Just bought the new Retina MacBook Pro to replace my rapidly aging 4 year old MBP. For a variety of reasons I chose to get the $2200 model and upgrade RAM to 16gb - leaving me with a 256gb SSD that is too small for my photography storage needs. I have been meaning to move my photos to an external for years but never had the motivation until now. Additionally, I figured that I could also move my windows partition to an external drive so that I can access it whenever I am docked at home (mostly use it for games and family/friends tech support duties - not pressing issues).
So here is where I am at:
1) I will be using the drives almost solely for photography. I bought this new computer entirely because I am sick of waiting into the tens of seconds to buffer 21 megapixel photos so access speed does matter.
2) While I have many of my photos backed up as full resolution .jpg's on my website, I need redundant backups of my .CR2 raw files in case of future need for post processing.
#1 leads me to believe a thunderbolt drive is going to be the way to go. I use wireless N over the 5ghz range at home and don't plan on laying down ethernet wiring unless I can save a substantial amount of money going with a NAS drive + ethernet over a thunderbolt drive.
#2 in my mind means Raid 1. I know its slower but redundancy means a lot when a substantial portion of my life is going to be stored on these drives. Worst case scenario (fire/hurricane/tornado) I do have off site backup via the internet.
I really don't know enough about NAS or thunderbolt drive arrays to go one way or the other. What is my best option here? My price limit is the in the $500 range and its a relatively hard limit. So far I have only looked at the LaCie and WD thunderbolt drive pairs (both of which have been reviewed positively here):
WD $518
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Thunderbo...WD+thunderbolt
LaCie $560
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-2big-Thu...ds=lacie+2+big
I know the WD has the requirement of the drive being WD "Green" so there isn't the potential for an eventual upgrade to a 7400 RPM drive. Not sure about the LaCie in regards to this. Does anyone have experience with these 2 drive, drive arrays OR any other thunderbolt arrays that can run Raid 1 (through software or otherwise)?
I appreciate your time and comments,
kezeka
So here is where I am at:
1) I will be using the drives almost solely for photography. I bought this new computer entirely because I am sick of waiting into the tens of seconds to buffer 21 megapixel photos so access speed does matter.
2) While I have many of my photos backed up as full resolution .jpg's on my website, I need redundant backups of my .CR2 raw files in case of future need for post processing.
#1 leads me to believe a thunderbolt drive is going to be the way to go. I use wireless N over the 5ghz range at home and don't plan on laying down ethernet wiring unless I can save a substantial amount of money going with a NAS drive + ethernet over a thunderbolt drive.
#2 in my mind means Raid 1. I know its slower but redundancy means a lot when a substantial portion of my life is going to be stored on these drives. Worst case scenario (fire/hurricane/tornado) I do have off site backup via the internet.
I really don't know enough about NAS or thunderbolt drive arrays to go one way or the other. What is my best option here? My price limit is the in the $500 range and its a relatively hard limit. So far I have only looked at the LaCie and WD thunderbolt drive pairs (both of which have been reviewed positively here):
WD $518
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Thunderbo...WD+thunderbolt
LaCie $560
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-2big-Thu...ds=lacie+2+big
I know the WD has the requirement of the drive being WD "Green" so there isn't the potential for an eventual upgrade to a 7400 RPM drive. Not sure about the LaCie in regards to this. Does anyone have experience with these 2 drive, drive arrays OR any other thunderbolt arrays that can run Raid 1 (through software or otherwise)?
I appreciate your time and comments,
kezeka
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