Fast External Hard Drive

I would like to have an external hard drive that I can put either a lightroom or iPhoto library on and be able to edit images. I can use either a thunderbolt or usb3 connection with my one year old mac mini. Does anyone have any suggestions on which hard drive to get and what speed I would need. For that matter is it even worth trying…that is could it be fast enough?

I think the catalog is always on your internal HD, but I've had all my photos on external drives for years, not a single one on the main drive. My old laptop didn't have enough storage and I want a backup copy anyways. Works with no issues. I pretty much just buy what's on sale at CostCo, currently I have two 1TB Iomega drives with firewire and two 3TB Seagate USB3 drives on my mac mini. Both on hubs. I think LR or PS loads what ever image you work on into memory, once it's there it's there and can be worked on. I notice no speed problems at all, though I can't compare it to having images on an internal drive. My mac mini is about the same age, two 27 inch screens on it at 20something by something resolution, higher than HD. Had to get a little dongle for the 2nd screen, turns one of the USB ports into a display port (I think, not too firm on all the acronyms and names of things, sorry)

So catalog is on the main drive with the application, all images on external drives, with no issues. The new ones (3TB) are usb 3 since it's just as speedy and my other hub is full.

I use pretty much the same setup as the post above. Catalogue on my laptop with my images stored externally. The Smart Preview function is a great tool for this scenario. I use WD my passport USB3 drives and I find the speed more than sufficient.

USB 3.0 is faster than a hard drive so Thunderbolt won't be any faster.

Its fine to put the Lightroom catalog on an external drive since its still local to the computer. Its network drives that LR doesn't like for the catalog, although they're fine for storing the library.

I don't really recommend brands of hard drives. There's only three companies in the world that actually make the drives themselves, regardless of who sticks their name on plastic box.

This review sold me on the Buffalo Drive station:
http://www.cnet.com …buffalo-drivestation-ddr/

Like others I store all my raw images on an external but I also store the catalogue on it as well. I just use Seagate 7200 rpm bare drives in Plugable usb 3.0 hard drive docks without any problems. Plugable uses the Asmedia chipsets in them and I've had much less issues with them disconnecting in the Mac environment.

If your internal disk is a spinning disk consider two external disks - one SSD for cache/catalog and such, one spinning disk for images. Images don't need to be on an SSD, and if the SSD is just for caches and such 60GB is plenty. If you can put an SSD inside the computer for OS programs cache catalog and swap then 128GB is enough, 256GB is better, then put a spinning disk on USB or thunderbolt.

Doesn't matter what brand of spinning disk really. They all fail eventually so you need backups. For SSD Samsung 850 pro is my pick, with the 850 evo, 840 pro, and 840 evo all good.

USB3 has more overhead then you'll ever use. A 3.5" drive will almost always be faster than a 2.5" drive; however, the 3.5" will require a separate power connection, whereas the 2.5" drives are usually bus-powered of the USB3 cable. Pick your poison.

frugivore wrote in post #17337078
This review sold me on the Buffalo Drive station:
http://www.cnet.com …buffalo-drivestation-ddr/

I will second this recommendation. I have two of their 2 TB drives and they are very fast. I keep my images on one of the drives and use the other one as backup. I also have two Seagate 2TB drives and the Buffalo drives run circles around them when it comes to the backup function. I haven't exactly timed them with a stop watch, but I figure the Buffalo drives are at least 3 to 4 times faster.

WesternGuy

Tony-S wrote in post #17342408
USB3 has more overhead then you'll ever use. A 3.5" drive will almost always be faster than a 2.5" drive; however, the 3.5" will require a separate power connection, whereas the 2.5" drives are usually bus-powered of the USB3 cable. Pick your poison.

It has 625MB/s... SSDs are close to that speed now.

tim wrote in post #17342469
It has 625MB/s... SSDs are close to that speed now.

True, but we're talking about external hard drives. They're still quite slow compared to any modern external bus and aren't likely to get much faster.