Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Newer members often state that they think their question is too basic, or stupid, or whatever, to be posted. Nothing could be further further from the truth in any section at DSLRUsers.com, but especially here. Don't feel intimidated. The only stupid question is the one that remains unasked. We were all beginners at one stage, and even the most experienced amongst us will admit to learning new stuff on a daily basis. Ask away! Please also refer to the forum rules and the portal page

Moderators: Greg B, Nnnnsic, Geoff, Glen, gstark, Moderators

Forum rules
Please ensure that you have a meaningful location included in your profile. Please refer to the FAQ for details of what "meaningful" is. Please also check the portal page for more information on this.

Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby phoenix on Sat Oct 04, 2008 6:45 pm

I have around about 200GB worth of photos I'm currently using in my catalogue. I'm using an external hard drive to store them and access through Lightroom and then when i do more edits in Photoshop. I'm wondering if an external hard drive would slow down the process at all? I've just got a few 1TB drives and am just about to put the whole library of photos over to one of those. Is there a better workflow? I get my photos and put them straight to the external drive and then sort and edit them from that in Lightroom and in photoshop.

My second question is, does anyone know the best way to transfer the photos to the new drive? I know you can just grab the photos in the Library module and drag them to the new drive, but is this the best way?

Thanks everyone!
phoenix
Member
 
Posts: 222
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 1:32 pm
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby ATJ on Sat Oct 04, 2008 6:55 pm

My whole Lightroom catalog and the images in the catalog are on an external drive. It might be slower, but not so much that it is annoying. I prefer having them all in one place.

As to moving them, here is one suggestion: http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00N4Ck
User avatar
ATJ
Senior Member
 
Posts: 3982
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:44 am
Location: Blue Mountains, NSW

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby gstark on Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:21 pm

How slow access to your files will be depends upon the type of interface that your external drive enjoys.

For instance, USB 1.1 would probably be too slow for any sort of practical use.

Many modern motherboards now provide eSata, and if you can use this, then access speeds should pretty much be the same as for any internal drive.

USB 2 and firewire will be somewhere in the middle of this.
g.
Gary Stark
Nikon, Canon, Bronica .... stuff
The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it - US Pres. Bartlet
User avatar
gstark
Site Admin
 
Posts: 22896
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2004 11:41 pm
Location: Bondi, NSW

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby Mr Darcy on Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:21 pm

Speed will depend on the speed of the connection to the external drive. I use a mixture of USB and Ethernet drives and there are noticeable differences in performance across them. I have not done any tests though so am unwilling to even say what is better. Personally I do my edits on the C: drive then move things off.

Assuming a Windows box, I don't think you can beat the old DOS XCOPY command to move the files.
Andrew's tip says how to reconnect lightroom after the copy is made, but

XCOPY SourceDir\*.* DestDir /S/E
will Copy everything with a minimum of fuss.

XCOPY SourceDir\*.* DestDir /S/E/V
will also verify after the copy, but it takes twice as long.

You would then need to delete the originals though.

YOu can also just use Windows Explorer to do the move, but it will take longer as it also updates the GUI, and AFAIK you can't do a verify.
Greg
It's easy to be good... when there is nothing else to do
User avatar
Mr Darcy
Senior Member
 
Posts: 3414
Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:35 pm
Location: The somewhat singed and blackened Blue Mountains

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby phoenix on Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:36 pm

Thanks guys!

I'm really tempted to move to a non powered USB 2 drive i just got hold of, but am a bit worried about that. I'm not sure why, but it just seems like it might not be as fast/stable as a powered one.

I'm using all USB 2 drives except for a firewire 800 drive, so I'm hoping that's ok.

I see a bit of slow times but I'm not sure if it's the work I'm doing or the connection type of the HD's.

I'll be moving to a Mac Pro early next year so hopefully that's all internal drives!
phoenix
Member
 
Posts: 222
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 1:32 pm
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby phoenix on Sat Oct 11, 2008 11:29 am

Well i have moved over to the portable drive. So far i have got a bit of slowdown, but I'm not sure if that's because of the drive or the amount of work I'm doing right now. Hopefully it's not the drive, because this workflow is the best. I take my laptop to the big jobs and when i have a break i throw a fresh CF card in the camera and load the used one up. Whenever i get a break, i go and do some work on them. It's awesome, but it does seem a bit slow.
phoenix
Member
 
Posts: 222
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 1:32 pm
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby pippin88 on Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:45 pm

You have backups right?

Keep multiple copies.

I use a RAID1 array in my main machine. (Hardware redundancy - not a backup, if I delete it, it's gone).
Periodically copy all photos to another drive that is stored offsite.
About to put a drive in another computer on the network which will auto copy roughly once a week.

Hard drives are sooooo cheap these days you would be insane not to have a heap of copies.

There are many great sync programs that might help with the external drive problem. Have a program auto sync to your desktop when the external is plugged in.
- Nick
Gallery
User avatar
pippin88
Senior Member
 
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:42 pm
Location: Newcastle / Sydney

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby ATJ on Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:42 am

Here is my backup strategy: How I backup my photographs.
User avatar
ATJ
Senior Member
 
Posts: 3982
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:44 am
Location: Blue Mountains, NSW

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby phoenix on Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:26 am

pippin88 wrote:You have backups right?

Keep multiple copies.

I use a RAID1 array in my main machine. (Hardware redundancy - not a backup, if I delete it, it's gone).
Periodically copy all photos to another drive that is stored offsite.
About to put a drive in another computer on the network which will auto copy roughly once a week.

Hard drives are sooooo cheap these days you would be insane not to have a heap of copies.

There are many great sync programs that might help with the external drive problem. Have a program auto sync to your desktop when the external is plugged in.



Yeah i have two backups. That's what started this whole buying hard drives thing last week. I was a bit worried one backup wasn't enough so i went out and splurged for some more.

I just want the most efficient workflow, with the best portability for now, before i get a desktop machine.
phoenix
Member
 
Posts: 222
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 1:32 pm
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW

Re: Editing and PP with an external hard drive

Postby phoenix on Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:40 am

ATJ wrote:Here is my backup strategy: How I backup my photographs.


Thanks for that Andrew. It's nice to see you're pretty thorough with your backups. I'm pretty slack i have to say. I have only really just started to backup properly now. I use to think i was safe because i have pretty much everything online, but i just realised how much of a pain in the ass that is to get back!
phoenix
Member
 
Posts: 222
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 1:32 pm
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW


Return to Absolute Beginners Questions

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests