Photo STORAGE prob: MacBook Air

[julestx]

I have a MacBook Air that I take everywhere, and I have loaded it with thousands of photos using iPhoto & Picasa. I need to move these older photos to a Seagate 1TB external hard drive somehow, then delete them. But I'm not sure how to safely do this and I don't know if I'll be able to use or alter the photos again later. Also, I have just purchased Photoshop Elements and I am very excited to begin using it, but the MacBook doesn't hold many photos. Should I download this new software to the external somehow (there is only one usb port on my laptop) and start using only the external hard drive to edit and save my photos? I am freaking out a little bit, b/c I have not been able to upload and take new photos with the sudden storage problem. Please help!!! How did you work around photo storage on your computers when you graduated from the occasional photographer to taking thousands of photos? Thank you for any help.

[julestx]

I should maybe add that my photo storage problem has grown into a disk space problem on my Mac, and I love this thing like crazy and enjoy bringing it everywhere to load photos and play with them wherever I travel to. So freeing up space and making the computer usable again is so important to me.

[Franglais]

I have the Samsung X900 which is pretty much the Macbook Air translated into a portable PC, the dimensions and characteristics are the same (except it has two USB ports..)

- I see the X900/Macbook Air as a lightweight device to have with me at all times containing the stuff that I am working on or that I must have with me. Not as a system to contain and do everything...
- That means that I have to sort out my content and seperate out stuff that I want to keep but isn't essential. This goes onto an external drive that stays at home. In fact I keep a copy of everything on the external drive
- I'm using a NAS as an external drive which is a thing like a shoebox with it's own system. I access over my home network with WiFi
- The NAS includes backup software to copy my precious files to another external drive (you are making backups of your Macbook Air - aren't you?)
- All software - including several photo editing packages - is installed on the hard drive of the X900. Sure this takes space that could be used to hold pictures but the system + applications should all be on the hard drive of the system and not on an external drive

I'm afraid I can't give you any guidance on Apple software but I think you should be able to edit your files just as well on an external drive as on the internal drive

[Medley]

On your system, go to:

(Drive name)> Users> (User Name)>Pictures. This is where your iPhoto library resides. You can change the name of the file if you wish. DO NOT attempt to alter the contents. Move the file to your backup disk.

Relaunch iPhoto. It will tell you it cannot find the library. Tell it to create a new one. Done. If you need to access the old library, just repeat the process in reverse.

- Joe U.

[Franglais]

I've been researching this question a bit. I notice that only the first two MacBook Air's had one USB connector. That means that your system dates from 2008-2009.

You're having problems with your disk?

Sorry to be alarming but I think you should BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM NOW IMMEDIATELY

If your system has a SSD "disk" then be aware that SSD "disks" degrade over time and eventually fail.

A collegue of mine just had it happen to his four year old portable PC - right in the middle of an important project. He had less and less free space on the drive and the system would slow down without explanation. When he analysed the disk he found that more than 20% of it was unusable.

He replaced the system with a new one.

If you don't have a backup of your precious data then I think that now is the time to do one.

[julestx]

Thank you so much, Franglais and Medley. I will do these things now. I imagine it will take some time to back up my computer. Does this back up help me with space? If not, is it ok to delete things on my computer once I have backed it up, since it seems like my entire system is duplicated on the external drive afterwards? Or is backing up only to provide a safety net in case my system crashes? Sorry to be so green...On one hand I want to play with technology so badly, on the other hand I don't know enough to do it without needing to bang my head against the wall.

[Franglais]

Hi

Lots of people don't know this sort of stuff or don't think of it till it's too late:

Backups

- Your files are on the disk of your portable
- You can suffer a disk failure at any time.
- A backup is a safety net. Don't think of it as a way to store your data. It's also on a disk which may fail..
- You should always have a backup of your portable disk on another external disk, preferably one that you leave at home in security
- Doing a backup will not change the files on your portable therefore you will save no space
- You need to update your backup regularly with the latest changes to your portable. I think that for an active system you need to do it once a week (I do it once a day)

External drive

- Your disk of your portable is full
- You need to add an extra, external disk which you connect to your portable by USB cable
- You need to sort out your files and decide which files you want to move to the external drive and how (can't help you with Apple technology)
- When you have moved the files you will have freed up the space on the disk in your portable so you can add new files

Backup of the external drive

- The external drive is also a disk which may fail
- You need to make a backup of the external drive as well to another external drive
- I don't know Apple software so I don't know if you can put the backup of your portable AND the backup of your external drive onto the same external backup drive or if you need to buy an extra backup drive
- As your MacBook Air has only one USB port you can't plug two external drives into it at the same time. You will probably have to buy a USB Hub to be able to plug two external drives into the Hub and the Hub into the MacBook

So overall you have:

- Your MacBook Air with your current photos
- An external drive with photos you want to keep but aren't current
- An external drive for backups (or perhaps two)
- A USB Hub to allow you to connect two USB drives to your MacBook Air

Fortunately the price of these things has dropped really low.

[Medley]

A lot of it depends on the hardware you have julestx. Regardless, Franglais' suggestion of redundant backups is a good one. I have an Airport Extreme router which allows me to connect an external hard drive to it, and do backups through Apple's Timeline software. It sounds like this would be s good fit for you, as it would still leave your USB port free. Some Airports even come with a drive built -in for exactly such purposes. I have a second external drive which I also backup to once a month.

If you use Timeline, the first backup will take a significant amount of time. Subsequent backups will be shorter, because the software will only backup any files that have changed since the last backup. It will store the new backup file as a new file, until Timeline detects that the disk is full Then it will delete the oldest backup to make room for the newest. For this reason, the drive connected to my Airport is a dedicated backup drive- I don't use it for anything else. The drive that I do my monthly backup to is a general-use drive.

[julestx]

Medley, thanks! I do have an Airport Extreme as well and I will check into this. But how do you free up space after you've backed stuff up? Do you also transfer things over so your computer is more 'free' to play with photos? If I understand correctly, backing up doesn't then allow you to delete files and free up space?