Working off of external drives

[Julian500]

I've had my macbook pro for about a year now, it's the previous generation (the one before the newest one-button touch pad) but the last few weeks it has really been slowing down. My good friend runs a recording studio here in LA and has always had all top of the line mac stuff, and told me that I should always be working on external drives (with firewire of course). He says when you work off your internal drive, it gets fragmented to hell and defragmenting doesn't really work. He knows what he's talking about with this stuff when it comes to his operation because he's been at it for years, but working and retouching large photoshop files doesn't seem as intense as massive 50 track pro tools files.

So does anybody here have advice on this situation? I couldn't imagine that's the only way to work and keep your computer running real fast is off external drives.

Thanks so much!

--
http://www.julianwalter.com
http://www.pbase.com/julianw

 

[Joergen Geerds]

hmm, there is a lot of hear-say going on.

first, internal drives are always faster than external ones. (firewire 800 will give you max 60mb/s data, USB about 25 MB/s, eSATA/SATA as fast as your HD is).

you can upgrade your internal disk yourself, or in a store to a larger/faster drive (640GB). you can avoid fragmentation by using two partitions: one smaller for system/applications, and another one for everything else.

the latest SSD/HD combo drives seem to be really good/fast, but you should read reviews first, since they are still new on the market.

pure SSDs are wicked fast, but expensive and small.

if you are more adventurous, you can do away with the internal dvd drive, and put an extra HD drive in that spot (1.2TB in your MBP).

if you have to use ext drives, and your laptop has an card slot for it, buy an esata card, and use esata drives. at least they don't have bottlenecks, and you get your data as fast as the drive is (typically 100 MB/s).

those are just some thought starters. i wouldn't be so worried about disk fragmentation, OSX is pretty good keeping your drive manageable.

on the other hand, if you don't have much/big/fast data anyway, a cheap 500GB 2.5in USB ext HD for $50 will do just fine.

--
Joergen Geerds
http://luminous-newyork.com
http://joergengeerds.com
http://newyorkpanorama.com

 

[Onetrack97]

I've had my macbook pro for about a year now, it's the previous generation (the one before the newest one-button touch pad) but the last few weeks it has really been slowing down. My good friend runs a recording studio here in LA and has always had all top of the line mac stuff, and told me that I should always be working on external drives (with firewire of course). He says when you work off your internal drive, it gets fragmented to hell and defragmenting doesn't really work. He knows what he's talking about with this stuff when it comes to his operation because he's been at it for years, but working and retouching large photoshop files doesn't seem as intense as massive 50 track pro tools files.

So does anybody here have advice on this situation? I couldn't imagine that's the only way to work and keep your computer running real fast is off external drives.

Thanks so much!

--
http://www.julianwalter.com
http://www.pbase.com/julianw

I'm not a MAC guy but I work off of an external drive plus internal drive. It's a RAID 0 with eSATA interface. It's pretty fast. Not as fast as the RAID 0, 10,000 RPM SATA that is my Drive C, but not bad.

Search around and you'll find lots of options.
Scott

 

[rainbow]

Friend of mine backed up all his info to an external so he could upgrade in a newer system. Dropped the external and lost all data. If the HD is in the computer you are less likely to drop it.

 

[thesurfdog]

Friend of mine backed up all his info to an external so he could upgrade in a newer system. Dropped the external and lost all data. If the HD is in the computer you are less likely to drop it.

That's why a lot of us suggest getting two of EVERYTHING.

We use several external drives at the studio, mostly for storage, but we ALWAYS purchase them in pairs.

Then again, we do the same with cameras, lenses, lights, etc., etc.

 

[Chato]

It will restore your drive to the same speed as when the computer was new.

There is also the option of backing up your machine and then reformatting the drive...

With either option make damn sure you have a good backup!

Dave

 

[Travelshooter]

FWIW, I don't keep any music or photos on my hard drive. Just programs and systems. All music, raw, tif and jpeg files in LR and iTunes are on a Raid 1 (mirrored) LaCie twin 1TB external, which is daisy chained to a second (but single) 1TB LaCie external. A western digital USB external has a fourth copy and it lives in a safe between updates. XP Pro system.
--
http://www.martindareff.com

Hoi An Vietnam Old City

 

[Hawaiian Punch]

you can upgrade your internal disk yourself, or in a store to a larger/faster drive (640GB). you can avoid fragmentation by using two partitions: one smaller for system/applications, and another one for everything else.

This is good advice but lets take it a step further.

Photoshop likes to have dedicated HD space for its swap file, space that doesn't contain program files or any other data. Setting up a partition for exclusive use by Photoshop will speed everything up.

What I've done was to include a secondary 60 gig internal drive for Photoshop use only . I do not store any data on this drive. Even on my aging 5 year old system, this has kept things fast.

I then use external drives for data storage. All my programs remain on the C drive.

 

[thesurfdog]

+1

Programs on one drive...everthing else, somewhere else.

 

[Joergen Geerds]

Photoshop likes to have dedicated HD space for its swap file, space that doesn't contain program files or any other data. Setting up a partition for exclusive use by Photoshop will speed everything up.

What I've done was to include a secondary 60 gig internal drive for Photoshop use only . I do not store any data on this drive. Even on my aging 5 year old system, this has kept things fast.

We are talking about a laptop here, aren't we?

yes, I agree, a desktop should have a dedicated photoshop scratch. I use a 5 disk RAID0 only for photoshop and ptgui scratch (in my mac pro), but the original question was about a laptop, not desktop. the problem is that ext drives don't help much with photoshop scratch (especially if they happen to be USB drives), so you are better off using the internal sata drive for photoshop scratch... after all, you wouldn't edit monster files on a MBP anyway, and regular files don't create that much of scratch volume, especially if you have 8GB of RAM, and photoshop CS5...

--
Joergen Geerds
http://luminous-newyork.com
http://joergengeerds.com
http://newyorkpanorama.com