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New MacBook Pros and MacBooks launched

Terry

New member
OK Guy,
I've looked at all the links....Assume your eSata setup with two running off the express card. What goes where.....

Software: All regular software goes on Laptop
Images: Copy all images to eSata #1 and 1 firewire as a backup
Music and other assorted stuff: eSata #1
Time Machine: eSata #2

Where do I back up images that have been worked on? Allow it to be done by Time Machine or something else?

I may be a little slow on this stuff but I do get it figured out :cussing:
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
First you need to decide on how you want to work. My basic setup is pretty simple. i have a 1 TB drive that holds ALL raw files. No matter what i shoot they go there. I than have another 1tb drive and that is for LR. i import all my shooting into LR on it's own drive. now actually these 2 drives are identical if your reading this correctly. So essential you could combine tis into one but i would not do this. keep two seperate raw drives one for you whole LR library and One for Raws. Okay than i have a drive that is 1TB for Finals. What I deliver to clients , there all 60 mg high res Tif files.

Moving forward than i have a drive i actually partitioned into three. 1/3rd scratch drive for CS3 , than a 1/3 for OS backup and 1/3 for Graphic files.

next drive is my Time machine and it backs up my Main OS drive.

Now the E sata is a great final solution setup because it is not hot swapable like a firewire 800 drive is.

Now if i was in the One computer laptop setup than i would make my LR library either internal ( Say 100 gbs of internal space, than off load later)or Firewire this way you can take you LR library on the road. The E sata stuff maybe not as portable so i would want that image finals and raw backup. This way it stays at home nice and safe and maybe just have a traveling small firewire drive and reload you main drives when you get home. there is all sorts of ways to do this but we need to get you into a workflow process with your drives first to get the most out of it. The biggest drawback to a laptop solution only is scratch drive for CS3, this could be done in the E sata since that is the fastest way to go. But first we need to know how you work than build a setup around that. there is also Time capsule which with ethernet can be your home network drive. depends if you want to do that. confusing i know but we need to get you organized and go from there.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
:ROTFL::ROTFL::ROTFL:

I will just have to go over this in Carmel with you more.


What we should be doing here is having a good 1 day computer setup seminar. Now that may have some real value for folks. Maybe a You tube for the forum. That be kind of cool
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
What we should be doing here is having a good 1 day computer setup seminar. Now that may have some real value for folks. Maybe a You tube for the forum. That be kind of cool
Yeah. A YOUtube showing just a flowchart of what you wrote above would be hilarious!

:ROTFL: :ROTFL: :ROTFL:
 

Terry

New member
Seriously,
I think I do have somewhat of a plan and I think it combines some of how you work and some of how Jack works.
I have learned my lesson on laptops "keep the bare minimum on the hard drive". Therefore, I would really only keep the software on the laptop and not any files, music etc.

If I travel with a laptop, I don't care that I don't have my full Lightroom Library. So for me I have no issue with arriving in Carmel with an empty Lightroom Catalogue.

So, my plan is to take one of the eSata drives and make that my main drive of my day to day stuff including images (RAWs and processed/ready to print files). It would also hold my Lightroom Library.

As soon as I have images to be loaded the DNGs would be copied both to this eSata drive and to another backup fire wire drive that I can store somewhere else.

The second eSata drive would be my Time machine back up.

If I set it up this way, the laptop should always have about 100-150gb of free space with 4gb of RAM and I shouldn't have any problems with both LR and CS3.

I think that is probably pretty adequate. The only main difference in my processing from today would be to change my files structure into shoot folders and have shoot folders on the hard drive. Then when I import to LR it would be from disk as discussed in this thread with Jack.

http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=860

I think this seems reasonably safe without being overkill for an amateur.
For my images I would have a copy of the original DNG in 3 places: main eSata, backup eSata, and external firewire. For my processed files they would be in two places main eSata and backup eSata.

If I keep the MacBook and iMac, I will back those up on a time capsule but they won't be my image processing machines.
 

Terry

New member
A new wrinkle?

I'm reading this morning that Apple will be updating to the new Montevina chips in June.
There is a blurb on macrumors.com
Is it worth just getting all the cr*p off my MacBook and freeing up disk space for 3-4 months?????
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
A new wrinkle?

I'm reading this morning that Apple will be updating to the new Montevina chips in June.
There is a blurb on macrumors.com
Is it worth just getting all the cr*p off my MacBook and freeing up disk space for 3-4 months?????
There will always be upgrades . Myself i am skipping the New Mac pro and the New MBP until the next gen. Just not enough horsepower gain from what i have.
 

Terry

New member
while I know that there will always be upgrades (and yes we will "need" a new iPhone this year), I wasn't sure how much gain there will be from this whole new chip platform that is really coming out quite quickly. If it were something like Dec. I wouldn't hesitate. Just curious about the scoop on montevina vs Santa rosa.

Also, guy I posted my proposed set up above....last post from last night.
 

