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Archive 2016 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...

  
 
stan2
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


I have been using a 2011 macbook pro for a few years now, and it's full. I now have a new macbook pro as a gift from the wife.

here's the issue: I have an almost full 1T hd on the older laptop. Among everything else is my LR catalogue, plus a lot, but not all, of my original photos. The new macbook pro only has a 250GB SSD (altho I also added a little slide-in 130GB Trancend card).

My problem here is that the new computer won't hold all the files, so I'll need to change my standard process to have LR on the new macbook start storing photos on an external drive now.

(Bonus issue: the older mac has some 'issues' in that it occasionally crashes, possibly due to how full it is. I've replace the battery a couple times now, which I thought was the problem, but maybe not.)

I have the older mac backed up to an external 1T drive, so it's almost full too.

Can I get some tips on how to proceed? The objective is to start using the newer macbook for the editing and have the files on a new, larger external drive. Seems like I need to transfer the old mac back-up to a larger 2-3T drive (since they are backed-up on a 1T drive that is almost full), then tell LR on the new mac where they are and to start using the new external drive. Is that it? Will that work? Will LR on the new mac be able to associate catalogues and edits I've done with the back-up drive? How do I do that? Thanks for any suggestions! I've been holding off importing or editing new photos till I get this resolved.





Oct 17, 2016 at 11:37 AM
R Schwarz
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


I did a similar “transfer” last year going from a PC to a Mac Book Pro. They trick is to use LR to transfer the files from your old machine to the new “working” external hard drive then when you open LR on the new machine, all should be well. Be sure to name the external drive. I had several bumps including a major recovery effort getting a work flow set up. So check everything at each step and check again. When I rushed I had problems and lost time overall.

For workflow, I keep LR and its catalog on the Mac Book. I use a 4T Thunderbolt drive as my working drive and three USB drives for backup. The Thunderbolt is pricy but the setup is as fast as my 2 year old PC was using an internal drive. Initially, I download pictures to the Mac Book and back the download up to a small 2 TB external. After I finish the initial review, or when space becomes an issue, I move the oldest files from the Mac to the working drive using LR. I backup the Mac with Time Machine to an external drive but need a 3rd party program to backup the larger working drive. I use GoodSync for this but had problems that lost files setting it up. If I think space on the Mac Book is going to be a problem or if I know I will have “down time” to work pictures, I bring the working drive but stay with the same procedure.

Richard



Oct 17, 2016 at 12:46 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


Stan, the ben way to have all your images available all the time would be to have your RAW files on an external drive ( a good USB3 drive would be fine for this) that can be connected most of the time . but also create a full set of SMART PREVIEWS that would allow you access to and processing of your images when the drive is not connected .

your smart preview file has to be in the same folder as the CAT file . if you have about 1tb of RAW files you'll end up with about 80gb of smart previews . that does depend on the size of the raw file though as the Smart is a standard size so the difference between large RAW files and the smart is bigger .




Oct 17, 2016 at 05:22 PM
Paulthelefty
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


Take a look at Jared Platt's storage methodology. basically, nothing is on the actual machine except software. All RAW files are on a separate drive, I think he uses RAID1 (so he has an automatic back up) and his LR catalog is on a separate SSD. He can literally plug everything into any computer and still have his LR settings/catalog, his RAW files/archives, etc. I use a modified version of this myself. My RAID1 is a pair of 2TB spin drives that I use for "working files" in a CRU RTX case. I have an external SSD in a CRU Toughtech USB3 case with LR catalog and a few etc things. I also have a LR catalog on my laptop, but that is for backup/oops i forgot my SSD/I did not expect to be using LR today situations.

So basically the computer/software become a discrete component in the workflow that can be replaced/subbed out very easily with minimal disruption to the overall workflow.

CRU is little known in photography, but big in security/surveillance industries. Super happy with their stuff... well built, solid, reliable.

Paul



Oct 17, 2016 at 10:22 PM
arbitrage
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


I have always run external drives to store all my RAWs and the laptops HD to store the Catalogue and Previews. This is usually a very smooth way of working except that you always have a HD attached. I've used Seagate Backup Plus portable drives in the 2TB flavour. I have 3 mirrored copies on three different Seagate drives. One main drive, one backup at home and one I keep at work.

I will soon be moving to 4TB drives as things are filling up.

I would move your RAWs to the external drive. There are two ways to do this. You can do this from within LR by dragging the folders onto the mounted external. OR move files from the Finder and then go into LR and tell it where the files reside now. Not sure if one way is safer than the other. I'd make sure a backup is complete before deleting off the internal HD.

