I'm a photographer by trade and all of my photos will never fit on a 1tb drive anyway, and I keep most of my stuff on external hard drives. I'm guessing the only thing I'd keep on the boot drive would be the OS? Unless there's something I'm missing?
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Any need for 1tb vs 512gb?
- Thread starter matthewh133
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Yes, you're missing that constantly having to work with external drives sucks. Or that you don't have to fit your entire library in one place. Or that you really want to take advantage of the fastest PCIe SSD in your laptop. Or that if you're talking about 2016 models, the SSD is soldered-on and can't be upgraded (not that previous retina models were easily upgradable due to proprietary connector and lack of aftermarket options)
P.S. 1TB is a minimum if you're serious about having your working (not archive) library on your laptop and actually using your laptop for serious photo editing on the go. 2TB is still a luxury, especially when it comes to high-end SSDs
P.S. 1TB is a minimum if you're serious about having your working (not archive) library on your laptop and actually using your laptop for serious photo editing on the go. 2TB is still a luxury, especially when it comes to high-end SSDs
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Professional photographers have to back up their work. It's best to have two external hard drives to back up your work to, with identical backups.
Your Macbook Pro doesn't need to have more than 512GB of storage space. It just flat out doesn't. Let's say you have a wedding you're editing. You'll be backing things up on your external drives right away, and as you go. If you're done and you've delivered to your client, you may still keep backups... but on the external drives!
512GB is a good size to have to give yourself some leeway on the computer, to store certain things. But if you're already working professionally, and you know your workflow habits, you should know which is better for you (512GB vs. 1TB). For me, if I were to go into photography professionally, I wouldn't have much on my laptop hard drive. An organized workflow means continually and properly backing up, and storing files on backups.
Remember, the whole idea of backup drives is that a hard drive can fail. Or be destroyed by something unforeseen. Any time. And you don't know when. If you keep a massive amount of your workflow all on your Macbook, you are taking a risk. What is a day worth of editing worth to you? I would be backing up once daily, minimum, depending on what I were doing. So really, that renders a big main hard drive a little bit moot.
I would save and stick with 512GB.
I guess I'm a little confused by this. I don't see much point in storing a very small portion of my library (about 6tb) on the main drive, I may as well keep them on the external drives I currently have them on no? What would I store in the 500gb of spare space that having a 1tb drive gives me?
I think I gave a long-winded answer not knowing if you know what you need.
The short-answer question to you, since you seem to know what you need: No, you're not missing anything.
I think his point is that it would be unwise to use the laptops SSD as any sort of permanent storage. It should be what is currently being worked on and even that should be backed up frequently. Your library should be on a system of external drives with some form of redundancy.
I still don't see 1TB being necessary as a boot drive for most people.
It really depends a lot on what you're doing. For what you're doing, it wouldn't seem useful. For me, 1TB+ would be a really good idea.
I have 256gb on my 2012 macbook, as photographer, and have no problems, i keep my current project on the internal ssd, and finished projects i move to external storage.
Have room for thousands of raw files on internal, and also have logic x installed on it (50gb)
Have room for thousands of raw files on internal, and also have logic x installed on it (50gb)
Considering how fast transfer speeds are with USB-C, save your money and just stick with the 512GB... and also given that you have 6TB of photos on external drives, you are going to be using them regardless if you have 512GB or 1TB...
Just grab a Samsung T3 external SSD if you need space, they go up to 2TB for $700 and swap out what you use to internal storage when needed. If the entire library cant fit in the first place why try? Coincidentally, you could have just 4 T3 and have the entire library portsble. Would still be expensive, but possible and portable.
I do a lot of shooting and never have an issue with the 512 GB. I carry a T3 Drive, to use as a physical backup when I am shooting. The physical separation helps ensures I have my images even if my laptop is stolen or breaks. Also, if the Wifi speed allows, I will backup to a cloud account. And when I get home I backup to my NAS.
I follow the long time rules that something is not backed up unless it is in at least 3 physical locations.
I follow the long time rules that something is not backed up unless it is in at least 3 physical locations.
Well, it obviously depends on your workflow and where you shoot. If you don't know "what would I store in the 500gb of spare space that having a 1tb drive gives me" that means you don't need it now (then what's the point of this thread?) If your workflow guarantees that you'll never need to access old files, then yeah. But it's not true for everyone and may even change for you over time.
As many people mentioned, backing up is crucial. Are you doing back-ups in your office to your desktop HDD array? Are you backing up to portable HDDs or portable SSDs on-the-go? Do you have a large well-defined portion of your library that you'd like to always have with you? And having bigger part of your library easily accessible doesn't imply you don't have off-site backups. You may even consider a copy of the most important photos on your built-in drive as an extra place to store it, which increases data survivability.
Overall, it comes down to the convenience you need and want. And the biggest question is whether it's worth saving 400$ on a 3000$+ laptop and sacrifice higher flexibility it'll give in terms of managing your files? 1TB isn't a lot, but it not being a lot isn't really a good point for choosing 512GB instead.