Sufficient for Photo Editing?

Mark!

b.d.bop wrote in post #9262390
I've had four or five PC's over the years, so I'm not a total idiot, but damned close. When you guys start talking about daisy chains, SATA's, RAID cards, etc., I get a little scared. (The only parts I'm really familiar with are perfused by blood vessels.)

You're not alone. I dare say the majority of the really good photographers I know out there don't know all that much about what they have under the hood. I had to explain over the phone to one of my buddies just a couple weeks ago what an NAS was....while he's enjoying an extra day of R&R after a ridiculously expensive destination wedding in the Caribbean! [I'd love to trade places with that guy....haha!]

Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter. A 500gb external would work fine with a 1TB HD internal....though (in this scenario) you might be a little restricted in what you can do with that external (for obvious reasons that your external isn't as big as the internal).

Here's the skinny -- It use to be that base hard drive configurations were pretty skimpy. Nowadays, most base HDD set-ups are plenty big. Heck, my retired mother has been running along with her 2-year old iMac and its 160gb HDD just fine. In terms of size, that's more than enough to run your core components.

That's the reason why the conventional wisdom around here is "Don't buy the Mac hard drive upgrades!" Get the smallest HDD option they offer (since it will be more than enough core space!) then spend the difference on a 1TB+ external (or something similar), and you'll come out with more storage for less money!

Of course, if money is no object, then....sure.....get the 1TB upgrade option!!! LOL!

I remember the first of the aluminum iMacs ran noticeably warmer than their white iMac counterparts. My iMac friends tell me Mac solved that problem, but I can't give specifics first hand. Perhaps someone like Maxxum can comment more directly???

RAM is all internal. If you bought your own RAM to swap, it would be an internal swap with what's already under the hood! Fortunately, Mac has made it easy to swap out, even for the novice. It might take some extra time if you've never done it before (mostly from nerves!). But for those of us that have done this 100's of times, I can do a memory swap in about the same time as it takes my OS to boot!

As for hard drives, any upgrades on the iMac would require either (a) swapping out the original (internal) one for a larger one OR (b) adding an external one via firewire or the like! Unlike the MacPro or any other tower for that matter, there are no extra bays for hard drives internally. Most people opt for (b) since it's easy to do and most want an external backup anyway! Now, If you are really anal about peripheral clutter (and I have a few friends that are), then that might be one reason to just get the big HDD upgrade in your iMac, even though you're paying a premium to Mac to get it. I know one designer that did something like that -- a big HDD in his iMac and he FTP's all of his files off-site for backup. That guy can't stand external HDD-type clutter, so it was worth it to him to just pay the extra for the upgrade.

Merry Christmas to you, Mark. Wish we had some of that Pennsylvania weather here in California. Today is so nice I could almost go kayaking without a wet suit!

BeritOlam wrote in post #9262500
Mark!


You're not alone. I dare say the majority of the really good photographers I know out there don't know all that much about what they have under the hood. I had to explain over the phone to one of my buddies just a couple weeks ago what an NAS was....while he's enjoying an extra day of R&R after a ridiculously expensive destination wedding in the Caribbean! [I'd love to trade places with that guy....haha!]


Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter. A 500gb external would work fine with a 1TB HD internal....though (in this scenario) you might be a little restricted in what you can do with that external (for obvious reasons that your external isn't as big as the internal).

Here's the skinny -- It use to be that base hard drive configurations were pretty skimpy. Nowadays, most base HDD set-ups are plenty big. Heck, my retired mother has been running along with her 2-year old iMac and its 160gb HDD just fine. In terms of size, that's more than enough to run your core components.

That's the reason why the conventional wisdom around here is "Don't buy the Mac hard drive upgrades!" Get the smallest HDD option they offer (since it will be more than enough core space!) then spend the difference on a 1TB+ external (or something similar), and you'll come out with more storage for less money!

Of course, if money is no object, then....sure.....get the 1TB upgrade option!!! LOL!


I remember the first of the aluminum iMacs ran noticeably warmer than their white iMac counterparts. My iMac friends tell me Mac solved that problem, but I can't give specifics first hand. Perhaps someone like Maxxum can comment more directly???


RAM is all internal. They've made that easy to swap out, even for the novice. It might take some extra time if you've never done it before (mostly from nerves!). But for those of us that have done this 100's of times, I can do a memory swap in about the same time as it takes my OS to boot!

As for hard drives, any upgrades on the iMac would require either (a) swapping out the original one or (b) adding an external one via firewire or the like! Unlike the MacPro or any other tower for that matter, there are no extra bays for hard drives internally. Now, If you are really anal about peripheral clutter (and I have a few friends that are), then that might be one reason to just get the big HDD upgrade, even though you're paying a premium to Mac to get it. I know one designer that did something like that -- a big HDD in his iMac and he FTP's all of his files off-site for backup. That guy can't stand external HDD-type clutter! LOL!

