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Archive 2014 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?

  
 
petermendelson
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


I am currently using a Mac desktop for editing my photos on Lightroom (I have around 1.5TB of photos), but I am spending more time away from my desk and would like to be able to edit photos in other rooms in my house.

I am planning to get a 15.4 inch Macbook Pro with retina display with 16GB of ram, and am trying to figure out how large a hard drive I need and what type of external hard drive set up to get so I can work on my photos on my laptop and sync the photos and edits to my desktop. I don't use many other processor intensive apps besides Lightroom and plugins for Lightroom - otherwise it's mainly email and the web.

Should I just get a 256GB SSD since I would plan to store photos on an external drive? Any reason to get the 512GB SSD instead?

Any strong recommendations for a small external hard drive to use in this context?

Finally, as far as the processor goes, is there a huge difference between 2.0ghz, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6, 2.7, etc when talking about just using Lightroom?

Thanks!

Peter



Feb 09, 2014 at 08:17 AM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


First thing , as far as processor goes . LR is processor intensive so faster will equal getting things done faster (preview generation ect )


Now you can do what you want a couple of ways .

The way I do it is to sync my LR cat and the smart preview file onto an external SSD drive . When I want to work away from my imac I take that drive and plug it into my laptop . That way I don't need to have the raw files present .
When I'm done I copy the Lrcat file (not the previews) back to my imac (so it overwrites the lrcat on the imac) and carry on working from there .

But if you have your images present on a network drive and as long as the laptop can see the network drive you could quite easily just drop a copy of your lrcat onto the laptop and work from that .




Feb 09, 2014 at 09:44 AM
Houman
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


I have the base model with Nvidia card which I recommend if you need a dedicated video card on the 15" and I believe that's a 2.3 and it works great with LR. That version came with 512gb and is plenty. I also use a 1TB external USB 3.0 drive (WD) for pictures.

I recommend getting the larger driver, especially if you're going to split the OS later one (I have both Maverick + Windows 8.1)

Hope it helps.



Feb 13, 2014 at 01:31 PM
Mirek Elsner
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


My LR catalog has two parts. I have "working folders" with frequently used files on my local drive and "archive folders" on a network drive. Files I frequently use are local on my SSD and when I am done with them I move them to the network drive. No cables involved.

With regards to the SSD size, I have currently 250GB full on my several months old laptop. I have some Creative Suite apps, some dev tools, office apps, my catalog and there are some image caches and other clutter. So I would definitely want bigger drive than 250GB.



Feb 13, 2014 at 01:45 PM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


For other rooms in your house I would recommend using Desktop Sharing. It's remote control of your desktop machine from any room in the house. And it's fast enough to work well. Additionally if you run ethernet around your house it's about the same speed as being on the host machine directly. To get ethernet around the house the easiest way is eithernet over mains. You can get 500Mbps to Gigabit speeds for between $50 and $150 for the two unit kit. This is what, about 10 or 20 times faster than wireless?
http://www.netgear.com/images/xavb5001_productimage_connection_diagram18-8776.jpg
As for laptop internal storage I'm sold on the use of those fusion drives (SSHD). Whether it's the Apple one or something from Seagate I think they're exactly what the doctor ordered! Your laptop might boot in 7s instead of 6s but you won't notice much (if any) difference between an SSD and a SSHD after using it for a little while. SSHDs are now available in 1TB and maybe even larger capacities - I haven't checked in a few months.



Feb 13, 2014 at 07:57 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


So far I have been less than impressed with usb 3.0 - especially when using external SSDs. Get a thunderbolt drive case if you can - it works both faster and more efficiently than usb 3.0. Usb 3.1 will catch up on the efficiency but that probably won't help you in the short term. There's something about the usb 3 and earlier protocol that loves large data transfers but chokes on many small data transfers (such as for image files). You may well find that Lr is not greatly affected but data backups surely will be. Ideally, get a case that has both thunderbolt and USB 3 so that it can still work relatively quickly should you ever need to use it with a windows pc (so far no thunderbolt).


The fastest 2.5" hdd I have seen is an HGST 1TB 7200rpm with 32MB cache and 6Mbps interface. They haven't been around for long. Most 1TB drives have 5400rpm and 16 or 8 GB cache. They're about $75US at B&H (when I bought some a few weeks ago). Up to $135US elsewhere.


