media or working drive for iMac...

Jim Panzer · Sep 11, 2014

Hey all, so I am pretty sure I am going to be getting an iMac to replace my ten year old mac at home. I am going to be using this for both 3d animation as well as photography. I would like to get an SSD or maybe even a fusion drive, however the capacities I can afford are pretty low, so I would like to restrict the main drive for programs only. And place all of my media on an external thunderbolt drive.

I assume others are doing this sort of thing. Would anyone have the time to recommend some good drives to use in this situation?

Oh and also, how do you handle the time machine or back up. Do you just have another drive which backs up both drives? Could I get one enclosure that houses two drive and use one as a media drive and the other as a backup?

Sorry for all the question, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten a new computer.

Thanks in advance for any information!

Jim

Tom_N · Sep 11, 2014

If the external drive is going to be a hard drive, you could save some money by getting a USB 3.0 enclosure, as opposed to a Thunderbolt one. External Thunderbolt drives mostly make sense if you are talking about RAIDs or SSDs that can push or exceed USB 3.0 speeds.

johnbandry · Sep 11, 2014

Jim Panzer said:
Hey all, so I am pretty sure I am going to be getting an iMac to replace my ten year old mac at home. I am going to be using this for both 3d animation as well as photography. I would like to get an SSD or maybe even a fusion drive, however the capacities I can afford are pretty low, so I would like to restrict the main drive for programs only. And place all of my media on an external thunderbolt drive.

I assume others are doing this sort of thing. Would anyone have the time to recommend some good drives to use in this situation?

Oh and also, how do you handle the time machine or back up. Do you just have another drive which backs up both drives? Could I get one enclosure that houses two drive and use one as a media drive and the other as a backup?

Sorry for all the question, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten a new computer.

Thanks in advance for any information!

Jim

Jim Panzer · Sep 11, 2014

Tom_N said:
If the external drive is going to be a hard drive, you could save some money by getting a USB 3.0 enclosure, as opposed to a Thunderbolt one. External Thunderbolt drives mostly make sense if you are talking about RAIDs or SSDs that can push or exceed USB 3.0 speeds.

Thanks Tom, I didn't realize that, good to know!

Jim Panzer · Sep 11, 2014

johnbandry said:
You don't say what sort of capacity you would need, which would help with making recommendations.

As already pointed out, Thunderbolt doesn't have a speed advantage over USB3 with a single drive, although the daisy-chaining capability might be useful. Look at both options.

It's not a good idea to rely on a second disk in one enclosure for backup; you are exposed to the risk of failure in the interface or controller, which could corrupt or take out both drives. Keep your backup on independent hardware.

What kind of backup and how much (i.e., how many copies) you need depends on your use case, which you also don't describe. For home use, a time machine backup covers a lot of the risk and may be enough for you - if your home burns down, you may feel the loss of your photos is not significant.

graybalanced · Sep 11, 2014

You need to have at least one drive to back up every drive you have data on. So if you have an internal and external, get two more drives, one to back up each of your primary drives.

If you want to protect your data from the "my home burned down" scenario, that isn't enough. You should have two sets of backup drives, and at least one should be off site at all times. Or one set of backup drives, plus cloud backup of everything and fast upload bandwidth on your home Internet account.

The rule some professional photographers go by is "three backups on three different media in three places." And in a way that is easy for you to update. Backups that are not updated frequently are not good backups.

robgendreau · Sep 11, 2014

It sorta depends on what you need to back up.

I would recommend at least two externals, USB 3.0. I've got a Plugable caddy and love it; it makes swapping drives in and then stashing them elsewhere for safe keeping as easy as floppies (yikes, but you get the idea). So maybe a caddy and 3TB and regular enclosure and 3TB.

For now you could probably device a strategy where one 3TB backs up both the iMac and the second external. Depends on how much stuff you have. That's a miminum.

I could lose all the Apple stuff, applications, and a lot of other stuff. It would just be a reinstallation; annoying and time consuming, but OK. But the photos? and user documents? those should have at least two backups. Maybe for now a cloud plus external solution.

rob

johnbandry · Sep 13, 2014

Jim Panzer said:
I assume I'd need at least a 1 or 2tb drive for working files, photos and video etc...

One of the Western Digital MyBook line would probably serve you well. There are Mac versions in the product line-up, but they are just pre-formatted for OS X and you pay a premium - you can use Disk Utility to format a Windows version and it's then just the same, as far as I know. WD like to supply some extra software; totally unnecessary, just don't install it.

You can get USB3 and Thunderbolt versions. See here for more info. WD are far from the only show in town, just one that I've had good results from. Others may have other recommendations.

--

John Bandry

Jacques Cornell · Sep 13, 2014

Jim Panzer said:
Hey all, so I am pretty sure I am going to be getting an iMac to replace my ten year old mac at home. I am going to be using this for both 3d animation as well as photography. I would like to get an SSD or maybe even a fusion drive, however the capacities I can afford are pretty low, so I would like to restrict the main drive for programs only. And place all of my media on an external thunderbolt drive.

