06.23.05

A brand new hard drive!

Posted in Mac OS X, computers at 1:00 am by Haris

I just did the unthinkable: I opened up my iBook and changed its hard drive!

Ok, it’s not unthinkable, many people have done it before. But it certainly is not for the faint at heart. Luckily there are lots of instructions and pictures online, namely here. It went overall ok, except I think I did not put the extra memory back properly (hear that Sameer?). Anyway, I am now back to restoring my computer to the settings that I am used to, and I will document it all here, so that I have it easily accessible the next time I have to do it. I’ll skip the links, which were included in another post.

Ok, here we go, Mac OSX DVD in… waiting… Choose language… Choose volume to install… WHAT? No volumes available? But I have a brand new 80GB drive in there? Oh, I read about this, I need to restart. Ok, I restart… language… choose volume… What? still not there? Hm. Let me try Disk Utility. Oh I see, I had forgotten to partition the drive. Ok, one big partition. Now let’s see. Oh excellent, now it’s found it. Ok, Customize, add X11, remove language translations, go. 3.7GB total. Skip DVD test. Now now we wait…

While we wait, I got to rant about the amount of printer drivers. The Operating System essentials are 1.9GB overall. The Printer Drivers are 1.6GB!!!! How many different printers are there??? I guess I could try to removed drivers, but they go by brands, and who knows what I will need at any given time. So let’s just leave them there, but that’s a lot of space devoted to Printer Drivers. On top of that, 1.1GB was devoted to the language translations. I got rid of that quickly. All this extra baggage. I guess it’s useful to some people.

Ok, it’s done. Installed. Now we restart… Ok, welcome in 15 different languages, makes me feel work inside. Boring list of questions about myself… Ok, now we are up and running.

First things first, set the Dock to hide automatically, and reduce the magnification a little bit. Much better. Now, open Safari, let’s go get Launchbar. Ok, done. Oh, it tells me that the Spotlight shortcut conflicts with it. Ok, change Spotlight to Opt-space. Next, LiteSwitch. I can’t stand the size of the switching thingie that shows up when you press Cmd-tab, I want something adjustable. Liteswitch does that and more.

Now, TextMate, so that I can start writting this entry. Newest version of course. Now it comes with enough bundles, that I don’t feel the need to do a checkout of the whole subversion trunk yet. Maybe a bit later, tomorrow or something. Oh, right, I forgot to run the updates. Let’s see… Ok, 4 system updates. Install… Reboot… Scan again, one more security update… Install… Reboot… Ok, done.

Ok, time for some more customizing. Open System Preferences. In Appearance, increase current documents number to 20. In Security disable automatic login. In Keyboard and Mouse, select the “Use F1-F12 keys to control software features” check-box. Under Keyboard shortcuts, select All controls. I find this extremely helpful. It allows me to easily cancel things when alert windows with two or three buttons show up. In those cases, space will trigger one of the other buttons, and tab+space will trigger the third one. Under Sound, deselect the “Show volume in menu bar” check-box. Never really found the use in it anyway. Under Accounts, add Launchbar to the Login Items. Just saw that my picture is a fortune cookie. It will have to do for now. In Date and Time, adjust things to taste. Under Universal Access, select the check-box titled “Enable access for assistive devices”. You never know which program will decide to use it.

Ok, that’s enough customizing. Next on the line for downloads: Firefox of course. Install the Sage extension of course, for all the RSS feeds. And of course Adium, so that I can chat with Sameer.

I think it’s time to go to sleep now. I’ll continue tomorrow.

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