My new 27inch 32Gb iMac

davesrose wrote in post #19211161
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Wow, I'm surprised you haven't at least backed up your photos Tom.
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I back up my photos regularly, and always have.

I don't back all of them up, but rather only back up the good ones. . I would absolutely hate to have every single photo backed up, and that is why I despise any system that automatically backs up all of one's files, such as Time Machine.


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duckster wrote in post #19211207
I also use Photos and being a hobbyist, have never wished for anything more. I did purchase a couple of small, external SSD portable drives. Each of them are 1 TB. With Photos, you can export a entire folder, as it is configured on your Mac and then if you want to photos again, it is very easy to plug in the drive and import the photos or the entire folder back into Photos. I had not been doing this but decided to try it for space and for a back up.

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Yes, but I want all of my photos in one place, not divided up into folders. . That's why I love the program "Photos" - because all of the photos appear in one big area, not some in this folder, some in that folder, etc. . That dividing things up into folders is what I hated so much about using PCs, and what I hate about using LR and PS.


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Tom Reichner wrote in post #19211312
I don't back all of them up, but rather only back up the good ones. I would absolutely hate to have every single photo backed up...

Why would you HATE to have them backed up? I don't understand.
I would think you would hate to lose any if you had a crash with no backup.

Is it a storage issue? HD space is really cheap.

I just do folders in Photos as opposed to one huge mass. I have 13,000+ photos, many are specific sporting events so they need to be in folders for me to find them. Can't look through that many to find ones from a specific game or athlete. At least, that is how it works for me.

FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #19211325
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Why would you HATE to have them backed up? I don't understand.
I would think you would hate to lose any if you had a crash with no backup.
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I have about 200,000 photos now. . Many of them are worthless. . But it takes so much time to go into them all and decide which ones to delete and which ones to save. . Ugh. . I mean, I do that for several hours each week, but still never get ahead of the curve, because I keep taking hundreds of new photos each week.

If I did suddenly have a computer failure, then the only photos I would have are the ones I have backed up - those that I have "favorited", about 20,000. . In some ways it would be a bit of a relief to have all of that culling done for me via catastrophe. . Sure, I would lose some images that I would like to have kept, but all of the really good ones would be saved, and 90% of the pretty good ones would be saved, and that would be sufficient.

I absolutely HATE having photos on my computer that are not worth keeping, but the time it takes to go thru and find them all and delete them keeps me from having perfectly curated archives. . So I guess if I hate that I have all of those photos in the first place, then having them all backed up is like taking something that I hate and multiplying it by two. . Or multiplied by three when I back them up to a 2nd backup drive. . The hatred would be exponential!
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FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #19211325
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Is it a storage issue? HD space is really cheap.
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No, storage space is not an issue for me. . But I do not think that storage is cheap at all.

I recently bought a 5TB external drive, to complement the drives I already have, and that 5TB drive cost me upwards of $150. . That is a freaking hell of a lot of money for 5TB of space, in my opinion. . I mean, that $150 could pay for a 3 or 4 day photography trip to a great wildlife destination in another state. . The fact that I spent so much for storage really irks me. . People keep saying that storage is cheap, but until I can get 5TB for 20 or 30 bucks, I will not see it that way.

I would love to know - where are you finding cheap storage? . Or is your idea of "cheap" just a lot different than mine?


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duckster wrote in post #19211331
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I just do folders in Photos as opposed to one huge mass. I have 13,000+ photos, many are specific sporting events so they need to be in folders for me to find them. Can't look through that many to find ones from a specific game or athlete. At least, that is how it works for me.
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I have about 107,000 images in my general Photos library now (although I'd love to cut that to 30,000+-), on my current computer. . "Photos" sorts them all chronologically, by default ..... which I love!

So when I want a specific image, I just remember what month and year I took that image, and then scroll down to the place where it is located in the library.

The chronological sorting is great for me because I always remember what year I took each photo in, and what month of the year. . I think that remembering year and time of year is something that just comes naturally to wildlife photographers, because wildlife is so dependent on the seasons. . Hence, if you ask me for any image I have taken, then I can pretty much find it within 30 seconds or thereabouts.


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Cull by crash. I love it!

Tom Reichner wrote in post #19211333
I would love to know - where are you finding cheap storage? Or is your idea of "cheap" just a lot different than mine?