Merry Christmas to you, Mark. Wish we had some of that Pennsylvania weather here in California. Today is so nice I could almost go kayaking without a wet suit!

You're the man, BeritOlam! Enjoying your posts - really helpful.
It's just a nasty, freezy kind of rain here today, not too much snow on the ground. But having a nice, warm Christmas day inside.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year, as well.

I'm certain I'll be picking your brain further down the road. This forum is such a great resource.

Mastamarek wrote in post #9262441
unless you can prove to me that your name is Bill Gates, getting 16Gb of ram from apple has no logical sense, what so ever. You don't even need 16Gb of ram for photo editing. I do hi def video edits in avid or FCP and I never needed 16Gb of ram. That $4000 extra price wont make your photos any better or speed up your editing or make it more secure. Its pointless unless you have a specific need of 16gb ram, which in your case - you don't. You would have to run multiple server systems on one machine to even come close to using all that 16Gb of ram.

I agree. The extra money would be better spent on the monitor.

Mark - The most important question about an iMac is if you can control your ambient light. The iMacs come with glossy displays that can be troublesome if you cannot. If you can, then an iMac with the following specs would suit your needs well based upon the cameras that you have:

Core i7
8 gb of RAM (4x2gb sticks: Apple charges $200 for those extra 2 gb that you could buy elsewhere for about $150. You'd be paying for the convenience and labor of putting them in with Apple)
2 TB hard drive

If you think you'll use most of that 2 TB hard drive, I'd suggest you get a dual-drive enclosure and put either two 1.5 TB drives or two 2 TB drives in it (for a total of 3 TB and 4 TB, respectively) for a Time Machine volume. Other World Computing sells these preassembled or as parts, again depending on your desire to assemble the components (which are very easy). I have this dual-drive enclosure with two 1.5 TB Seagate 5400 rpm hard drives in it as a Time Machine drive for my computer. It is connected by Firewire 400, but also does FW800 and USB2.

Tony-S wrote in post #9262678
Mark - The most important question about an iMac is if you can control your ambient light. The iMacs come with glossy displays that can be troublesome if you cannot. If you can, then an iMac with the following specs would suit your needs well based upon the cameras that you have:

Core i7
8 gb of RAM (4x2gb sticks: Apple charges $200 for those extra 2 gb that you could buy elsewhere for about $150. You'd be paying for the convenience and labor of putting them in with Apple)
2 TB hard drive

If you think you'll use most of that 2 TB hard drive, I'd suggest you get a dual-drive enclosure and put either two 1.5 TB drives or two 2 TB drives in it (for a total of 3 TB and 4 TB, respectively) for a Time Machine volume. Other World Computing sells these preassembled or as parts, again depending on your desire to assemble the components (which are very easy). I have this dual-drive enclosure with two 1.5 TB Seagate 5400 rpm hard drives in it as a Time Machine drive for my computer. It is connected by Firewire 400, but also does FW800 and USB2.

This is really intriguing, Tony. So if I bought this OWC unit like you did, all I have to do is plug it into one of the FW ports on the iMac and Time Machine does the rest in terms of bacxkup? It's that easy? What "assembly" (if any) is required if I went that way?

Yes, that's pretty much it. You have to connect two SATA drives, drive about 16 screws, then connect it and power it up. OS X will see the drive as an uninitialized drive and ask you if you want to initialize (format) it. Click "OK", name it (I just use "Time Machine") and after it initializes it it will ask you if you want to use it as your Time Machine volume. The first backup is the longest since everything on your internal drive has to be backed up. After that, Time Machine does hourly incremental updates.

Keep in mind, a Time Machine volume is not bootable. If you ever have a crash or failure of your internal drive, you have to reinstall from the Installer DVD, after which it will ask you if you want to restore from a Time Machine volume. Easy peasy.

Tony-S wrote in post #9263200
You have to connect two SATA drives, drive about 16 screws, then connect it and power it up.

Uh oh - now do you mean drive screws in the external device (dual drive enclosure), or do you mean open the back of the iMac display and fidget in its guts?

No, nothing on the iMac, just the enclosure. It comes disassembled. I assembled mine in about 5 minutes. The two drives seat onto their SATA connectors, then each requires 4 screws that are included. You then slide the housing into the case and it's another 4 screws (IIRC).

Mark,

I haven't tried out Tony's OWC device, but it looks to me exactly like the kind of thing I'd recommend starting out with....unless you are looking for some serious external redundancy in a storage device.

Do you have much experience dealing with an external backup? The OWC device in question is a good hobbyist-level storage device. However, if your data (photos) are your livelihood -- and judging by your equipment, I'm thinking maybe they are -- I'd probably want something a little more secure.

