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Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
Hey folks,

Where do you store your photos? I have a MBP and have run out of space. I'm considering external drive options. I tried the TimeCapsule option with iTunes and it was not a great experience. It was laggy and slow - moving it back to my laptop was even WORSE. I lost a handful of songs etc.

Anyway, I don't really want to go thru the same situation with iPhoto or iMovie. So, I'm looking for some advice.

Are you folks using Firewire, USB, what size etc?
 
Hey folks,

Where do you store your photos? I have a MBP and have run out of space. I'm considering external drive options. I tried the TimeCapsule option with iTunes and it was not a great experience. It was laggy and slow - moving it back to my laptop was even WORSE. I lost a handful of songs etc.

Anyway, I don't really want to go thru the same situation with iPhoto or iMovie. So, I'm looking for some advice.

Are you folks using Firewire, USB, what size etc?

You guys really need to do a little searching before making new threads as this has been discussed quite a bit in here over the last few days. There are at least 2 threads I can think of that have at least 2 pages of replies and they are still on the first page of the forum.

Since you already made a post, ill simply say that I am 100% pro DVD back up. Redundant drives simply become too expensive with large collections.
 

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
You guys really need to do a little searching before making new threads as this has been discussed quite a bit in here over the last few days. There are at least 2 threads I can think of that have at least 2 pages of replies and they are still on the first page of the forum.

Since you already made a post, ill simply say that I am 100% pro DVD back up. Redundant drives simply become too expensive with large collections.

Awesome - you are really helpful. I've spent the last 2 hours searching this site and haven't found what I'm looking for and then you answer my question without answering it.

I'm looking for what folks use as working drives, not necessarily backup. I'm comfortable with Time Machine and even the Time Capsule. What I didn't like about the TC option was storing the files on it and then trying to use them over the wireless N network.

So to be clear, I'm looking for options for storing files externally but accessing and editing them on my MBP.
 

wheelhot

macrumors 68020
Nov 23, 2007
2,082
269
So to be clear, I'm looking for options for storing files externally but accessing and editing them on my MBP.
So what you actually want is to store your original photos on an external drive but you want to be able to edit it on your MBP?

Well if that is what you want, then you will need either Aperture or Lightroom, try both cause its more of a preference thing. Dont listen to people who kept saying Lightroom is better then Aperture at all the important stuff and all, both got their pro and con, choose which one you prefer. Try out the trial version of both before making your purchase.
 

Phrasikleia

macrumors 601
Feb 24, 2008
4,082
403
Over there------->
I have a MBP and am using an external 1TB FW 800 drive to work off of. It definitely helped to speed things up once I got everything moved over to it. The photos are all backed up in triplicate, mostly on DVDs.
 

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
Well if that is what you want, then you will need either Aperture or Lightroom, try both cause its more of a preference thing. Dont listen to people who kept saying Lightroom is better then Aperture at all the important stuff and all, both got their pro and con, choose which one you prefer. Try out the trial version of both before making your purchase.

That's what I was afraid of - a major software upgrade. I enjoy iPhoto for it's ease of use, but I find that I'm increasingly needing a few features that it doesn't have.

I'll research them both (good advice) and will likely go with the one that is easier to use. I'm a hobby photographer so I don't need a ton of advanced features and would go with ease of use over in depth features.
 

wheelhot

macrumors 68020
Nov 23, 2007
2,082
269
Well the reason why I asked you to get either Aperture or Lightroom cause it makes managing photos from external drives easier. Im not sure if iPhoto has such capabilities and what is iPhoto limits, I used to use iPhoto but since I moved to Aperture, I never look back.
 

Hmac

macrumors 68020
May 30, 2007
2,130
4
Midwest USA
For my Mac Pro, I use a firewire 800 external drive I bought from OWC. For my MacBook Pro, I have a Western Digital 500 gig Passport, USB2.0-powered external.
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,541
1,653
Redondo Beach, California
Since you already made a post, ill simply say that I am 100% pro DVD back up. Redundant drives simply become too expensive with large collections.

I just bought a 1TB drive for $100. I expect to get about fives years of use from it. $20 per year is not all that expensive.

Do you periodically test your DVD backups, say about once a month. I test my set of external drives frequently every time one comes back into rotation to be refreshed.

Now back to the OP's question. he asked about ONLINE, active storage, not backup. Buy the largest FW800 disk you can reasonably afford. The best value today is the 1TB size.

