Moving from a Fusion Drive iMac to an SSD iMac - how to best deal with reduced onboard storage?

Forums › Desktop computing › Moving from a Fusion Drive iMac to an SSD iMac - how to best deal with reduced onboard storage?

Geektastic

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#195694 29-Apr-2016 23:42

I'm shifting from a 27" 3tb Fusion iMac (late 2013) to a late 2015 27" 5k with a 512Gb SSD.

Principle use is photo editing using Adobe Creative Cloud apps, mainly Lightroom.

The current Lightroom catalogue is about 850Gb so won't be able to live on the SSD and will have to be moved to an external drive (a copy of it lives on the NAS but as a working file location that probably is not fastest)

Externally I have available

1) Seagate NAS

2) WD My Passport Pro Thunderbolt portable RAID drive (2Tb in RAID)

3) 2Tb Thunderbolt Lacie rugged drive

4) 1.5Tb Iosafe HDD USB 3

5) 2Tb OWC Mercury Elite HDD USB 3

I think the fastest solution would be a Thunderbolt SSD, however I would need a second mortgage to get one of those and the largest size is still 1Tb I think.

Next fastest is probably the WD Passport Pro Thunderbolt but I do not know if it is designed to work in a 12 hour day environment - it would not be working all that time but powered up.

Next would be the Lacie due to the Thunderbolt connection but again perhaps not intended for this kind of use.

After that I think most of the drives are around the same transfer speeds.

I'd be grateful for recommendations (a) how best to use what I have and (b) what if any alternatives are worth considering.

(In case it helps, my image files are large RAW files from 36Mp cameras)

Thanks

Dynamic

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#1544329 29-Apr-2016 23:52

Just use one of your thunderbolt drives and see how you go. Perhaps stick it to the back of the iMac with Command Strips so it cant be bumped. (Client lost a USB HDD off the side of their desk this week that was not well baked up.)

Keep things well backed up with Time Machine to another 2Tb drive. (I've never checked whether Time Machine can include an external drive in its backups.) It would definately not hurt to do a manual backup to another drive so you have your time machine backup on site and an external drive you can take off site, or use a cloud backup solution.

No point in buying something new unless the drives you have are unsuitable.

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#1544330 30-Apr-2016 00:00

I'd suggest running a benchmark test so you know exactly what you will gain or give up.

After that find out exactly what model hardware is in those cases. Device manager or disk manager should help.

The odd steppings 1.5, 3, etc have tended to be unreliable in practice so that leaves the 2s.

CYaBro

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#1544332 30-Apr-2016 00:06

Time machine can backup external drives.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

geekiegeek

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#1544346 30-Apr-2016 05:35

Is cloud storage an option?

Geektastic

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#1544379 30-Apr-2016 08:37

geekiegeek:
Is cloud storage an option?

Sadly not. As you can see, our internet here is pedestrian and it's taken Backblaze over 6 months to back up my images to their servers and still hasn't completed!

timmmay

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#1544382 30-Apr-2016 09:12

1. Delete stuff. Many people keep a lot of crap.

2. Keep only current working set on the SSD, the rest goes onto another disk. Of course everything is backed up at all times, offsite.

3. Separate Lightroom catalogs per event, per year, something like that. Make sure you remove the previews/cache/thumbnails which is huge.

4. Archived images should have XMP files written then remove them from the catalog, which unless you need a searchable catalog saves all image settings.

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#1544392 30-Apr-2016 09:59

timmmay:

1. Delete stuff. Many people keep a lot of crap.

2. Keep only current working set on the SSD, the rest goes onto another disk. Of course everything is backed up at all times, offsite.

3. Separate Lightroom catalogs per event, per year, something like that. Make sure you remove the previews/cache/thumbnails which is huge.

4. Archived images should have XMP files written then remove them from the catalog, which unless you need a searchable catalog saves all image settings.

Yes, that is more or less where I am getting to. It's less convenient in some ways that having the catalogue in one place so that when I get the "I know I have that image of a ladyboy riding an elephant standing on one leg and holding a picture of Neil Armstrong" request, I do not then have to try and remember what year, project, event or whatever it was when I took it.

I thought about getting a Samsung T1 and just leaving that connected as a photo drive, as it would be fast as, but the 1Tb is at least $700 and 1Tb really isn't that much.

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timmmay

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#1544398 30-Apr-2016 10:16

Why is the catalog so big? It's meant to be just photo metadata. Is the cache combined with it or something?

Geektastic

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#1544456 30-Apr-2016 12:51

timmmay:

Why is the catalog so big? It's meant to be just photo metadata. Is the cache combined with it or something?

It includes all the RAW files.

timmmay

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#1544690 30-Apr-2016 23:44

How strange. I always thought the catalog was just the metadata. Why would anyone want to store all your raw files in one huge file? This is another reason I never liked and won't use LR. Horrible problem. I like simpler options like Bridge.

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#1544906 1-May-2016 16:12

timmmay:

How strange. I always thought the catalog was just the metadata. Why would anyone want to store all your raw files in one huge file? This is another reason I never liked and won't use LR. Horrible problem. I like simpler options like Bridge.

I think you can have them in other places as referenced files but you still have to be able to access them anyway, so in this context (I think, at least) they have to be on the same disc, whether they are in one file or ten files.