iMac Storage

marts_uk

marts_uk

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Martin
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iMac storage... Currently looking at options for when I move from PC to Mac shortly.

Is 256Gb flash enough and also is it worth the extra £140 - anyone have any first hand experience.

Thoughts were to put my LR catalogues and cache on the flash, and have the images on a NAS. I use LR for 95% of my work, and PS for a small amount.

Keep swaying between fusion/ssd - hence the reason for asking if anyone first hand experience.
 
I have a fusion drive, as to be honest. I'm lazy.

I just let the Mac sort out what needs to go on the SSD and then all my personal stuff is on the HD on the Mac. All my work gets put onto externals. Works pretty well for me.
 
marts_uk said:
Thanks Rob.

Do you work on the raws on an external NAS/HDD? How do you find the speed?
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Looking into getting a 27inch iMac and would love this same question answered.

Also looking at the fusion drive funny enough.
 
marts_uk said:
Do you work on the raws on an external NAS/HDD? How do you find the speed?
Click to expand...

i do on a windows machine.. if you choose this route then gigabit ethernet cable it all.

and if possible keep your working raw on the SSD with the cat(s), then move the raw to the NAS when finished working on them. much much faster.
 
iMac 27'' with a 512gb SSD here, work and immediate files are PP'd on the SSD then exported to 2 x Drobos and a 16TB external box (It's called a Hive). The SSD makes it very snappy but it was bloody expensive. Remember that you'll only notice speeds when copying / moving files into the software, once it's loaded into LR / PS etc it will then be down to the RAM & CPU to do the work.
To be honest though, the new iMac with even the standard 1TB drive & a good amount of RAM is pretty snappy for PP. Unfortunately Apple won't allow you to just turn up with an external drive and test out the system for exporting and editing! Although I do believe some of the approved retailers do allow such, I know that the shop in Salisbury allows you to spend a good few hours on a machine testing it out as long as you book it with them!
 
Unless you need to share data via a network I would have thought a USB 3 drive would be quicker than using a NAS even with Gigabit Ethernet. Thunderbolt is nice but I don't think you need the speed unless the external drives are SSD's

I've a SSD on my MacBook Pro and it starts up in just a few seconds. Apps load just as fast. but do you need that speed. As it has been said when it comes down to editing your bottle neck is probably going to be the external drive
 
I don't think even usb3 can be saturated by ssd. Thunderbolt for storage at this moment in time is overkill. Unless you're planning to run a ssd raid0 arrays daisy chained :D
 
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marts_uk said:
Thanks Rob.

Do you work on the raws on an external NAS/HDD? How do you find the speed?
Click to expand...

The RAWs are on my external HDD. I have a NAS but never use it, its way way too slow.

I use LR to edit, and the data is on the external. I've never had a speed issue and I'm using huge D800 files too. (I also have way to much stuff open haha) and speed has always been good on the iMac. Even exporting stuff isn't too bad.
 
i used to run my working RAW from a NAS and didnt find it too bad (although compared to working from SSD obviously its night and day). however it was gigabit cabled and it was a SMB NAS, not a cheap nastly old netgear etc.
 
Get the fusion (oh, you did :) ). SSD is very overpriced. Fusion is very quick. Black Magic disk test benches it as faster than many SSDs - even fairly decent ones.
 
BTW I'm pretty sure a 420 can't be connected to an iMac via USB3. The USB ports are downstream for backing up the NAS - only upstream connector is ethernet. But check that with somebody who knows these things I may be completely wrong.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Get the fusion (oh, you did :) ). SSD is very overpriced. Fusion is very quick. Black Magic disk test benches it as faster than many SSDs - even fairly decent ones.
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Source and conditions? Otherwise that comment is a bit like saying Porsches are faster than Ferraris.

Every bench I've seen has put them level on read (obv where the fusion has the data in its flash, different storey from the mechanical), but ssd blows fusion away on writes.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Get the fusion (oh, you did :) ). SSD is very overpriced. Fusion is very quick. Black Magic disk test benches it as faster than many SSDs - even fairly decent ones.
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Really? Well if the fusion reaches these speeds then I'll rip out my SSD :)View attachment 389
 
neil_g said:
Source and conditions?
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Running Black Magic disk test on Fusion drive vs running against a bunch of SSDs attached via USB3. [You're found of telling people SSDs can't saturate a USB bus so I assume that's fair]

Write speed bounces around 300 and read easily averages above 400.

By comparison I've seen some very bad speeds from cheap SSDs.
 
marts_uk said:
Will be buying the QNAP 420 NAS at some point, and connect this via USB3 to the iMac for my image storage.
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None of the NAS drives I've seen support this. The USB port is usually to attach external FAT-formatted drives

IMHO a NAS is a poor solution for a setup with one computer

Nick Froome
 
JonathanRyan said:
BTW I'm pretty sure a 420 can't be connected to an iMac via USB3. The USB ports are downstream for backing up the NAS - only upstream connector is ethernet. But check that with somebody who knows these things I may be completely wrong.
Click to expand...