Then buy another (at least) of the same for backup
 
I just bought a 1TB drive for $100. I expect to get about fives years of use from it. $20 per year is not all that expensive.

Do you periodically test your DVD backups, say about once a month. I test my set of external drives frequently every time one comes back into rotation to be refreshed.

Now back to the OP's question. he asked about ONLINE, active storage, not backup. Buy the largest FW800 disk you can reasonably afford. The best value today is the 1TB size.

Then buy another (at least) of the same for backup

You expect to get 5 years? Well what you expect with HDs and what you really end up getting can be 2 very different things especially when your buying the larger drives.

I have already answered this like 20 times in the last week, lol. You dont have to test DVD's. As long as you verify your burn, use HQ media and make multiple back ups your 100% golden. The reason you test your HD's once a month is because HD's are VASTLY inferior reliability wise. A HD can fail at any time for a hundred different reasons. That just isnt the case with DVD's. I have already stated if you have small collections then redundant HD's are fine. That simply isnt the case with larger collections. It becomes way too cost prohibitive.

10+ years, over 5000 DVD back Ups (10,000+ Discs), and not a single lost picture thus far. Not one. The DVD's I use have a minimum life expectancy of 30+ years. Actually some of my Kodak discs have 100 year life expectancy.

Awesome - you are really helpful. I've spent the last 2 hours searching this site and haven't found what I'm looking for and then you answer my question without answering it.

Thats it get an attitude with me because you have poor searching skills. 2 HOURS?? There are 2 posts still on the main page alone that deal directly with this subject matter. One of them is entitled "Your Back up Solutions". Even if those posts didn't have a direct answer to your questions, they would have been a much better place for posting your question than starting yet another thread on the same topic.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/586886/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/645984/


Dont worry tho, next time ill ignore your post entirely.
 

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
Thats it get an attitude with me because you have poor searching skills. 2 HOURS?? There are 2 posts still on the main page alone that deal directly with this subject matter. One of them is entitled "Your Back up Solutions". Even if those posts didn't have a direct answer to your questions, they would have been a much better place for posting your question than starting yet another thread on the same topic.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/586886/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/645984/


Dont worry tho, next time ill ignore your post entirely.

You're making my point for me - they didn't answer my question.

Storing data on external drives and actively using them are 2 completely different uses. You have also overlooked the software aspect of this type of computing. You'd rather espouse the importance of a DVD backup. That's great and they are a good idea - but those too don't answer my question. We agree on one thing thought - you are THE MAN when it comes to DVD answers. 20+ in one week - WOW!

As for an attitude, I find it funny that you are accusing me of getting one. Rather than just answering the question or posting helpful links, you thought it would be better to NOT answer it and then rub my nose in it. I have been an active member of this forum for over a year. I'm familiar with how to search it etc.

You've spent more time and effort essenatially calling me an idiot than you have actually trying to help. Well done.
 

Cliff3

macrumors 68000
Nov 2, 2007
1,556
178
SF Bay Area
Search the iPhoto help for moving your library - it will tell you how to move it to and access it from an external drive. Unfortunately, it's not readily user configurable and you are limited to just the one library. Yet another reason why I don't use iPhoto, but that's a topic for a different thread.

I use a FW800 2TB RAID 1 drive from Lacie and so far I am happy with it. I bought it on my return to the US after a previous drive was damaged during shipment to Australia. It has since been superceded by a drive that also includes an eSATA connection. They have a smaller 1TB version as well that is reasonably priced. Having a real-time backup created via the mirroring is reassuring.

(edit: FWIW, I am a Lightroom/Photoshop user)
 
You're making my point for me - they didn't answer my question.

Storing data on external drives and actively using them are 2 completely different uses. You have also overlooked the software aspect of this type of computing. You'd rather espouse the importance of a DVD backup. That's great and they are a good idea - but those too don't answer my question. We agree on one thing thought - you are THE MAN when it comes to DVD answers. 20+ in one week - WOW!

As for an attitude, I find it funny that you are accusing me of getting one. Rather than just answering the question or posting helpful links, you thought it would be better to NOT answer it and then rub my nose in it. I have been an active member of this forum for over a year. I'm familiar with how to search it etc.

You've spent more time and effort essenatially calling me an idiot than you have actually trying to help. Well done.

