Unique Buying Advice

[jrambler]

I have three main goals:

1) system to maintain iPhone photos natively for my very large photo collection (2TB)

2) system to store music in ForScore (I have sheet music for piano - also use an AirTurn device for flipping pages)

3) have a good display setup I can use on my piano.

I have a MBA, M1 but it is only 512GB. Tried having my photo collection on a separate drive but struggled to maintain it on a Samsung external drive. “Photos” folder did not cooperate and seemed corrupted. Would love to have 4TB natively, but mac products with that much storage are really expensive.

Currently thinking of getting an iMac 24 with the VESA mount to mount to my piano. May splurge to get max sized SDD. Doesn’t feel like the best long term solution though. iPad would be nice but doesn’t seem the best option to maintain photo library…and 12.9” is a little small for piano sheet music at times.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Help wanted please

 

[tis100]

Here are some options that may help you (from cheapest to most expensive):

1. Continue to use Macbook Air, but store photos in iCloud ($9.99/month for 2TB on iCloud+ or $39.94/month for 4TB ($29.95/month for Apple One Premier + $9.99/month iCloud+)
2. Continue to use Macbook Air, but get a better external ssd with thunderbolt 3 support. For example: OCW 2TB Envoy Pro SX Portable NVMe M.2 External SSD ($348), SanDisk 2TB Pro-G40 SSD ($450) or OCW 4TB Envoy Pro SX Portable NVMe M.2 External SSD ($749).
3. iMac with 256GB SSD and VESA support ($1299) + 2TB iCloud+ ($9.99/month)
4. iPad Pro 12.9" 256GB ($1199) + Dell S2722QC 27" 4k USB-C Monitor ($400) + 2TB iCloud+ ($9.99/month)
5. iMac with 256GB SSD and VESA support ($1299) + external ssd with thunderbolt 3 support ($350-$749)
6. iMac with 2TB SSD and VESA support ($1700 + $600 = $2300)
7. iMac with 2TB SSD and VESA support ($1700 + $600 = $2300) + 2TB iCloud+ ($9.99/month)
8. iMac with 2TB SSD and VESA support ($1700 + $600 = $2300) + external ssd with thunderbolt 3 support ($350-$749)

 

[T Coma]

Tried having my photo collection on a separate drive but struggled to maintain it on a Samsung external drive. “Photos” folder did not cooperate and seemed corrupted.

I think you need to do some troubleshooting back here. It looks like you are trying to maintain your photos on the native Mac “Photos” app. The app itself fundamentally has no problem with maintaining a library on an external device, or switching among multiple libraries. When I switched over my main computer from a 2011 imac to a new MBP, I simply copied the photos library from the imac boot drive to a speedy Crucial brand 1 TB SSD and pointed Photos to that drive in Preferences. It has worked flawlessly ever since.

It’s unclear to me what “struggled” means in this context. Did you previously have it on another system with no “struggles?” Have you just imported 2TB of pics into the Photos app? I’m just guessing here but if that’s the case, it may still be busy indexing or whatever that app does to new entries. It’s tough to say though without a little more detail on what you had — apparently without problems — and how you brought it over to your new Mac.

Lastly, while 2TB is certainly a lot of pictures, it isn’t more than others have managed successfully with this app, although you can still search for posts about large Photos libraries. I don’t think that’s the problem, however you can try using a smaller sized library and gradually build it up to see if the problem comes from library size. I would think not, but if you attack this issue through process of elimination, that would be one approach.