For the internal ssd, consider how big your existing Lr catalog is (and allow for future growth), as well as the Lr preview cache and the ACR cache and the Lr smart preview cache. You'll want all of these on the ssd so that the speed of the external drive becomes less significant. They'll take a big chunk of a 512 MB drive. Allow more space for a Parallels or vmWare Fusion volume with Windows in it. That works much better than restarting to boot into Windows or OS X with BootCamp. About 30GB used to be sufficient for a 40GB pseudo-drive with my Windows XP stuff but I'm sure that newer versions will need more. Once you have Parallels or Fusion you can have multiple windows volumes in case you stuff one up (easily done with Windows).

Given that you can never expand the internal ssd I would recommend getting the biggest one that you can afford. Unlike with older MBPs you do not have the option of replacing an internal dvd drive with an ssd or hdd. What you buy on day one is all that you will ever have. It's very expensive but it might allow you to defer a future upgrade.


If you opt for an external ssd then watch the 5V current draw because some need more than a usb 3 port can provide (900mA) and will then need an external power supply. Ditto for external cases with two or more hdds.

Also ensure that the OS can see past the drive case to identify the drive as an ssd, or else use an OWC ssd, because otherwise you will find that you can't get the OS to use the TRIM for improved ssd performance. OWC drives do not need TRIM.


- Alan



Feb 16, 2014 at 06:48 AM
DougDolde
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


I use a Pegasus Promise J4 Thunderbolt enclosure with my Retina MBP. It takes as many as four hard drives or SSDs. If you use Raid 0 you can basically get as much storage as 4X your hard drive size allows. It's the size of a Mac Mini and totally silent at least with SSDs.


Feb 17, 2014 at 01:17 PM
bogeybrown
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


I'm looking into some of these same considerations (off-site/backup storage to keep my hard drive space free) and the AirPort system from Apple appears on the surface to be a great way of ensuring my images are backed up.
Does anyone have any feedback on the AirPort?




Mar 29, 2014 at 06:10 AM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


For the SSD I suggest you count up how much static storage you think yoiu will end up with at the end of the lifetime of your new laptop and then double that number. What many don't take into account is that during operation there are many large temporary fihat are typically created on the primary drive such as the OS Virtual Memory and if you are using Photoshop at the same time it uses it for its scratch disk.
SSDs also operate slightly different than HDs where the memory must be written to zeros before that same location is written too. This is a longer process so the "writing to zeros" is given to a background process. If you are near the limit of the SSD storage with lots of writing to it going on, you can get a slow down if the OS or programs are waiting for the background process to clear up more space.
So I say 512GB minimum. Unfortunatley Apple really charges a big premium for the 1TB option yet when I upgrade my MacBook Pro, that will be the only option for me when staying with the Mac systems.
Hope this is helpful.



Mar 29, 2014 at 09:03 AM
bogeybrown
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


Very helpful, thanks John. I'm trying to configure my first rMBpro at the moment, and figuring out where to spend the money without ending up with a $3k laptop (that can't be upgraded) is proving to be a challenge.
I typically rely on multiple 1Tb externals, which I'll likely continue to do with the new computer as well.





Mar 29, 2014 at 09:37 AM
OntheRez
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


Peter,

Echoing both Ian and Alan, get the fastest processor and the largest SSD you can afford. I use a current model 11" Air for in the field storage and light processing for events where pix have to be delivered immediately. (Not a common occurrence for me.) On an extended shoot (on the road) I generally dump cards off to the Air so I can keep from having a huge pile of cards to deal with. I do the first brutal cull and the survivors are transferred to my main storage system upon returning home. As noted Lr essentially ignores multi processor/multi threading and is most sensitive to raw speed. There several older thread where members have demonstrated this using adjustable speed processors. I only got a 240GB on my Air as I couldn't really imagine generating more than that even in a two week period. This presumes I'll be culling as I go along. You'll need to examine your own workload to see what fits for you.

One thing for sure, if you expect to do a lot of editing on the MBP you'll want the dedicated video card and the fastest processor. Even with this it will not come close to the performance of virtually any later model iMac.

Sounds like a fun project.

Robert



Mar 29, 2014 at 12:18 PM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · What Macbook Pro hard drive for working with Lightroom?


https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1283305/0#12233642



Mar 30, 2014 at 05:21 AM





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