If they didnt answer your specific questions then ask!! Why does it require a brand new thread for you to ask a question? Are threads only for the person who started them? They were threads dealing specifically with storage and your question was in regards to storage.

As for your ridiculous assumption that I have spent more time attacking you than helping you. Sorry but it was you who attacked me with your sickening sarcasm, not the other way around. I simply made the comment that you should have searched the forum before starting a new thread as this was something that had been discussed a lot here in the last couple days and you could have easily posted your question in those threads instead of creating a new thread. I then stated that I prefer DVD's. If that is attacking you then I am the king of england. As for my 2nd reply, well I treat people as they treat me. Since you clearly showed me no respect, well the rest is academic. If you dont want people to attack you then dont attack them. Its that simple.
 

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
If they didnt answer your specific questions then ask!! Why does it require a brand new thread for you to ask a question? Are threads only for the person who started them? They were threads dealing specifically with storage and your question was in regards to storage.

As for your ridiculous assumption that I have spent more time attacking you than helping you. Sorry but it was you who attacked me with your sickening sarcasm, not the other way around. I simply made the comment that you should have searched the forum before starting a new thread as this was something that had been discussed a lot here in the last couple days and you could have easily posted your question in those threads instead of creating a new thread. I then stated that I prefer DVD's. If that is attacking you then I am the king of england. As for my 2nd reply, well I treat people as they treat me. Since you clearly showed me no respect, well the rest is academic. If you dont want people to attack you then dont attack them. Its that simple.

HA! I thought you were ignoring me Your Highness.

You guys really need to do a little searching before making new threads as this has been discussed quite a bit in here over the last few days. There are at least 2 threads I can think of that have at least 2 pages of replies and they are still on the first page of the forum.

Apparently you were scolding more than just me as we ALL should do a better job searching first. So to your point, you weren't being snide to me...that snide comment was directed at all of us.

As for not asking my questions in another thread - I try to not to do that. That's called hijacking. I don't like to hijack other folks threads because 1. it makes the OP have trouble getting his answer and 2. it makes searching for things more difficult as you navigate hijacked threads looking for a particular answer.

Thanks for hijacking this thread and for not answering the questions posted in it. You are on a roll.
 

pprior

macrumors 65816
Aug 1, 2007
1,448
9
Hey folks,

Where do you store your photos? I have a MBP and have run out of space. I'm considering external drive options. I tried the TimeCapsule option with iTunes and it was not a great experience. It was laggy and slow - moving it back to my laptop was even WORSE. I lost a handful of songs etc.

Anyway, I don't really want to go thru the same situation with iPhoto or iMovie. So, I'm looking for some advice.

Are you folks using Firewire, USB, what size etc?

It's not clear to me, but it appears you're talking about primary storage here, and not backup. If so, timecapsule is a terrible idea.

If you need to edit on the run, then you need to upgrade your hard disk.
If you plan to edit always at home, then get a FW800 disk if your make supports it and you'll have a ton more speed than the timecapsule.
I would strongly suggest against using anything USB - no matter what the specs say, it's very much slower than firewire.

As to what -I- do, I edit off a dedicated 1TB drive (separate from my boot disk) and backup to multiple sources including a drobo, a NAS, removable hard drives and offsite via mozy. This is aperture based (moving to Lightroom 2.2 currently).
 

titaniummd

macrumors member
Jan 19, 2009
79
0
Hey folks,

Where do you store your photos? I have a MBP and have run out of space. I'm considering external drive options. I tried the TimeCapsule option with iTunes and it was not a great experience. It was laggy and slow - moving it back to my laptop was even WORSE. I lost a handful of songs etc.

Anyway, I don't really want to go thru the same situation with iPhoto or iMovie. So, I'm looking for some advice.

Are you folks using Firewire, USB, what size etc?

I bought a Hammer Morespace 500 gb external HD for $107 (USB).
 

THX1139

macrumors 68000
Mar 4, 2006
1,928
0
This what you should consider doing. Buy a dual drive external housing that supports FW800. Add a couple of 750 or terabyte drives, but don't run them in RAID. Use one of the drives as your working drive (storing new projects and recent photos), and then backup to the other drive. Every month or so, burn DVDs of new photos that you have stored on the backup, then delete them when you run out of room. If you're really anal about backup, you could get a 3rd drive and rotate that with the backup. When the first backup drive fills up, back it up to DVD and then swap it out with the 3rd drive. When that drive fills up, back it up to DVD and then swap back the original drive. Keep repeating. This will give you an extra layer of redundancy.