Oh.... can anyone else confirm/deny - after searching google I can't find the answer

What other options are there for mass external storage to backup and read/write to?
 
Yup normally the USB ports on the qnap and synology are for connecting drives, not to a computer. These drives can be fat or ntfs but doesn't matter for mac as they're shared out as smb or AFP.

What exactly do you want to achieve with your storage?
 
Ok, currently I use a Windows PC with a 250Gb OS drive, and 2 x 1Tb Mirrored drives for images. I also use an external single drive icy box connected by USB3 for my off-site storage. I also upload my jpgs to Zenfolio.

I use SyncToy to copy from the internal mirror to the external icybox

My iMac is arriving tomorrow, and I want the same or better setup in terms of backups etc. It has a 1Tb Fusion drive. Obviously I can no longer connect 2 drives inside the iMac in a mirrored setup, so all that leaves me with is the icybox and zenfolio.

So, what I need is storage for my raws and exported jpgs - that I can also use via LR
 
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I have tried and failed to find a multi drive DAS box that works reliably with a 2012 iMac. Maybe the ones I had were faulty but I tried hard and then gave up. Note that I was specifically looking for a non-RAID box.

I use NAS RAID for long term storage and a USB3 Icybox for quick local backups.

Apparently there was some tinkering with iMacs' USB 3 support a release or 2 back and that may have improved/worsened the situation.
 
neil_g said:
What does the disk test actually do?
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Dunno.

It's only really useful for testing one drive against another and saying "I will use Drive A for this because it tests faster than Drive B".

It's actually designed to see if you can support various video capture formats on your drive. No, I'm not sure what that means.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I have tried and failed to find a multi drive DAS box that works reliably with a 2012 iMac. Maybe the ones I had were faulty but I tried hard and then gave up. Note that I was specifically looking for a non-RAID box.

I use NAS RAID for long term storage and a USB3 Icybox for quick local backups.

Apparently there was some tinkering with iMacs' USB 3 support a release or 2 back and that may have improved/worsened the situation.
Click to expand...
What do you use for local storage, ie working drive (Lightroom files)
 
JonathanRyan said:
I have tried and failed to find a multi drive DAS box that works reliably with a 2012 iMac. Maybe the ones I had were faulty but I tried hard and then gave up. Note that I was specifically looking for a non-RAID box.

I use NAS RAID for long term storage and a USB3 Icybox for quick local backups.

Apparently there was some tinkering with iMacs' USB 3 support a release or 2 back and that may have improved/worsened the situation.
Click to expand...
I haven't used it, but what is wrong with something like this?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/IB-3640SU3-inch-External-4-Bay-Enclosure/dp/B009DH5Q2S

Naturally there are much more expensive models available, and most RAID designed systems can run in jbod as well. I quite like the Drobo's myself, naturally not in jbod but wouldn't want jbod personally anyway as it is too much hassle for my needs.
 
Get at least a 256gb ssd.

And a couple of big external drives USB3.

Just copy files to ssd, work on them and then transfer back.

It does depend on your work though. Someone shooting hundreds of shots a day is very different to say one wedding a week.
 
marts_uk said:
That's another issue... my infinity router and modem is downstairs, the iMac will be upstairs.

...and heres me thinking moving from a PC to a Mac would be easy :(
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If you can't run a cable then connect to the internet via wifi and the qnap via the cable. Or get a powerline extender.
 
neil_g said:
Unless you use a crossover cable and assign network details manually itd be best to get a gigabit switch and hang it off your router.
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You don't need a crossover cable with Gigabit connections.
 
dejongj said:
I haven't used it, but what is wrong with something like this?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/IB-3640SU3-inch-External-4-Bay-Enclosure/dp/B009DH5Q2S

Naturally there are much more expensive models available, and most RAID designed systems can run in jbod as well. I quite like the Drobo's myself, naturally not in jbod but wouldn't want jbod personally anyway as it is too much hassle for my needs.
Click to expand...

I tried that exact box. Couldn't make more than one drive work reliably in it.

It's possible the one I had was faulty but it's also possible they don't work properly with Macs ;)

The HornetTech has a much better cooling system (it draws hot air to the top where it wants to go so cold air can come in at the bottom) but I had 2 copies of it and couldn't make them work for more than half an hour.
 
neil_g said:
Yup normally the USB ports on the qnap and synology are for connecting drives, not to a computer. These drives can be fat or ntfs but doesn't matter for mac as they're shared out as smb or AFP.
Click to expand...

I mentioned the requirement for a FAT / NTFS format for a specific reason: if you want to dump a lot of files to a NAS in one easy hit it'd be nice to be able to plug it in directly and make the copy. That won't work if your files are on a Macintosh-formatted drive

Nick Froome
 
bolide said:
I mentioned the requirement for a FAT / NTFS format for a specific reason: if you want to dump a lot of files to a NAS in one easy hit it'd be nice to be able to plug it in directly and make the copy. That won't work if your files are on a Macintosh-formatted drive

Nick Froome
Click to expand...
I don't get your point. Most nas won't have a das option.
 
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