should i get an external hard drive for my new imac or?

i have an imac i7 27' 2012 model. and its really great but i am paranoid on installing microsoft office, photoshop, lightroom, bit torrent etc i was thinking i should get an external hard drive and download all the programs i am neglecting to download on the external and keep the internal hard drive clean but i feel like maybe i am wrong and you cant do that?

plz help so i dont buy useless crap, i am a photographer and need photoshop and have been waiting till i got an external till i download idk if i need that

I would definitely get an external drive for Time Machine.
Most of my photo bug friends have a dedicated drive just for photos something you may consider depending on the size of your library.

i understand getting a external for just photos but i am talking about is there a way i can install my programs i wants (photoshop,microsoft office,lightroom etc...) on JUST my external and keep it off my internal?

G'day and welcome to the forums./

Yes and no.

Applications which are drag and drop can be installed on the external subject to its being formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Applications that come with an Installer, such as Office as you mention and Apple applications, are better on the boot drive.

ryanvegas said:

i understand getting a external for just photos but i am talking about is there a way i can install my programs i wants (photoshop,microsoft office,lightroom etc...) on JUST my external and keep it off my internal?

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You really do want to install those applications on your iMac's internal hard drive simply for the reason that the applications will launch faster...and saving & retrieving files will be faster from the internal HD.

There really isn't a problem installing your applications on the iMac's internal HD...that's what it's there for!

- Nick

What Nick said.

Is it POSSIBLE to keep apps on an external drive? Yes.
Is it a good idea? No, not really.

Apps generally aren't large, if that's your concern. My largest app is 1.5 GB (a game with lots of graphics). Most are in the under 100 MB range. My entire applications folder is only 35 GB. You didn't say how large your hard drive is, but I doubt that the space your applications will consume will take up a significant portion of it. I tried putting applications on external drives, and although it worked, it was slow and no all of them took to it that well. Many assume that they are on the boot drive, and look for components there at run time. So as chase_m, harry and nick have said, it can be done, but should not.

Install all your photo apps to your main drive, as others have said they don't take up much room. You may try to use an external USB3.0 or thunderbolt display as your scratch disk though. I use Lightroom and have found that it works much quicker for previews if the catalogue is on the main drive as it accesses quicker.

- My work flow for photography looks like this.
- Import photos using Lightroom to main drive.
- Edit photos, do photoshop work saving photos in original folder.
- When I'm finished working on a particular set of images I drag the folder within Lightroom to a new folder on the external drive. (You need to create a folder first on the external with one photo that you can import so you can map the drive in LR). You must move the folder in Lightroom to retain your changes or the files will show up as missing.

This all being said you have no back up this way as all files will eventually only be on the external. The solution is to run 2 externals and either Carbon Copy Clone a drive or use Super Duper to just back up the Photo folder.

I currently use 2 3tb externals and upload all my photos to Smugmug as high quality .jpgs.