If you don't always want to have the HD attached then you can use Smart Previews to work on your images without the drive attached. You just have to build those previews ahead of time and they would be stored on the internal with the Catalogue and the other previews.



Oct 19, 2016 at 02:36 PM
stan2
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


thanks for all the tips, folks. I'll get the drives hooked up and plow ahead.

I understand the part about having the files on the external drive I intend to use with the new computer. My entire old computer back-up (using Time Machine) is on one external drive now, but I need to copy it to a larger drive, since the current back up drive is also 1T and it's almost full. I'm still not quite clear on whether I'll be able to 'point' lightroom to the back up drives. I don't have LR on the new laptop yet, so I haven't tried. I guess that's the next step.



Oct 20, 2016 at 11:16 AM
butchM
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


stan2 wrote:
I'm still not quite clear on whether I'll be able to 'point' lightroom to the back up drives.


You won't be able to 'point' Lightroom to a Time Machine backup, it must be a direct copy or clone of the the original file structure on your old laptop.




Oct 20, 2016 at 11:29 AM
stan2
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


butchM wrote:
You won't be able to 'point' Lightroom to a Time Machine backup, it must be a direct copy or clone of the the original file structure on your old laptop.



sorry! I just saw your reply. Thanks. I got into getting it done and didn't circle back here. Got it done off a copy, as you advised. All good now.




Feb 07, 2017 at 11:23 AM
Dustin Gent
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


i have a 2015 mid level 15" MBP with the 512SSD drive. So i have my LR catalogue on an external bus powered 2TB SeaGate drive i got from Costco for like $80. Pretty quick transfer times, but i came from a mid 2011 iMac with USB 2.0 and FW800 (USB 3 is way faster) My LR catalogue was on my internal iMac HDD, but easy enough to switch it.

I have seen costco sell external LaCie SSD drives for just over a $100 - didn't check to see the capacity on them.




Feb 07, 2017 at 04:36 PM
Michael White
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


Here's what I did to get the lr files and images off my internal drives of my laptop. I went to staples and got the largest western digital passport drive they had then created a new catalog on it then imported everything from my old catelog and moved the images also


Feb 07, 2017 at 06:59 PM
rdeloe
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


I don't mean to be a picky twit here, but RAID1 does not give you "back up" in the sense that some readers may take from Paul's otherwise great suggestion. RAID 1 mirrors your drive so that if it dies on you, you'll have another copy of everything on the mirror drive. But if you delete a file by mistake on a RAID 1 setup, it's gone on the "back up" drive too because it's just a mirror. If you want an actual "back up" you need another copy of your files on another device (ideally) or in another location on the same device (not ideal). This doesn't mean RAID 1 is a bad idea -- it's a great idea! But you still want backups.

Paulthelefty wrote:
Take a look at Jared Platt's storage methodology. basically, nothing is on the actual machine except software. All RAW files are on a separate drive, I think he uses RAID1 (so he has an automatic back up)





Feb 07, 2017 at 07:19 PM
EGrav
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


rdeloe wrote:
I don't mean to be a picky twit here, but RAID1 does not give you "back up" in the sense that some readers may take from Paul's otherwise great suggestion. RAID 1 mirrors your drive so that if it dies on you, you'll have another copy of everything on the mirror drive. But if you delete a file by mistake on a RAID 1 setup, it's gone on the "back up" drive too because it's just a mirror. If you want an actual "back up" you need another copy of your files on another device (ideally) or in another location
...Show more

+1. A common misconception is that a RAID is a backup system. It is not. Be careful.



Feb 07, 2017 at 08:05 PM
mjc
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


+1 on a good work process. Macbook does the processing / computer work and redundant array / set of external drives to store the main data files... Good also to keep one backed up copy locally (home) and one remotely (work or with friend etc). Keep files on mac machine to a required minimum (not storage)....


Feb 07, 2017 at 08:09 PM
elkhornsun
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · LR and new macbook pro. I'm kinda paralyzed here...


Get a Thunderbolt enabled dual drive enclosure so that all your data is mirrored from the first drive to the second drive automatically. If you have 1TB of data now then get two 4TB drives to provide some headroom.

You can setup the external drive as a logical drive to make it easier for Lightroom to make use of it. Move the data from your existing computers to the dual drive box using LR to do the export so it can then import it back to your new computer.

RAID prevents data loss when a drive fails. It is not a backup unless you have data on other drives and back them up to the RAID device. RAID does not protect against fire, flood, or theft, so a backup with that backup at another location is a good practice for important data.



Feb 10, 2017 at 08:32 PM





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