Toronto Photography Meetup Group

So the new computer is up and running, but need to decide on performance options for accessing my photos.

The plan is to dabble with the Lightroom 3 beta and see how things go. I am dealing with 24MP raw files, but would like the option that is fast enough for practical operation.

Options:
1. 1TB c:/ drive
2. 1TB NAS (Western Digital Mybook World Edition), connected via Gigabit Ethernet
3. Buy a 2nd internal hard drive - Later consideration.

My question is really, can option 2 keep up?

You could have an external drive connected via eSATA or have a secondary drive internally. Then use a NAS to store a second copy of your data or to archive your data when you no longer need it on your primary storage. May different ways to go about this, just depends on what your budget is and what works best for you.

Backup? That's an entirely different thing as you know with plenty of discussions, your backup is only as good as your weakest link.

From some light reading, apparently the transfer rates of my existing NAS are atrocious, to say the least. It can be the safe backup for sure... but I'm going to be copying the whole beast of my images over the the C drive for now.

Hey hotwire, if your going to work with 24MP raw files, best performance would be to work from your local hdd or via esata as Tanner mentioned.

When I edit my 12MP raw files in CS4/Bridge its done on my local hdd, an external eSata drive will give you the same performance as Tanner mentioned. Even though my NAS is connected on a 1Gb network, primary use is for streaming media and continuous backup storage. There are times when I access my NAS directly with my Mac/PC and performance can't compare vs. local hdd access even though everything on my LAN is 1Gb...

hope this helps.

I have my LR Catalog, LR Cache and RAW files on 3 seperate disks...Catalog and RAW fiels are backed up to two different locations.

Don't buy a Western Digital drive! My Mac WD drive and those of a few of my friends have all suddenly crashed and made files irretrievable. I'd recommend Seagate.

Nothing wrong with Western Digital, drives will die regardless of brand though I only buy WD and Seagate.

Pls inform the uninformed... How exactly is this done and what do I need to buy? My local drive is running out of space and I already have 4 external drives of 500 GB each only for backup. I want fast access to my working files. I use Mac and Mac OS 10.5.8.

What model Mac do you have? If you have an iMac, you're stuck with firewire 400 (or 800 if you have a newer model) or USB2. If you have a MacPro tower, there are two ways to get eSATA. The cheaper alternative is open up your unit and attach a SATA to eSATA cable/plate to a SATA port on the motherboard and attach the plate to one of the expansion bays at the rear of your unit. The second option is to buy a PCI SATA controller card and install that into one of the expansion slots.

If you have a Macbook Pro laptop, you have no choice but to pickup an eSATA adapter to fit the expresscard slot.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/esata ... cable.html

I have both an iMac which I use for everything and a Macbook Pro laptop for travelling. My iMac has Firewire 800. I've never used Firewire to access my external drives and USB2 is just too slow. Is firewire faster?

I'm now thinking of possibly replacing the internal HD to something bigger. Just asked the store today and told me to bring it to an authorized dealer/reseller that also does repair.

Firewire is quicker than USB2.

Firewire has more sustained data throughput.
eSATA is the fastest connection you can get and stay within a budget.
Actually eSATA is as fast as your internal harddrive.

The only drawback for eSATA is power is not provided by the eSATA cable, therefore you need an external power supply. Very small price to pay.

Now that may be the solution to my problem... just need to open the computer and figure out if I have multiple extra SATA connectors.

Can these be found locally

If you are planning on adding a new SATA in the PC then you likely already have spare SATA ports on the motherboard. If you want an eSATA (external drive) then you would likely need the cable that Carlton mentioned above but you never know your new PC may already have an eSATA slot.

BTW, I work locally with LR for performance reasons and then move my images to a USB HDD and I copy (sync) to my NAS.

Wouldn't the best be to add a fast internal sata drive ??
You probably have lots of sata connectors on the motherboard.
A fast 1TB D drive and then a nas or other external drive
for backup later.

Tim

+1 - I agree, the best and cheapest thing to do is add another internal spindle - I use a laptop so I have fewer choices.

My preference to hold the working images would be as follows:

1st : SATA internal
2nd : eSATA external
3rd : USB external
4th : NAS

You should be able to find these in any of the major clone computer stores like Canada Computers etc. Probably cheaper than going to a Mac store.

I use a 4Tb Buffalo NAS....happy with it very good performance

Browsing files and batch editing will be slowed down by a NAS. However for editing a gigabit connection to a NAS would be fine, as long as the scratch disk under edit>preferences>performance is set as your fastest internal drive. The only performance issue you'll notice is in opening, saving files and browsing large number of files.