Digital Photo Storage

What app are you using for photo management? How well it handles externally referenced files will make a difference. Can you keep your best photos on the Mac and archive the others to an external? How often do you need all the photos when portable?

I have TBs of photos from the past 10 years. No way I could carry that around even if I wanted. And why would I want that? Get an 1TB SSD so there is plenty of room for OS, apps, and an Aperture Library. Import the new photos to the library on the internal SSD. After they are culled and edited, use Aperture to move them to a library on a large external drive that is backed up.

Sure do. 7 x external HDDs and counting.

Hammie said:

My current MBP has two 512 GB internal SSD drives.

I am looking at getting a new rMBP and am torn between the cost of the 512GB and 1TB drives.

I can use one of the 512 GB SSD (probably the one that I use for my photography files today) from my current laptop in an external enclosure if I go with the rMBP with a 512 GB drive. However, if I go with the 1TB drive, I will not need to worry about carrying around an external drive.

Does anyone currently use an external drive for digital photo storage with their MBP?

Any thoughts? Pros and Cons that I should take into consideration?

Click to expand...

I have a 13" rMBP and use a 2TB. WD external in a CIS custom enclosure...takes care if pictures which I export monthly from Aperture and other large items..the Mac has the 512 SSD as it's main storage.

Hammie said:

Good food for thought.

I use Lightroom primary, but have dabbled in and have an Aperture library.

I guess I will need to look into what a workflow looks like when archiving files to an external drive.

I do not need access to all of my photos from the past 15+ years. I have my exported photos that are used for screensavers, etc.

Thanks for the information.

Click to expand...

All you is to add is the final step of using LR to move the completed photos from the folder on your SSD to a folder on an external drive. Personally I put a folder for the current year ( i.e. 2014) in the internal SSD's Pictures folder. All photos are imported to the year folder with a subfolder per day. The external drive also has a Pictures folder with a subfolder per year (over 10 year folders currently). When ready, I simply use LR to drag and drop the daily subfolders from the internal SSD's 2014 folder to the external drive's 2014 folder. Needless to say the external drive is part of my Time Machine backups.

One constant will be that you're going to be taking more pictures, it doesn't matter what option you take, eventually you will need to get more space one way or another.
I chose to take the cheapest route, 256GB SSD in my rMBP and a 2TB external portable drive and when it's full I'll get another one, or a large storage solution and transfer what I have there, and continue to use it until it's broken.

The Pro's out weigh the Con's in my opinion for cost, drive size and replaceability. If you see it another way and can afford the 1TB SSD, I see no reason why not to get it.