Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How are people handling iMovie/iPhoto Libraries on their new rmbp small SSDs?

F

FrozenDarkness

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 21, 2009
1,923
1,252
I have a 256gb 13" rmbp and having trouble handling my iMovie and iPhoto database files. Seems liek I can't split them so they're huge. And it's a weird compromise to put this on an external becuase I oftentimes want to have those things available to me without having to lug a drive around as well.

How are people getting around this? Is there a web service that would help? Can i split libraries?
 
I keep both of those libraries on an external drive. That means I don't have them with me when I travel, but with media in the cloud it doesn't hurt much. If I want to take specific media with me I sync it to my iPad.
 
6TB external library drive and separate 6TB drive for Time Machine backups. I use iTunes to put music on my iPhone and photos on my iPad.
 
I mainly work from my iMac but if I want to take my music and photos on the go, I have both libraries syncd to an external drive that has nothing but my music and the current library sysing Good Sync. I run good sync before I leave on a trip and then sync again to the main hard drive when I get back.
 
All games, music, video, and photos are on a USB 3.0 external 1.5 TB drive. I have another USB 2.0 drive with 500 GB of storage for backups. Seems to work well, and I can take the 1.5 TB with me while keeping the backup drive at home just in case.
 
On my rMBP (256/8 GB) I have an additional Transcend JetDrive Lite (64 GB) plugged into my SD slot, nearly flush with the exterior of my rMBP. On it I have additional files with important photos, documents, etc., and also I have spanned my iTunes library using TuneSpan (available in the App Store) so that I have many movies stashed on the Transcend drive rather than on my rMBP's actual SSD drive. So far that has worked out well for me.
 
I have 2 external hard drives and one mobile wifi hard drive. All iTunes media folder goes to mobile wifi hard drive and one external hard drive is for Time Machine back up. Another external hard drive with Windows FAT32 format is for videos and pictures plus other stuff. so all of them are 500GB size. I know it is too many hard drives. :apple:
 
Clix Pix said:
On my rMBP (256/8 GB) I have an additional Transcend JetDrive Lite (64 GB) plugged into my SD slot, nearly flush with the exterior of my rMBP. On it I have additional files with important photos, documents, etc., and also I have spanned my iTunes library using TuneSpan (available in the App Store) so that I have many movies stashed on the Transcend drive rather than on my rMBP's actual SSD drive. So far that has worked out well for me.
Click to expand...

how is the transcend jetdrive lite if you don't mind me asking? Is it super slow?
 
I am very, very pleased with the Transcend drive -- It is quite speedy, not slow at all. I use it mainly for stashing documents, photos and such, but also have experimented with TuneSpan and have put some movies on that drive. Have to admit I haven't watched one using that drive since I did this, though! I would be very happy if Transcend were to eventually develop a larger-capacity drive, as I would love to push even more stuff off the computer's SSD drive to that one....
 
FrozenDarkness said:
I have a 256gb 13" rmbp and having trouble handling my iMovie and iPhoto database files. Seems liek I can't split them so they're huge. And it's a weird compromise to put this on an external becuase I oftentimes want to have those things available to me without having to lug a drive around as well.

How are people getting around this? Is there a web service that would help? Can i split libraries?
Click to expand...

Don't know about iMovie but easy enough to create a 2nd, smaller, iPhoto library for mobile use, move the main library to an external drive (and back it up elsewhere), to create space on the rMBP.
 
How does this work with external drives when you use Lightroom as a photo catalogue? Does this not create any issues?
 
Is this not part of the reasoning behind iCloud? I am considering that when IOS8 and Yosemite come out later this year, I shall buy iCloud storage and place all my bulky files/libraries on there in order to be accessible to all devices all the time. Maybe I'm missing something, but that should free up space on my local disks too?
 
This is an unfortunate tradeoff that Apple made. Basically, Apple has traded the space and low cost of a hard drive for the speed of SSD/flash storage. It is also a way to get people to spend more up front, as current rMBP models can't be upgraded with third party solutions (yet).

You have four basic options:

1. Buy a Mac with more onboard storage to start and pay the absurd Apple storage premium.

2. Keep your iPhoto/iTunes/iMovie libraries on an external drive.

3. If you can, use something like the PNY Storedge to hold said libraries.

4. Keep them on a cloud-based solution and hope you'll always have connectivity.

None of those are nearly as convenient as being able to store them on your machine without having to buy more machine than you need.
 
Clix Pix said:
I am very, very pleased with the Transcend drive -- It is quite speedy, not slow at all. I use it mainly for stashing documents, photos and such, but also have experimented with TuneSpan and have put some movies on that drive. Have to admit I haven't watched one using that drive since I did this, though! I would be very happy if Transcend were to eventually develop a larger-capacity drive, as I would love to push even more stuff off the computer's SSD drive to that one....
Click to expand...

I'd just like to throw in another positive experience for the Transcend JetDrive Lite. I just picked one up a few days ago and so far it's been working really well. More than fast enough to store and access photos, videos, and documents on, and I even ran a few large games (that I only play sometimes) from it without any issues. While the drive is not completely flush, it is close enough that it is much easier to leave in as compared to standard SD cards or USB drives.
 
MarvinHC said:
How does this work with external drives when you use Lightroom as a photo catalogue? Does this not create any issues?
Click to expand...
The latest version of Lightroom (v5) handles external drives beautifully. It also has an awesome new feature called "Smart Previews" that builds editable previews that you can keep on your internal HDD, and changes will automatically sync up with the master files when you next connect to your external drive. It's very slick and works really well. I have been quite impressed. I purchased the LaClie 2big 6TB Thunderbolt drive to house my photo library (80,000+ photos), and it handles that without breaking a sweat. Insanely fast and quiet. But I also keep Smart Previews of all my images (you don't have to do it for all, you can pick and choose which images for which you want to keep a Smart Preview) on my internal HDD so I essentially take my entire library with me wherever I go.

One word of caution: Lightroom does *not* support networked drives. And frankly, if you do even a modest amount of photo editing, you are much, much better served with a directly connected external drive. I've been down the NAS path with my photos, and it was a frustrating experience overall. Not trying to criticize those that do it, this is just my personal experience and my opinion.

EDIT: Another word of caution on the LaClie 2big (or any external drive configured as a striped RAID array): that configuration is crazy fast and awesome, but it doesn't offer the redundancy and hot-swapping of a more traditional RAID configuration. If you use a striped RAID array, *please* be smart and keep at least one (preferably two) backups of the drive, particularly if that drive contains priceless family memories. I personally use Time Machine for this, but there are many options here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back