2 External HDD - Which one for my workflow?! :/

I'm aware there's a thread for which external HDD to buy, but that isn't my issue. Mine is this:

I've finally sorted out my photography workflow how I want it, but I'm using up gigibytes fast on both my internal drive and Time Machine (500gb each). To alleviate the issue I'm about to buy a 1TB FW800 External Hard drive.

I'm going to be relocating my workflow to an HDD to free up space on the iMac - would I be better keeping my current Time Machine drive as it is, and using the FW800 for my photography, or the 1TB drive for time machine and then format the current time machine drive and use that for my photos?!

Would I notice any considerable difference in speed using the FW800 drive for photo work?

Apologies if this sounds confusing, but I'd appreciate any opinions!

Just curious, what interface if your other external you currently own and use with Time Machine? FireWire 800 is quite fast. Only things faster are Thunderbolt and E-Sata.

Usb 2.0

Oh my! FW800 will blow that down. FW400 in real use is quite noticeably faster than USB 2.0. I am sure the photo library would access a lot faster.

Will let others give their opinion also. I have tried to keep my photo library on my Internal but I don't have as large as a library as some here do.

Personally, I'd go fw800. Actually, I'd eventually go with two of those (and use one to backup your initial copy). Will you notice a difference in read/write times compared to your internal drive? Yep, not gonna lie, you will. Will it be a deal-breaker? No, not one bit. Dennis' comment made me curious this morning, so I fired up an external FW800/USB2 drive and benchmarked the same drive. All with the usual stuff I'd have running.. Firefox, Mail, iTunes, Lightroom, Photoshop...


FW800 transfer speed


USB2.0 transfer speed


Oh and to compare that to an internal drive on an iMac..

Thanks for the advice, gents!

Interestingly the USB 2.0 drive has a higher average read rate than the FW800 drive... Would this be down to an anomaly?!

Either way, looks like storing my photos on the FW drive is the way to go then! And yes, I would eventually get another one to for backups!

Cheers!

Yea, this is the problem with benchmarking in general (looks like spinup was slower when I first ran it, of course.. the drive had been off for hours ). I believe it's an anomaly, I've had to read large files from both and lemme tell ya.. the fw drives are faster.

Sweet! Cheers, Mike!