Storage on a new MacBook Pro

[KevinRightWing]

I want to apologize in advance to a lot of you that might see my question as pretty elementary, but it is something I don’t understand.

I have a 2011 mbp with a 1gb of ssd storage and my iPhoto library is about 450gb. What do you do if you buy a new MacBook Pro that only has 256 or 512gb of flash storage? You would have to store that externally I guess? Would I put my entire iPhoto library on an external drive and then it is only accessible when I have that external drive with me?

 

[Howard2k]

I use Lightroom and use a distributed library. I keep files in my MBPro that are recent and/or I’m processing, and then older images are moved to my NAS.

 

[chabig]

Would I put my entire iPhoto library on an external drive and then it is only accessible when I have that external drive with me?

Yes. or you could use iCloud Photo Library and let all of your pictures stay in the cloud where they are always accessible. I like the second option. Do you really need all of your pictures locally available all the time? I doubt it.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I have a 2011 mbp with a 1gb of ssd storage and my iPhoto library is about 450gb. What do you do if you buy a new MacBook Pro that only has 256 or 512gb of flash storage?"

I would get TWO external drives.
I'd use the first drive to store the library "externally".
I'd use the second drive as a backup for the first.

I would also maintain a "thinned down" library for the internal drive -- those pics you like the best. Of course, you'd have to do some "pruning" to cut down the big library to only those "choice items" you wished to keep on the internal drive.

I don't use Lightroom, but the concept of a "distributed library" that Howard mentions in reply 2 above looks interesting.

And again, remember -- if you move stuff to an external drive, and if that stuff is important to you, you'd better keep it backed up to at least one (preferably TWO) more backup drives.
I recommend using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper for this task.
Both will produce exact copies of the source drive on "the targets"...