I guess I consider a few hundred dollars cheap for 5TB. I tend to cycle through drives every few years. Last year I bought two 10TB drives for about $200 each.
I have a Seagate die recently (last year)... and for some dumb reason I did not have about half a year of 2014 backed up anywhere else. I took some really nice shots that year and am disappointed in my lack of back up.

In you and I's lifetime we are not going to see $20 and $30 hard drives. But it's good to dream.

Regarding the culling... everytime I open my lightroom catalog I delete photos randomly. If the photo sux and I have no reason to ever want to see it again then away it goes. Same goes for bracketed landscape shots that take up a lot of room. If I've combined them into something I like then I get rid of all the individual shots. Before COVID I was averaging 2k photos per month. I like to cull that down to a few hundred at most. Honestly nobody is ever going to look at them after I'm gone. Best to save only the best.

On my computer HD I only have the past few months of photos. Everything else gets backed up on two similar size G drives and also to a Synology system. I have yet to store on the Cloud but REALLY need to get that set up. A lot of my edits that I really like are on Flickr (and other places) so if my house burned down it would not be an entire loss but I'd still be kicking myself for years for not having off-site or cloud backups.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #19211333
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No, storage space is not an issue for me. . But I do not think that storage is cheap at all.

I recently bought a 5TB external drive, to complement the drives I already have, and that 5TB drive cost me upwards of $150. . That is a freaking hell of a lot of money for 5TB of space, in my opinion. . I mean, that $150 could pay for a 3 or 4 day photography trip to a great wildlife destination in another state. . The fact that I spent so much for storage really irks me. . People keep saying that storage is cheap, but until I can get 5TB for 20 or 30 bucks, I will not see it that way.

I would love to know - where are you finding cheap storage? . Or is your idea of "cheap" just a lot different than mine?

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Amazon regularly has sales on external drives. During the Christmas season, I got a 12TB Seagate HD for $200 and a 2TB Sandisk Extreme Pro external SSD for $270. It looks like for $150, you can get 8TB drives....and 5TB is averaging $100. I think you indicated wanting a larger internal HD with a new iMac. That is comparatively much more expensive. A: iMacs now have SSDs that are more expensive than platter drives, B: Apple tends to upsell RAM and SSDs (especially on their products that have these components soldered onto the motherboard). As far as trying to find a HD that's $30....I think you do have to raise your expectations: HD manufacturers have to set a price on the lowest common denominator for making a profit (and that price point isn't just capacity but drive components).

FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #19211337
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Regarding the culling... everytime I open my lightroom catalog I delete photos randomly. If the photo sux and I have no reason to ever want to see it again then away it goes.
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But then don't you also need to go into your backups on your external drives, find the photos that you deleted in LR, and delete them from your backup archives, as well? . Isn't it just as important to you to have your archives be well-culled and clean as it is to have your main files culled and clean?

The way I see it, if a photo is not worth keeping, then I don't want it anywhere at all - not on my main drive, not on any backup drives, and not on "the cloud". . Do you see it the same way, or would you be okay with having your poor quality images residing on a backup drive or on the cloud, along with the good photos?


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You are correct Tom... that is for sure a problem. I'm deleting them from my LR library which is only removing them from the primary work drive... not the backup. But, I have the space and I suppose I could load them again if I deleted something accidentally.

I have two external drives, both with Time Machine. And one external bootable drive with Super Duper that I update once a week. So everything I do on the Mac Pro gets updated on three external drives and all automatically. Works fine.

Chronologically would not work for me, I need the name of the game or meet. Different solutions for different needs. Folders do make back up easier as opposed to single photos for me.

FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #19208303
I put 64gb in mine. Night and day difference.

I got 32GB straight from Apple in my new 27inch iMac. I later saw many YouTube people saying: "Don't buy memory from Apple - buy it separately much more cheaply and insert the extra memory yourself." I would have been too scared, frankly, to do that myself but now feel confident enough to add more memory if I wish. I was thinking of going up to 64GB, but to be honest I don't feel I need it at the moment. My new Mac is frighteningly fast!!! Another 32Gb RAM bought independently will cost about £70 here in the UK, so it's very affordable. Bear in mind that you can only add extra RAM on the 27inch model. The 21.5 doesn't have the access cover in the back of the machine.

It's really easy! There's a door on the back that pops off and the slots are right there.

Yeah, I bought a 21.5 some years back and was shocked that I could not add RAM.