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crabapplemcn

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 22, 2010
21
0
Considering moving from old MBP to the new Imac. I currently have 320GB of photos in the cloud and on external HD, but I would like to store locally (not optimaized) on new iMac. Should I then consider a 1Tb or 2 Tb imac model? Or what other options would you suggest? Keep on external HD (but I want my default Photos library to be either the cloud or local imac folder so I dont have to always plug in EHD to view photos)? Thanks
 
I use a small 2TB SSD attached to the back of the stand. Can’t see it from the front. Apple’s storage is too overpriced.
 
I see the 1tb SSD (from Apple) as being within reasonable pricing, but the 2tb is too much.

iDave's suggestion to use an external SSD for storage of the photo library is a good one. But you must also keep that SSD backed up "locally", as well.

CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper makes this task EASY. The backup will be an exact copy of the source drive.

If you don't want to keep the external SSD "mounted on the desktop" all the time, there's a very nifty little utility called "Semulov" which can dismount/mount it for you. It's FREE, also. (Note: I don't know if this works with Big Sur and m series Macs).
 
As long as the cost is reasonable I prefer to have enough internal storage to hold all my commonly used files. My photo library is only about 60gb. Just bought the new iMac with a 1tb drive which should hold me for a few years.
 
Considering moving from old MBP to the new Imac. I currently have 320GB of photos in the cloud and on external HD, but I would like to store locally (not optimaized) on new iMac. Should I then consider a 1Tb or 2 Tb imac model? Or what other options would you suggest? Keep on external HD (but I want my default Photos library to be either the cloud or local imac folder so I dont have to always plug in EHD to view photos)? Thanks

Why hesitate? Just go for it.
2TB on internal SSD, 2TB of cloud storage will last a long time, provided that you don't shoot and store a lot of 4k footage videos in RAW.
 
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