[aleni]

im thinking about getting a hd enclosure with a firewire cable output, i have an unused 7200rpm hd which i want to put into the hd enclosure and install osx into so the mini will boot up off the 7200 rpm hd instead of my default 5400rpm hd which is slow.

can it boot off the firewire?

im sorry for being a total n00b, this is my first mac and i love it. the operating system holds me to use my pc (amd64bit 3200) again. eventhough the mac mini is way sloweerrrr than my current pc rig.

and one more question, some jpg's files are opened in photoshop by default, how do i make a "preview" app to associate all those images file types?

and, when i select 2 or more image files and then press enter, why the "preview" app opens lots of windows insted opening the drawer?

thanks!

[mportuesi]

Yes, you can boot the Mini off a Firewire hard disk. In fact, I did it just this morning. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a duplicate of the internal drive to an external firewire disk as a backup, and I was able to successfully boot from the backup.

For your second question, Choose a .jpg file in the Finder, choose "Show Info" from the menu. The third pane down is "Open with:" You can choose the application here, and also apply it to all jpg files.

Can't help with the third question, sorry.

[aleni]

carbon copy cloner? so i just back up all files from the internal disk to the external hard drive and i will be able to boot from it? so there is no need to reinstall osx? cool!

thanks, i might get this carbon copy cloner to test this out.

[mportuesi]

Originally Posted by aleni

carbon copy cloner? so i just back up all files from the internal disk to the external hard drive and i will be able to boot from it? so there is no need to reinstall osx? cool!

Yes.

Carbon Copy Cloner is free. Right now it's not compatible with Tiger (10.4), but the author is working on updating it. (My Mini is running 10.3.9 at the moment).

[aleni]

im still using 10.3.9 at the moment as well, the enclosure will ship today and i will try using it soon. i will soon reply to this again soon after im doin it. thanks.

[Krusty]

Regarding point 3. Preview has always opened multiple pics in a single window with a browseable sidebar for me .... that is, until just now when I tried it again ..they all opened in separate windows Looks like some sort of recently introduced bug to me, the help files still claim that Preview will open multi pics in a single window. Hmmmmmm ..... I just tried on my other machine: worked fine. The only difference is that I have QT 7, the last security update, and iTunes 4.8 on this machine. One of these must have broken Preview somehow because I am running the same OS (10.3.9) and same version of Preview on both machines.

[aleni]

anyway, jpg's files used to be opened by photoshop cs in default, but i changed it for jp's and png's files to use preview as a default image viewer, then i selected multiple jpgs files, bang viola preview opens the drawer again!.

[aleni]

mportuesi: it works like a charm, my mac now boots up off the firewire external hard disk and i feel a significant improvement of the disk activity is becoming faster.

cool. i love apple!

and carbon copy app is really a great backup tools.

[andrewgf]

Congrats on the Mini.

I recently did the same thing. However I just used the standard backup tools in the disk utilities that came with OS X.

Then upgraded the external disk to Tiger.