Aperture/Photoshop Workflow on a laptop

I'm using a Macbook Pro with a 200GB internal disk, Aperture 2, and Photoshop CS5. My hard drive is not maxed out, but getting close to a level that will require some data movement/removal. I currently backup my laptop via Time Machine to a 500GB external drive.

Some people have been telling me to run all my data from an external disk, as opposed to internal. So for instance, buy an external disk for photos and videos, and run Aperture using a referenced files approach. I hear I'll get much better performance. Others say to just get a bigger internal disk. That there is no performance advantage of the first approach, or that I would actually see a performance degradation as the data is now further from the application. Currently my laptop runs pretty good (has 4GB memory).

I guess I'm curious to hear how people using laptops save their photos for use in Aperture and Photoshop. And what drives they like as well? I have a preference for firewire 800, and am looking at about 1TB, but other than that, don't really know too much about external drives.

All comments welcome!

Welcome to the Mac Forums!

Everyone has an opinion about hard drives and their usage - internal or external. However, it makes sense that a good quality fast internal drive is going to be more efficient to use. On the practical side, it also makes sense to store large photo and video files on an external. So perhaps you need to consider the best of both worlds....

My recommendation is to install a fast internal HD in your MBP - perhaps a 500 or 750 GB 7200 RPM model. The largest capacity drive that currently fits in a MBP is 750 GB. SATA, 2.5" width and 9.5 MM height.

An excellent external HD which supports USB, FW400, and FW800 is the "Mercury on the Go" series sold by Other World Computing, Mac resellers and specialists. These drives are also highly rated by MacWorld Mag. You can see them here at this LINK.

Thanks chscag, I appreciate your thoughts! So you think I should upgrade my internal disk as well, even though I could possibly move around 100GB's off of it, by moving photos, videos and music to an external? My current internal is 200GB 5400rpm.

I have been considering replacing my 500Gb internal drive with a 120Gb SSD (~$290 from OWC) and putting the 500Gb drive in a swappable external enclosure. Same basic reason as yours, running out of space and performance boost.

If you're moving/using large volumes of data, it may be time to invest in network attached storage. Units such as this one from Netgear would allow you not only to store your files off your Mac and stop worrying about filling up your hard drive, but would also back your data up on the fly; better, you can just keep adding/replacing hard drives as your storage needs grow, without having to reconfigure the array. Also, ethernet is faster than USB/Firewire; and you can put on that enclosure 7200 rpm HDDs, which are faster than the ones that usually ship with laptops. Drobo has a similar solution, but Netgear's cheaper. Both companies' products are fully compatible with Mac OS.

I'd stay away from SSDs for the time being: lots of problems with firmwares, and the technology isn't yet as reliable as magnetic storage.

Skiletsrage said:

Thanks chscag, I appreciate your thoughts! So you think I should upgrade my internal disk as well, even though I could possibly move around 100GB's off of it, by moving photos, videos and music to an external? My current internal is 200GB 5400rpm.

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Frankly yes. Nowadays, a 200 GB internal drive is small. (I'm thinking about my first PC back in ancient times... it had a 30 MB hard drive.)

Lord Alveric said:

I'd stay away from SSDs for the time being: lots of problems with firmwares, and the technology isn't yet as reliable as magnetic storage.

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I agree. Also the fact that Mac OS X is yet to support TRIM (Windows 7 does) is another reason to avoid them for the time being. The most bang for your buck is still going to come from a standard fast 7200 RPM drive.

so this might be a silly question, but if i have my machine backed up to an external disk via Time Machine, can i install a new internal hard disk and simply 'restore' that new disk to the latest state on the Time Machine external disk? or will i need to reinstall the OS, apps, etc?