storage suggestions for 21 mega pixel files!

[gargravar10]

5d mark ii owner getting ready to play with my new toy. I have an imac intel core duo computer and love it. I need advice on external harddrives that work well with this computer. I just bought the "My Book" 1 T from western Digital and the disk never appeared on my desktop. I read reviews on Amazon and see that this has been common. I know I will need a large external drive with this 21 megapixel camera and I would like to know what external harddrives you are using to back up your files.

I would also like to know if anyone out there knows what software I will need to use in order to edit my images as I am not sure if Aperture (which I currently use with my xti) is compatible with the 5d mark ii.


Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[runplaysleeprun]

Does the My Book appear in your "Disk Utility" application? You may need to reformat it to get it to work with your iMac.

 

[wheezy]

Your 1TB will be fine for several several thousand pictures at least, but you need to let us know the avg File Size of your images. Also, if you're shooting in RAW, then the space will getting used up much quicker.

Apple released a Digital RAW update a few weeks ago via Software Update that makes iPhoto and Aperture compatible with 5DII RAW files so you're good to go. If you're just shooting in JPG then you'll be fine as well.

I'd recommend maxing out the RAM on your iMac if you haven't already, and if it's a Core Duo (not a Core 2 Duo) then I'm thinking that it's only 2GB Max on it.

 

[gargravar10]

thank you for the responses. I am not sure yet how big the files are but I will be shooting in Raw and full resolution which I imagine is a very big file. Not to mention when I edit and create layers in other applications such as photoshop. It is a core 2 duo and I maxed out the ram to 4 gigs. I just bought a Macbook and it only has 2 gigs of ram so I don't know if I can do much work in it with the mark ii. I will run the updates for aperture, thanks for the info on that. iPhoto can convert raw with this update or just view the files as Jpeg?

If the "MyBook" doesn't work are there any other suggestions on what you use for external?

Thanks again.

 

[gargravar10]

Ok, so here's a question for you. I went to the disk utility and found the harddrive. It is recognized as only having 465 GB when it is actually 1 Terra byte. What's up with that? Also, what do I do once I have found it in disk utility, do I run "first aid", "raid", "restore it"...etc?

 

[rdowns]

Select the drive in disc utility and erase it. Make sure you have Mac OS Journaled selected as the format type.

If you decide to partition the drive, you can do it there as well.

 

[gargravar10]

rdowns,

thank you for the suggestion. when I select the drive and then select "erase" there are no available actions that I can select. Volume format and Name are both in bold but the drop down window is grayed out. it does have OS exteneded (journaled) selected. the buttons for erase free space, security op and "erase" are all grayed out as well. Do you know what this means?

 

[ChrisA]

5d mark ii owner getting ready to play with my new toy. I have an imac intel core duo computer and love it. I need advice on external harddrives that work well with this computer. I just bought the "My Book" 1 T from western Digital and the disk never appeared on my desktop. I read reviews on Amazon and see that this has been common. I know I will need a large external drive with this 21 megapixel camera and I would like to know what external harddrives you are using to back up your files.

Have you partitioned the drive and formated the partition using Disk Utilty? If not that explains it.

Nice camera but 21MP files are not really that big. I have thousands of files that size and many even larger all from scanned film. It takes a lot of photos to fill a 1TB drive.

Here is what I do:

1) I have a 1TB external for "data" that means Aperture library and iTunes and other documents I'm working on.

2) I have a 1.5 TB external drive that I use excluisivly for Time Machine.

3) I have several other external hard drives that I use to back up data. For photos I use Aperture's "vault" system. I sync a vault to the backup drive and then rotate that drive to either my office at work or a fire save at home.

So I have two independent backup systems, Time Machine and a few rotating vaults

For data that you care about an want to keep for decades you really need a system that keeps (1) at least three copies of the data on different physical media and (2) keeps the data in at least two different geographical locations -- that's the minimum you need to do.

I'm predicting that in 100 years there will be almost no 100 year old photos.

