Apple Another Lightroom, iMac, external hard drive question

BillN

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Name
Bill
I am looking to upgrade my Nikon D300 to maybe the D600 or whatever .. anyway this will mean bigger RAW images.

I would also like to store all my images on an external hard drive that I can move from iMac to MBP and vica versa.

Images on hard drive, LR application on iMac/MBP ...... processing them on external hard drive with app on computer

My Question: - is this feasable or will the process be too slow
I bought my iMac in about 2010

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac9,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

and my MBP about the same time

my son says no it will not be fast enough and came out with the usual attack on Apple from a dedicated PC user,

his quote 'Without wishing to say I told you so, this is the problem with Macs. With a PC, you could open it up, put a USB 3.0 card in, job done.

Unfortunately, yours has USB 2.0 ports only, which will be far too slow. You probably also have firewire, but I’ve never used it and the drives tend to be more expensive.

So, USB 2.0 will be slow, probably unusably so. Your best bet is to put images that you want to edit on the hard drive, with an external device as the storage. Its not especialy practical, but you can thank Apple for making their products a complete bugger to upgrade. Of course, the Apple answer to the problem is to go and buy a new one with a nice shiny Thunderbolt port. And then buy all new drives for it. Wait 2 years, rinse and repeat" Unquote
 
Firewire 800 is faster than USB2 I think. Might be worth the investment. It will likely come with USB3 as well, and you'll be set for the future. either way, get a USB3 drive, and when you upgrade (in your own good time), you'll be OK. USB3 is backward compatible to USB2.

Ignore trolling sons :)

[edit] BTW I use USB2 drives and have NO usability issues. Four of them (one has FW400 but thats slower than USB2 now) are attached to a hub which is attached to my AEBS, that is all in a different room except when I actually doing some serious editing.. then the MBP and I move in there for the bigger screen... One of those drives is the repository for all downloads and documents, as well as a ton ofphotographs I should delete, one is my backup (clone) drive, one is my media (movies, TV etc) and the last is the backup for that. Movies stream over the network to my AppleTV without incident. USB2 is not too slow, it is simply slower than USB3. I'm currently using a USB2 portable drive for the Lightroom catalog and photographs and its just fine. Try it and see.

[edit#2]
Of course, the Apple answer to the problem is to go and buy a new one with a nice shiny Thunderbolt port. And then buy all new drives for it. Wait 2 years, rinse and repeat" Unquote
This is just arrant nonsense and shows your son's complete lack of understanding of apple hardware. Every thunderbolt enabled machine also comes with USB. I have thunderbolt on my early 2011 MBP. I don't use it. Not for storage or anything else. Its a dual purpose port and connects the MBP to my screen ( A Dell U2410)... If I had bought an Apple screen, it would have connected to that, as well. Don't let him bully you into buying a PC.
 
A couple of things

A FW drive is sometimes a bit more expensive, but not much. Go for it.

Pit more RAM in both your Macs. It's cheap, easy to do (just search online, or read your manuals) and will really help.

Make sure you have 2 drives: the one you use for the photos, and another to back up the first drive. In other words, have two copies of your photos.

There are good online tutorials on sharing a library and data via LR on two or more computers.

It's really not a big deal, and your computers will be able to handle it. Newer computers would certainly be faster, but unless you are processing hundreds of photos per shoot, and several shoots per week you should be fine.
 
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