Hi, first post here. I ordered a the new iMac but can use some advise on my photo storage. I have over 14,000 pictures on my computer now & was looking for advice on storage for them. I don’t think I want to transfer all to the new computer. I can do an external hard drive but I always worry it will go bad. I thought, I would just upgrade my iCloud but then I don’t think I can pull them off the computer. I assume if I did, they would also come out of iCloud. Amy advice is appreciated.
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Photo storage
- Thread starter Jt919
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Not sure exactly what you're saying here. If you set your Mac to "Optimize Photo Storage" then you'll consume very little storage on the Mac, and most will live in iCloud.
You haven't said *why* you don't want to move your photos to the new computer. Is it just because of the size of the new SSD? If so the above option would solve the problem for you, *if* you're OK not having all the originals stored locally (I'm not OK with it, but others might be).
My iMac from 2016 has been painful to use & I guess I was thinking that the less I have on there the better chance it won’t bog down. I would rather keep them on the computer. I’ll check out your suggestion. Thank you.
Ok. You’ve convinced me. I’ll give it a go. I would really like to keep them accessible. Thanks so much.
I would not trust an important photo library "to the cloud only".
I would want "a physical copy" nearby under my control.
If you don't want to keep all the photos on the internal SSD, then I'd suggest:
- An EXTERNAL USB3 SSD. Doesn't have to be super-fast. A 2.5" "bare" SSD in a good enclosure would do. This becomes your "primary external storage" drive.
- A backup for the SSD. This could be platter-based. Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to regularly "clone" the SSD to the backup. It will be an EXACT copy of the source drive.
- A SECOND backup (also platter based) would be advisable. Store this "off-site" (away from the house). This protects you against home disasters.
I would want "a physical copy" nearby under my control.
If you don't want to keep all the photos on the internal SSD, then I'd suggest:
- An EXTERNAL USB3 SSD. Doesn't have to be super-fast. A 2.5" "bare" SSD in a good enclosure would do. This becomes your "primary external storage" drive.
- A backup for the SSD. This could be platter-based. Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to regularly "clone" the SSD to the backup. It will be an EXACT copy of the source drive.
- A SECOND backup (also platter based) would be advisable. Store this "off-site" (away from the house). This protects you against home disasters.
14,000 photos is not much, especially if they are smartphone photos. I have 30,000 DSLR photos (which are much bigger than iPhone photos) on my machine, no problem. I used to have 100,000+, but culled a lot of them.
You need to consider storing photos elsewhere if you have 100,000+ of photos.
Either way, always have at least two backups, whether cloud or physical, or both.
You need to consider storing photos elsewhere if you have 100,000+ of photos.
Either way, always have at least two backups, whether cloud or physical, or both.
I use an iMac for my photo editing with Lightroom and Photoshop. On the SSD of my iMac are only the programs and the Lightroom catalog. All photos I have on an external hard drive system consisting of 4 hard drives (a 8 TB) in Raid 5 (OWC Thunderbay 4) connected (gives 24TB net). This gives me enough space for a long time, a very fast and secure hard drive system.
As a final security measure, the entire system is regularly backed up to a Synology NAS.
As a final security measure, the entire system is regularly backed up to a Synology NAS.
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I use a 2018 15" MBP with an external monitor for my photo editing and like Strohscw, I keep the majority of my photo image files on external drives rather than on my main hard drive. I have redundancy in the drives so that if one drive fails I don't lose all my images and files. I don't have a RAID system or a NAS set up, I handle it all manually and this works for me. The main point being protecting the images from being inadvertently lost or destroyed and also saving space on my computer's 1 TB SSD. I do not use iCloud for much of anything, and don't put my images in there. I prefer keeping my data locally where I have full control over it.
14,000 photos isn't really that much to begin with. My Photos library contains 14,720 photos of various sizes and formats from scanned childhood photos to iPhone 3GS JPEGs to DSLR RAWs as well as 156 videos and is a mere 78GB in size. You should thus have no issues storing your library on even the small 256 GB SSD.