LJL

New member
There will always be upgrades . Myself i am skipping the New Mac pro and the New MBP until the next gen. Just not enough horsepower gain from what i have.
Personally, if somebody really needs to replace or get a new computer for critical work now, there is no point in waiting. Whatever one buys, at any time, is or will be obsolete quickly anyway. Buy on need, not on speculation. The amount of use and time saved with a new machine over the next 3-6 months for the new ones to roll out may be more than worth it for those in need.

I think the horsepower part is a bit of a wash, but the more interesting is the possible improved front side bus. THAT will make things move a lot faster. Of course, that also means that new memory modules will have to be built and marketed also, so costs there are going to be higher until volumes catch up with demand.

LJ
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
A new wrinkle?

I'm reading this morning that Apple will be updating to the new Montevina chips in June.
There is a blurb on macrumors.com
Is it worth just getting all the cr*p off my MacBook and freeing up disk space for 3-4 months?????
There will always be upgrades, usually every 6 months with more "significant" upgrades every 18 months (Corollary to Moore's Law). And for sure, the current stuff will always be less expensive 6 months from now...

My take is this: Use the equipment you own until 1) it bogs down to the point you can no longer take it, 2) it doesn't do something you need it to do, 3) it breaks or 4) You want the upgrade and can sell your old system, recovering a significant enough portion of the initial investment to justify it.

Goes counter to conventional wisdom on this, but I find that if I buy the "best" at the onset, I get enough longer life out of it to justify the added expense. I think image processing users fall into a heavier use category than the norm, and I suspect this is why this logic works for us...

So, if you can live with your current MB for travel, then you probably should. Cleaning it off is not a bad thing either :)ROTFL:) You have the iMac and it serves well for larger file handling. And you can always process raws on the road as 8-bit tiffs or even jpegs to gain performance out of an older laptop. After all, those files usually won't be your finals anyway, the desktop versions will... Moreover, you can copy any adjustment layers over to a newly processed version of your raw image and save repeating those steps if you really like what you did :)

Cheers,
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Equipment churning is also time consuming. I usually wait for a couple generations of "new" before making a change. That way I see a big step forward and feel like I'm getting a good value. My recent transition to the latest Mac Pro took me from Tiger to Leopard and PPC to Intel. Based on my absolutely stunning experience to date, I've just ordered the new MBP which will replace my Powerbook G4.

With almost 20 years of Mac owning/using experience under my belt, I have to say that Apple has really got their stuff together of late. Apple computers rock!
 

Terry

New member
I am clearly not a wimp when it comes to doing upgrades or getting new technology but seeing a new chip platform coming on line so quickly, I just wanted to do a sanity check.

Jack, I went in the other direction on tech purchases (cheaper more often) prior a more serious move into digital photography. Now, I agree with your assessment of buying high end.

I think I am going to get myself a good big fast FireWire drive (suggestions welcome) to restructure my image files and get that all in order. At the same time, I will clean off the MacBook and use that and see if it continues to act up with a clean hard drive. If it doesn't behave, bye bye. If it does, then I will wait till the summer.

Sorry for all the "thinking out loud" on this thread but it has been really helpful !!!!!!
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Terry: Get these boxes and stuff them with the Seagate 7200.11 500G or 1TB drives from NewEgg:

OWC drive Box, eSATA, FW800x2, FW400 & USB2 interfaces: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW924AL1K/

Drives form NewEgg are a bit less expensive than OWC, but OWC should match price for you if you ask. NOTE! On Seagate 7200.11 drives you HAVE to remove the stock jumper to get SATA2 speeds, otherwise the drive runs at SATA1 speed!!! Why they default to SATA1 who knows, but they do...
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I am clearly not a wimp when it comes to doing upgrades or getting new technology but seeing a new chip platform coming on line so quickly, I just wanted to do a sanity check.

Jack, I went in the other direction on tech purchases (cheaper more often) prior a more serious move into digital photography. Now, I agree with your assessment of buying high end.

I think I am going to get myself a good big fast FireWire drive (suggestions welcome) to restructure my image files and get that all in order. At the same time, I will clean off the MacBook and use that and see if it continues to act up with a clean hard drive. If it doesn't behave, bye bye. If it does, then I will wait till the summer.

Sorry for all the "thinking out loud" on this thread but it has been really helpful !!!!!!

Oh just get the MBP and get on with it.:grin:
 

Terry

New member
Terry: Get these boxes and stuff them with the Seagate 7200.11 500G or 1TB drives from NewEgg:

OWC drive Box, eSATA, FW800x2, FW400 & USB2 interfaces: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW924AL1K/

Drives form NewEgg are a bit less expensive than OWC, but OWC should match price for you if you ask. NOTE! On Seagate 7200.11 drives you HAVE to remove the stock jumper to get SATA2 speeds, otherwise the drive runs at SATA1 speed!!! Why they default to SATA1 who knows, but they do...
I'll cross the "jumper" bridge when I get to it. The OWC enclosure I assume from the picture will hold one drive. Dumb question but why doesn't seagate sell the drive with an enclosure?

OK so I get the most retro digital camera possibly made and it turns me into a total tech geek on the other end. What's wrong with this picture? :grin:
 
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