 

[compuwar]

Ok, so here's a question for you. I went to the disk utility and found the harddrive. It is recognized as only having 465 GB when it is actually 1 Terra byte. What's up with that? Also, what do I do once I have found it in disk utility, do I run "first aid", "raid", "restore it"...etc?

I've had issues with an external drive that was 2 500G drives in a chassis, and could only get one drive recognized no matter what (the thing may have been capable of RAID, but didn't seem to be set that way.) Every single-drive external I've tried has been fine, so I just go with those.

 

[Cliff3]

After my un-backed up external drive died during shipment to Australia (bye bye 300GB photo library...), I replaced it with a 2TB RAID drive from Lacie configured as 1TB of RAID 1. It has FW800/FW400/USB 2.0 connectivity and performance is excellent. It also hosts a time machine backup of my primary laptop, and bootable clones of each of my laptop's drives.

 

[djbahdow01]

Almost sounds as though the MyBook is set to a Raid configuration. In disk utility you should be able to just format it and set it to a JBOD, which will show you the full 1TB, well not 1TB but close.

For my storage, I have a redundant system.
Mac Pro
320GB Main Drive - OSX, Programs, downloads, small documents.
1 TB Work Drive - Graphic Design Work including Font Collection, Photography Work
400GB Secondary Drive - Used as a scratch Disk, Music Collection, as well as a dump drive for downloads and program installs.

Power Mac G4 - Server
160GB Main Drive - OSX, Programs
1TB Work 2 Drive - Back Ups of Design and Photo Work, backed up every night with ChronoSync
400 GB Secondary - Back Up of Music, and installs, also dump drive for my DVR recordings.

2 External 400GB HDs -
1) Travels with me to back up work I am currently photographing onsite, dumped to every night while traveling.
2) Stays at home pretty much cleaned out.

1 2TB Iomega x2 NAS
Mirrored Raid so only 1TB available - Redundant Back Up of Photo and Design work. Will eventually have this drive off site and will back up through the internet, so I have off site storage in case of emergency.

1 160GB USB powered Drive
Travel Drive backups of program installs etc, also used as a back up when limited with power. Always good to have your programs incase you have a laptop drive failure while on location (happened once, got my laptop running again in a few hours after figuring out what happened and making sure the drive wasn't fully bad.)

 

[CrackedButter]

Almost sounds as though the MyBook is set to a Raid configuration. In disk utility you should be able to just format it and set it to a JBOD, which will show you the full 1TB, well not 1TB but close.

For my storage, I have a redundant system.
Mac Pro
320GB Main Drive - OSX, Programs, downloads, small documents.
1 TB Work Drive - Graphic Design Work including Font Collection, Photography Work
400GB Secondary Drive - Used as a scratch Disk, Music Collection, as well as a dump drive for downloads and program installs.

Power Mac G4 - Server
160GB Main Drive - OSX, Programs
1TB Work 2 Drive - Back Ups of Design and Photo Work, backed up every night with ChronoSync
400 GB Secondary - Back Up of Music, and installs, also dump drive for my DVR recordings.

2 External 400GB HDs -
1) Travels with me to back up work I am currently photographing onsite, dumped to every night while traveling.
2) Stays at home pretty much cleaned out.

1 2TB Iomega x2 NAS
Mirrored Raid so only 1TB available - Redundant Back Up of Photo and Design work. Will eventually have this drive off site and will back up through the internet, so I have off site storage in case of emergency.

1 160GB USB powered Drive
Travel Drive backups of program installs etc, also used as a back up when limited with power. Always good to have your programs incase you have a laptop drive failure while on location (happened once, got my laptop running again in a few hours after figuring out what happened and making sure the drive wasn't fully bad.)

As of today this is my backup solution (though smaller). A 2.5" 500GB Time Machine Drive with a 2.5" 320GB backup running off the 1 Firewire cable.

 

[hhlee]

can i suggest that you get 2 1TB hd for proper backup?

 

[CrackedButter]

can i suggest that you get 2 1TB hd for proper backup?

Who me?