I've found there's a definite perkiness advantage to having my Aperture libraries on an SSD. I believe this would be true with Lightroom catalogs as well. This is because libraries/catalogs comprise a huge number of very small files, and SSDs are many times faster than HDs at handling small files. For large files, like RAW image files, the speed difference isn't as great. I keep my (referenced) libraries on a 350GB "Data" partition of a 500GB SSD and my OS & apps on the other 150GB "OS X" partition, and my master image files on a LaCie 2big 4TB RAID. My very large iTunes folder also resides on the RAID, since putting it on the SSD would be a waste of that valuable space. The SSD is backed up to a small HD, and the RAID is backed up to an identical RAID as well as a single 4TB LaCie drive for offsite backup.

Jim Panzer said:
I assume others are doing this sort of thing. Would anyone have the time to recommend some good drives to use in this situation?

I've had a good experience with an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD in my 13" Macbook Pro.

Jim Panzer said:
Oh and also, how do you handle the time machine or back up.

My SSD partitions are backed up to matching partitions on a 750GB HD, and I Time Machine the OS X partition to a third HD partition comprising the remaining 250GB on the HD.

Jim Panzer said:
Do you just have another drive which backs up both drives? Could I get one enclosure that houses two drive and use one as a media drive and the other as a backup?

As others have said, this leaves you vulnerable to a single failure.

JimBob0 · Sep 14, 2014

Jim Panzer said:
Hey all, so I am pretty sure I am going to be getting an iMac to replace my ten year old mac at home. I am going to be using this for both 3d animation as well as photography. I would like to get an SSD or maybe even a fusion drive, however the capacities I can afford are pretty low, so I would like to restrict the main drive for programs only. And place all of my media on an external thunderbolt drive.

You could do what I was doing over the summer (or something similar).

Use the internal drive for applications, OSX and whatever you are working on, use Time Machine to backup to the first external drive, and then use a nightly rsync command to backup the external to a second external. You could obviously use the first external to put media files on as well.

You'd need to edit the crontab:

0 2 * * * rsync -rv /Volumes/Drive1 /Volumes/Drive2

And job done.

At 2am each morning, external 1 gets backed up in it's entirety to external 2.

Howard Moftich · Sep 14, 2014

you actually probably want to use the -a option instead of -rv. the -a option sets a number of 'good' run-time defaults.

JimBob0 · Sep 14, 2014

Howard Moftich said:
you actually probably want to use the -a option instead of -rv. the -a option sets a number of 'good' run-time defaults.

Yes, you're right. Overlooked -a.

I wasn't using -a this summer because I was also using rsync to backup between an OSX and Linux box, and -a preserved permissions which was "A Bad Thing" tm. But in this case, -a would probably be better.

noirdesir · Sep 14, 2014

Jacques Cornell said:
I keep my (referenced) libraries on a 350GB "Data" partition of a 500GB SSD and my OS & apps on the other 150GB "OS X" partition, and my master image files on a LaCie 2big 4TB RAID.

The benefits of partitioning an SSD are really marginal (makes things a little bit easier with backup applications that don't allow to select a folder as a source and only allow volumes for that, protects the other partition against the minuscule risk that disk directory of the SSD becomes irrevocably corrupted and needs to be re-formated).

Weighing against this are the disadvantages that if one of partitions is getting full (or just temporarily needs more space) while the other partition still has space, you'd either have move files manually around or change the size of the partitions (which when the partitions are getting full cannot really be done anymore without completely re-formating the whole drive), with other minor issues like needing to set up an additional backup task.

Jacques Cornell said:
My SSD partitions are backed up to matching partitions on a 750GB HD, and I Time Machine the OS X partition to a third HD partition comprising the remaining 250GB on the HD.

Why use Time Machine only for the boot volume?

All your other points and setup decisions I fully agree with.

Jacques Cornell · Sep 14, 2014

noirdesir said:
Jacques Cornell said:

I keep my (referenced) libraries on a 350GB "Data" partition of a 500GB SSD and my OS & apps on the other 150GB "OS X" partition, and my master image files on a LaCie 2big 4TB RAID.

Click to expand...

The benefits of partitioning an SSD are really marginal (makes things a little bit easier with backup applications that don't allow to select a folder as a source and only allow volumes for that, protects the other partition against the minuscule risk that disk directory of the SSD becomes irrevocably corrupted and needs to be re-formated).

That's not why I partition.

noirdesir said:
Weighing against this are the disadvantages that if one of partitions is getting full (or just temporarily needs more space) while the other partition still has space, you'd either have move files manually around or change the size of the partitions (which when the partitions are getting full cannot really be done anymore without completely re-formating the whole drive), with other minor issues like needing to set up an additional backup task.

noirdesir said:

My SSD partitions are backed up to matching partitions on a 750GB HD, and I Time Machine the OS X partition to a third HD partition comprising the remaining 250GB on the HD.

Click to expand...

Why use Time Machine only for the boot volume?

Allows me to use small volumes for multiple TM and multiple bootable clones. Reread my post and you'll see that clone and TM my boot partition to two small partitions, plus I backup 300GB of data, all onto an internal 750GB HD. Why? The HD is in the optical bay of my 13" MBP, so I always have backup on the road without fussing with a portable drive. Obviously, in this configuration, adding my 4TB RAID full of images to TM is not possible. TM is convenient for restoring things like documents, iCal, Reminders, Mail, etc., but for all my big data, I prefer a Finder-level backup. If TM were bootable, I might reconsider my strategy.

So, summing up, a small boot volume let's me have a bunch of TM and clone copies all over the place. Also, if I need to restore the OS, it's a lot faster if I don't have to copy back tons of non-OS data.

noirdesir said:
All your other points and setup decisions I fully agree with.

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