MacBook Pro - How do you store your photos?

EddyP82

Suspended / Banned
Messages
68
Name
Ed
Edit My Images
Yes
Evening All,

I use a MB Pro that's a mid 2012 model, have upgraded to an SSD which sped things up but as a result means I don't have a huge amount of space on the drive, I'm keen to try and keep as much of it free as possible so not to sacrifice performance.
I do have a NAS drive on our network but find over the wifi it's incredibly slow, there's no way it would copy with me sending it 250 RAW images, would probably take 4 hours to copy it all.

So what do you use and how fast do you find it?

Also I'm starting to use lightroom more, but find that lightroom doesn't interact very well with photos, do you bother with photos just import direct to lightroom or ?


Thanks

Ed.
 
So do you just have a single copy of them on the USB? no backups?
 
I have largely stopped using Photos, especially on my laptop (I run a Macbook and iMac) and basically use Lightroom only and the export catalogue function to transfer things back to the iMac 'home'.

I export my keepers from LR and upload them to Flickr and have Google photos monitor my exports folder and have a backup there too. I might stick them in Photos but I don't like the way it keeps a semi-locked library so tend not to on my laptop as it is just duplicates and takes up space, I do put them in Photos on my iMac so as to have another backup and access on my phone etc.

edit: I also run external HD backup - each year I export everything to an external HD - and in your case that is what I'd do, I just hope you have USB 3.
 
Last edited:
I use external hard drives for my raws (annually dated & back ups) Another larger external hard drive the runs my Aperture 3 library which my favourites are kept on, and again I have back ups of that.
 
Ned - Nawty from TA too? If so long time no speak!!

So it sounds like you're both storing the pics on your mabcooks/imacs mostly, but with an occasional backup? a 1TB SSD will soon fill up surely? and apparently OSX is quite sensitive to filling the HD up.

Just checked about USB 3, mine is actually an early 2011, I was wrong in my original post, so no USB3, but do have a thunderbolt connector.
 
Ned - Nawty from TA too? If so long time no speak!!

So it sounds like you're both storing the pics on your mabcooks/imacs mostly, but with an occasional backup? a 1TB SSD will soon fill up surely? and apparently OSX is quite sensitive to filling the HD up.

Just checked about USB 3, mine is actually an early 2011, I was wrong in my original post, so no USB3, but do have a thunderbolt connector.


One and the same :D how are you, still got the Phantom?

1TB is plenty enough for 1 year's worth of 16mp raws for me, actually 512mb would probably do. My shooting tends to be 1 big trip a year (= a couple of thousand shots), a few weekends away, maybe a shoot for a friend and recently I've been going to Bournemouth Airshow which is a few k of shots; maybe 6k photos a year.

USB 2.0 is a bit of a PITA but if it's a yearly thing then not a problem but it will depend on if you are going to store your films and music on the macbook as that WILL eat storage and you might run out.
 
I'm great thanks mate, you should come visit us on TA!

Still got the Phantom yes, don't think I'll ever sell her! Just in the process of fitting a new turbo to try and stop her smoking habit.

We did a fair few air shows last year, infact it's how I caught the bug.

Just found a 2 TB HDD from ebuyer for £60 that has USB 3.0 and thunderbolt built in! So got that ordered straight away. Shame I can't shift that amount of data to a NAS in a sensible time frame.
 
I'm great thanks mate, you should come visit us on TA!

Still got the Phantom yes, don't think I'll ever sell her! Just in the process of fitting a new turbo to try and stop her smoking habit.

We did a fair few air shows last year, infact it's how I caught the bug.

Just found a 2 TB HDD from ebuyer for £60 that has USB 3.0 and thunderbolt built in! So got that ordered straight away. Shame I can't shift that amount of data to a NAS in a sensible time frame.

This sounds ideal if it is thunderbolt speeds. Does the seller have any more as I've been thinking of upgrading my trial HHD to a SSD. I use an external hard drive to store my current years images. All other years are 'archived' to my iMac's hard drive. The idea of the external hard drive for the current years images is being able to easily swap between the macbook and the iMac with the least amount of hassle. For backup I use Carbon Copy Cloner. It backups up the external drive to the iMac then backups the iMac hard drive to another external drive attached to the iMac. Its a bit around the houses but its all automatic so it works well for me.