This system will give you a fast external WORKING drive, a storage drive and backup to DVD.
 

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
It's not clear to me, but it appears you're talking about primary storage here, and not backup. If so, timecapsule is a terrible idea.

If you need to edit on the run, then you need to upgrade your hard disk.
If you plan to edit always at home, then get a FW800 disk if your make supports it and you'll have a ton more speed than the timecapsule.
I would strongly suggest against using anything USB - no matter what the specs say, it's very much slower than firewire.

As to what -I- do, I edit off a dedicated 1TB drive (separate from my boot disk) and backup to multiple sources including a drobo, a NAS, removable hard drives and offsite via mozy. This is aperture based (moving to Lightroom 2.2 currently).

Thanks for the feedback. I agree with you - the TC was a bad idea. I tried it and was very disappointed. When I started my Mac journey I was drawn in by the iLife suite and simplicity of TC. I have never considered myself a 'power user' but I think I'm reaching the limits of some aspects of iLife.

I have over 20,000 photos that I have taken in the past 2 years or so. My hard drive is overflowing with pictures, music and video. In hindsight, I should have kept my MBA and iMac, put all my media on the iMac and used the MBA for mobile surfing etc.

So, it sounds like I'm headed towards Aperture or Lightroom with a Firewire drive. I was hoping to avoid an expensive software upgrade and even more wanted to avoid having hardware hanging off of my MBP. I like being able to edit anything, any time, anywhere. Having devices store my data means I have to have them with me which is kind of a bummer. Either that or I move the files back and forth from editing to storage etc.
 

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
This what you should consider doing. Buy a dual drive external housing that supports FW800. Add a couple of 750 or terabyte drives, but don't run them in RAID. Use one of the drives as your working drive (storing new projects and recent photos), and then backup to the other drive. Every month or so, burn DVDs of new photos that you have stored on the backup, then delete them when you run out of room. If you're really anal about backup, you could get a 3rd drive and rotate that with the backup. When the first backup drive fills up, back it up to DVD and then swap it out with the 3rd drive. When that drive fills up, back it up to DVD and then swap back the original drive. Keep repeating. This will give you an extra layer of redundancy.

This system will give you a fast external WORKING drive, a storage drive and backup to DVD.

Good idea. Off to search for a new external drive solution...
 

pprior

macrumors 65816
Aug 1, 2007
1,448
9
Well with either Aperture or LR you can keep previews on your portable, but the files on an external. Upgrading your internal drive may be a more solid solution if you really need true portable editing.
 

Wingnut330

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
530
0
Central Ohio - USA
Well with either Aperture or LR you can keep previews on your portable, but the files on an external. Upgrading your internal drive may be a more solid solution if you really need true portable editing.

I just ran through a few Aperture tutorials. It seems pretty slick. I am a fan of the iPhoto interfaces (events, faces, places) and would hate to give those up. I'm gonna research iPhoto via an external drive now...
 

termina3

macrumors 65816
Jul 16, 2007
1,078
1
TX
FW 800 drive--as large as possible. (and 7200rpm). Otherwise, USB 2.0 won't completely kill you. Might come close though.

All the programs aforementioned can use files hosted externally... sometimes it just takes a little work to get the files to be addressed properly (aliases are amazing).

ill simply say that I am 100% pro DVD back up. Redundant drives simply become too expensive with large collections.

Don't DVDs degrade over time? (that's a question put to the "room")

Oh, and yes, there are other threads that cover this issue, or an issue sufficiently close to it that you could have found your answer. That said, I completely empathize with having problems with the MR search tool--usually a google search with "site:forums.macrumors.com" is a better shot. Just for future reference.
 

THX1139

macrumors 68000
Mar 4, 2006
1,928
0
Don't DVDs degrade over time? (that's a question put to the "room")

Yes, EVERYTHING degrades over time. But DVDs will last longer than hard disk media because there are no moving parts. But more importantly, you would need to copy your DVD media before it ever degraded enough to be an issue because of changes to technology. For example, if you would have stored photos on whatever media was available 20 years ago, do you think you could open those files with the modern computer of today? Probably not... the media would be obsolete without the hardware/software to read it.

I think you're pretty safe to create your library on DVD, but create new copies whenever a new technology comes out, or maybe every 10 years just to be safe.
 
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