one perspective, not only are the graphics a huge win, but also the financial and vitality aspects of this new breed of gaming devices.

Photo by sneeu – Licensed under Creative Commons

Top 10 Songs for 2010

It’s about time that I belabor you with my musical likings from the last year.

 

Top 10 songs8 added to my iTunes library for 2010.

  1. Daylight – Matt & Kim – Grand
  2. Intro – The xx – xx
  3. Animus Vox – The Glitch Mob – Drink the Sea
  4. Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’ – Hanson – Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’9
  5. Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare – Matt & Kim – Grand
  6. Difficult – Uffie – Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans
  7. Home – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
  8. Colors – April Smith & The Great Picture Show – Songs For A Sinking Ship
  9. I Hope I Become A Ghost – The Deadly Syndrome – The Ortolan10
  10. Right As Rain – Adele – 19

 

Top 10 released in 2010

  1. Animus Vox – The Glitch Mob – Drink the Sea
  2. Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’ – Hanson – Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’
  3. Difficult – Uffie – Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans
  4. Colors – April Smith & The Great Picture Show – Songs For A Sinking Ship
  5. Rill Rill – Sleigh Bells – Treats
  6. Horchata – Vampire Weekend – Contra
  7. Bombay – El Guincho – Pop Negro11
  8. The Grid – Daft Punk – Tron: Legacy
  9. The Game Has Changed – Daft Punk – Tron: Legacy
  10. If You Think You Need Some Lovin – Pomplamoose – 3 New Songs Woot!


Here’s my lists from 2006, 2008 and 2009 if you’re interested. You can see what else I’m currently listening to on Last.fm.

Everything is Great on the Internet

After posting about why the Internet makes me feel like an idiot my friend Tim had this to add:

Tim: Did you read the slate article I shared re: Facebook makes you sad?

Chris: I have it in the queue.

Tim: I think that goes in to your blog post, if tangentially.

Tim: Everyone is cool on the Internet.

Chris: Exactly.

Tim: No one is sad or imperfect or boring or lethargic.

Tim: Because it is filtered reality.

I didn’t think about this factor when writing the aforementioned post, but man Tim hits the nail on the head.