Optimal set up of new iMac for working on videos.

[lslukas]

Hi! I’m pretty new here so forgive me if I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m an artist who teaches.

I’ve just got a new iMac and an 8TB seagate external drive. I want to set up so I can take videos and work on them without filling up the storage on my iPhone, iPad, and new iMac. I do use certain photo albums on my iPhone when I teach art.

can anyone advise on how to best set it up?

thanks so much
Lori

 

[jerwin]

From Apple

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac

Move your iMovie for Mac library

etc etc.

 

[lslukas]

From Apple

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac

Move your iMovie for Mac library

etc etc.

Thankyou for replying. I’m not very techie, so please forgive what might be a dumb question. Will I still be able to work on the photo or video from the iMac? ie. import it from the external drive, work on it in Photos or iMovie and then store it back into the external drive? is that the process?
thanks,
Lori

 

[jerwin]

I haven't yet "upgraded" to macos 10.15, so my experience is limited to now obsolete products.

But I have configured my Aperture (very obsolete), iTunes (renamed to Apple music), and Photos (probably still current) libraries to an external drive.

There's no moving files back and forth-- the programs are able to read and write to the external drive.


Two issues--

• the external drive is likely slower than an SSD, which may come into play when editing movies
• you'll still need a backup drive

 

[lslukas]

That sounds great. Are you saying the New 8TB external drive I have will not be enough? I also have a Seagate 4TB that I use for my Time Machine.

 

[jerwin]

If you have 8 TB of data, you obviously can't back it up on an 4 TB drive.

 

[lslukas]

No, of course not. But I will continue to use that to back up the iMac, if I have moved Photos to the 8TB. Right? It’s the 8TB that needs the back up. Am I understanding you?

 

[jerwin]

Oh sure. As long as you have less than 4 TB of actual data spread around on your drives, a 4TB back up drive is sufficient.

And if you want to throw caution to the wind, you can manually exclude everthing on that 8TB drive from being backed up. Wouldn't want to recommend it, but you have that option.