A photog friend of mine in Orange Co. actually just set himself up over Thanksgiving with a Sans Digital 5-bay storage device (2gb Seagate drives x 5) w/ his Mac Pro, and it works like a charm. [Granted this exact one wouldn't work in your case w/ the iMac, because this comes with its own eSata controller card....but there are other devices like this suited to run via Firewire 800.] He had never set up anything like this before, and was a little nervous doing himself....but I said just follow the directions, buy 5 of the same drives, and everything else will pretty much run itself. Running redundant (RAID) backups is a whole lot easier to do than it use to be. This isn't his only backup solution mind you, but it covers all of his typical day-to-day work flow.

Lots of options here. It's just a question of how much external storage you need and want, and people vary in their degree of anal-ness as far as backing things up go!

Merry Christmas to all....and to all a goodnight!

Tony-S wrote in post #9263567
No, nothing on the iMac, just the enclosure. It comes disassembled. I assembled mine in about 5 minutes. The two drives seat onto their SATA connectors, then each requires 4 screws that are included. You then slide the housing into the case and it's another 4 screws (IIRC).

Thanks, Tony! Sounds great.
While I'm bugging you, do you know anything about Drobo? I've heard from some folks that the Drobo unit's a nice way to go, also. I know it's a bit more expensive. What do you think?

BeritOlam wrote in post #9264220
Mark,

I haven't tried out Tony's OWC device, but it looks to me exactly like the kind of thing I'd recommend starting out with....unless you are looking for some serious external redundancy in a storage device.

Do you have much experience dealing with an external backup? The OWC device in question is a good hobbyist-level storage device. However, if your data (photos) are your livelihood -- and judging by your equipment, I'm thinking maybe they are -- I'd probably want something a little more secure.

A photog friend of mine in Orange Co. actually just set himself up over Thanksgiving with a Sans Digital 5-bay storage device (2gb Seagate drives x 5) w/ his Mac Pro, and it works like a charm. [Granted this exact one wouldn't work in your case w/ the iMac, because this comes with its own eSata controller card....but there are other devices like this suited to run via Firewire 800.] He had never set up anything like this before, and was a little nervous doing himself....but I said just follow the directions, buy 5 of the same drives, and everything else will pretty much run itself. Running redundant (RAID) backups is a whole lot easier to do than it use to be. This isn't his only backup solution mind you, but it covers all of his typical day-to-day work flow.

Lots of options here. It's just a question of how much external storage you need and want, and people vary in their degree of anal-ness as far as backing things up go!

Merry Christmas to all....and to all a goodnight!

LOL, don't judge my level of professional photographic needs by my equipment, though, BeritOlam - I'm a very avid hobbyist (decent enough) who could have worse vices such as cars, etc. Mainly I'm a gear hound!
As per my question to Tony (above), do you know anything about Drobo and have an opinion about it as an alternative?

Thanks, guys!

I have no experience with Drobos. When I looked at them a few years ago they were very expensive and only USB. I'm sure that's change over the last few years, though. I prefer Firewire drives for Time Machine because they minimize cpu effort. USB requires the cpu for read/write, Firewire doesn't as much because it has its own controller in the enclosure. This is why FW400 is about 3x faster than USB2.

Drobo are fairly common, and new versions have firewire and esata support too. Hotswap and internal redundancy, not bad spec wise. But it doesn't actually support standard RAID levels, so if your Drobo ever breaks, you'll need to buy an identical one or risk loosing ALL of that data.

As for FW vs USB, if you have an i7, cpu use doesn't matter, and FW has lower cpu use because of direct memory addressing, not because of anything else. And in ALL tests you find out there, FW400 is the SAME or SLOWER than high speed usb, FW800 is faster than usb, but slower than eSATA.

basroil wrote in post #9266132
And in ALL tests you find out there, FW400 is the SAME or SLOWER than high speed usb

This is not true. I've tested it extensively under OS X and FW400 is always faster than USB2 except for reading/writing of small blocks (where they're essentially the same).

Tony-S wrote in post #9266151
under OS X and FW400 is always faster than USB2 except for reading/writing of small blocks (where they're essentially the same).

My experience as well.

Might be OS or processor dependant?

René Damkot wrote in post #9266170
My experience as well.

Might be OS or processor dependant?

Don't see how it's OS dependent but is memory (and therefore partially processor) dependent. Very dependent on the HDD though, just check out http://www.tomshardwar​e.com …sfer-Performance,694.html . Looks like both of us are right depending on where you look. Some of the better FW400 drives are faster than some USB, some USB are faster than FW400, but the max speed of both is about 35mb/s, any more than that and you need FW800 or esata. And the difference between a good drive and a bad drive is much larger than the connection type... even some esata and FW800 drives are slower than usb and FW400 ones