I've seen a storage option that neatly fits into the SD card slot, it seems to be like a SD card but doesn't protrude like an SD card does. Transfer speeds seem ok and storage can be up to 256GB but its not exactly a cheap option.
 
Evening All,

I use a MB Pro that's a mid 2012 model, have upgraded to an SSD which sped things up but as a result means I don't have a huge amount of space on the drive, I'm keen to try and keep as much of it free as possible so not to sacrifice performance.
I do have a NAS drive on our network but find over the wifi it's incredibly slow, there's no way it would copy with me sending it 250 RAW images, would probably take 4 hours to copy it all.

So what do you use and how fast do you find it?

Also I'm starting to use lightroom more, but find that lightroom doesn't interact very well with photos, do you bother with photos just import direct to lightroom or ?


Thanks

Ed.
Increase the speed to your NAS drive; ideally via WiFi, but ultimately via a Gigabit ethernet connection. That is what I do.

And no Photos never captured me like Aperture did. I'm still not keen on Lightroom like I was on Aperture but tons better than Photos. I import locally, sort the stuff out and then within Lightroom I move them to my NAS.
 
Evening All,

I use a MB Pro that's a mid 2012 model, have upgraded to an SSD which sped things up but as a result means I don't have a huge amount of space on the drive, I'm keen to try and keep as much of it free as possible so not to sacrifice performance.
I do have a NAS drive on our network but find over the wifi it's incredibly slow, there's no way it would copy with me sending it 250 RAW images, would probably take 4 hours to copy it all.

So what do you use and how fast do you find it?

Also I'm starting to use lightroom more, but find that lightroom doesn't interact very well with photos, do you bother with photos just import direct to lightroom or ?


Thanks

Ed.
My wife has a mid 2010 15in MBP and I'm about to change the HD to an SSD, the HD will go in the optical drive slot for extra storage. Could you do the same? Do you need the optical drive?


Increase the speed to your NAS drive; ideally via WiFi, but ultimately via a Gigabit ethernet connection. That is what I do.

And no Photos never captured me like Aperture did. I'm still not keen on Lightroom like I was on Aperture but tons better than Photos. I import locally, sort the stuff out and then within Lightroom I move them to my NAS.

I'm going to miss Aperture, I find Lightroom too clunky, maybe that'll change in time. I can forgive Apple most things, even Apple Maps, but dropping Aperture, thats unforgivable.
 
Last edited:
I have a 2013 MBP with 256GB SSD

RAW files are on a Hard drive which in turn is backed up to another drive.

Jpegs are within ICloud, I think I pay £2.49 a month for 200GB and I can access them from my Ipad and Iphone which is handy.
 
This is the drive I've ordered:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BUFFALO-MiniStation-2TB-USB-3-0-Thunderbolt-Hard-Drive/361672059178

Should arrive on Thursday, so I'll give it a go and let you know.

I do occasionally use the optical drive when I burn a DVD so would prefer to keep it really.

I'll have to look into how to increase the speed to the NAS, it's not helped by the fact we live in a very old house so have 4 different wifi networks, one of which is run over a power line adapter, one day I'll get some CAT6 around, but don't fancy pulling up even more floorboards etc.. just yet.
 
I'm using WD ultra 2tb usb 3 drives ATM.
When down loading I down load all my images to the drive via my MacBook it works for me.
And I back up on a regular basis any saved images I have worked and kept on the ssd picture folder.
 
I have a 2013 MBP with 256GB SSD

RAW files are on a Hard drive which in turn is backed up to another drive.

Jpegs are within ICloud, I think I pay £2.49 a month for 200GB and I can access them from my Ipad and Iphone which is handy.


Google photos is free for unlimited storage, you have to use their compression algorithm to get unlimited storage but as far as I can see there isn't really any loss in quality.

The app is better than the iPhone Photos app in many ways too.
 
Google photos is free for unlimited storage, you have to use their compression algorithm to get unlimited storage but as far as I can see there isn't really any loss in quality.

The app is better than the iPhone Photos app in many ways too.

I haven't seen Google photos but I am happy paying £2.49 as iCloud stores everything including photos and document etc and I can access it easily on each device I have and on the iCloud web portal.

I like the fact I can open the MacBook and open all the photos locally without downloading them but any changes made are uploaded straight away.
 
Back
Top