Effjayess Loc: NE,Pennsylvania

Once again I ask for help from the UHHers. I have seen many of you state that you store all of your pics on a external drive only. I have the rare opportunity to start fresh.I have a brand new iMac, loaded Aperture and the NIK suite on the system; but it is sitting on the desk top with no pictures. Now I want to start transferring all of my work to the new machine. If Aperture is set up as the default viewer when I insert a card it will open the pics, I edit and then how do I get it to save only to the external drive and not stay on the internal drive? Also, if I want to review pics I am assuming I won't have a organized library in the Aperture folder, the whole idea of aperture was for the cataloging feature. Will my drive show as a source within the program with just hundreds of mixed pics or will it mimic the file names given in aperture when downloaded?
Excuse my ignorance but I just can't get my head around this, I always just let everything reside within the editing program which was Picasa. By the way the internal drive is a 1 T and the external is a 1 T. Am I sweating it for nothing will there be plenty of room for a casual shooter should I just let everything on the internal and just let the external archive back up or use the external as primary picture storage? I just want to do it right being that I am staring fresh. Thanks in advance to all who answer.

CurreyPhoto Loc: Reddick, Florida

My computer is a PC, so none of what I say may apply. We will have to wait for the Mac users to get up before we have the definitive answer, but I can tell you what I do. When I finish editing a picture in PSE 11 I select "file" then "save as". Then I type the location of the external drive, say "d" then ":" then "/" then the name of the folder I have set up on the external drive. In my case it is "proofs and final pictures 7", then "enter" and it is there. Hope that helps.

Db7423 Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Use both the internal and external drive . The purpose of the desktop (external) drive is so your pics will be in TWO locations so if one drive should go bad you won't lose anything. Setup the Time Machine on your iMac to handle the backups for you.

GHK Loc: The Vale of Eden

[quote=Effjayess] I have seen many of you state that you store all of your pics on a external drive only.

Don't do this; you need at least two copies of every file, stored in different places; otherwise, disaster might be just around the corner. GHK

when I insert a card it will open the pics, I edit and then how do I get it to save only to the external drive and not stay on the internal drive?

If you have edited the file, it will still be open on the screen, so you can choose "Save As", select the destination and click "Save".
You main objective, however, seems to be file transference.
In this case there is no need to open the files themselves.
If I have a file, more often a folder with several image files in it, stored on my internal drive, I open the drive by double clicking Computer" and selecting the drive. Then I go into the drive and find the folder that I want to transfer. I right click on the folder icon and select "Copy to". This brings up a list which may or may not contain my external drive. If it does, I just click on it. If not, I select "Choose Folder" at the bottom of the list. This brings up another list which contains my external drive, either visible or stacked under "Computer". When I find the drive, I just click on it. This procedure, which takes much longer to explain than to do in practice will save the folder, and all its contents on the external drive as well as leaving a copy at the original site. If you really do want it only on the external disc, you can select "Move to" instead of "Copy to".
GHK

rebride

Actually your files do not reside in Picasa. Even if you imported thru Picasa they were on your hard drive outside of Picasa. Probably in My Pictures.

billybaseball Loc: Bel Air MD

I have two external drives and save all my pics separately to both so that that if one goes down I don't lose all my pics.

BboH Loc: s of 2/21, Ellicott City, MD

If my house is destroyed, vandallized or burglarized then I've "had it". Otherwise, I'm confident in my storage.

I have two 3T drives, formatted for Raid 0; drive 2 automatically backs drive 1. Drive goes bad, replace it and the remaining drive repopulates the new drive. I keep only photorgaphic items (images and documents) in this system.

Have another system that is 1T comprised of 4 250G drives, formatted Raid 5; can lose up to two drives, replace them and they are repopulated by the other two - doesn't matter whicb two - all dirves back each other up.

My computer contains only programs and duplicated images that can get lost should the computer fail.

Have considered the "cloud" but so far, for me, the cons outweigh the pros. Have considered swapping out drives and using off-site storage but as I am a retired hobbyest I have no compelling "need" to go to that effort.

Fat Gregory Loc: Southern New Jersey

With my Pics I'm a Belt and Suspenders guy. I have the originals on my iMac internal, a TimeMachine back up on an external and another original on my MBPRO where the daily work is dumped in the field. The only pain in the battery bay is that the Apple Professional Services Aperture software prevents the same copy from being in use over your network at the same time. This can get confusing if you want everything neat and tidy. To cure my neurosis I just decided the desktop rules and do most work from there.
Drives are cheap... Hope this helps... If not ignore!!?

JennT Loc: South Central PA

I use Aperture and an iMac. and a couple of externals ...and a rather complicated to explain process of storing my images-- works well for me-- if you would like to have an explanation please send me a message---
since it is Mac and Aperture specific, it would be meaningless to go into it without knowing one would be interested.

BTW-- I also live in Pennsylvania

Edmojo Loc: Manhattan New York

I have almost the same setup but I use Lightroom.
I never import with a card as I had damaged a pin on a card before, I import with a USB cord from camera to my Mac. Lightroom opens and import saves to a g drive . I edit what I want and save changes. Everything is on the drive. Every once in a while I back my drive to another as to have a duplicate set.
I store some pics that are finished and ready to send in a jpeg format as specific files on the computer.

Ed

strikerazde Loc: Phoenix, AZ

I know this will sound Preachy here, but please take this from someone who has lost 6 months worth of data before. You photos to be safe should be in TWO PHYSICAL locations. Doesn't mater how many drives etc. they are on. There are a lot of options. One location should be local, and one off-site.

BTW a RAID device is NOT a backup, no matter if it has 4 drives configured in it or not. They do not account for viruses, human error and many other cases. RAID is a storage device, not a backup solution. And they are normally local as well.

Typically you would have a local copy on your computer/ RAID, extra drives locally when your computer drive is not large enough. Stored in a fire proof safe or under your mattress. Then ideally you want a copy off site. This could be a cloud like Carbonite. It could be DVD's in a safe deposit box, or another drive stored at your Aunt Bee's house. There are as many combinations here as there are UHH users. The point here is to move one physical copy away from the other so that if the unthinkable happens like a fire or theft, you do not lose it all.

I am not a MAC user so will let MAC folks speak directly to that. You said you had the chance to start over and do it correctly, I hope you do.

Ralloh Loc: Ohio

For what it's worth, I only use my external drive as a backup. Everything is on my internal drive. I can unplug the external and take it with me or hide it so I have a better chance of recovery if something goes wrong.

Unfortunately I am on a capped internet service so have to watch my usage. If I still had DSL, I would be using an off site service for storage too.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I use the internal computer storage and two external drives, sometimes using a third, as well. I use SyncBack Free to do the backups, and it's very fast because after the initial backup, all it does is copy the changes.

NOTLguy Loc: Niagara on the Lake, Ontario

I also have multiple copies of my files. I have an iMac with a time capsule back up. In addition to this I recently purchased a 3TB external drive which I also use to store my photographic files.

Now I'm going to get really anal. I also intend to use an older external drive to back up all of my photographs, and I will keep this at my daughters house (just in case of fire).

Why so many copies? Well, around 30 years ago, we moved from over seas and lost ALL of our photographs and negatives in the process (lesson #1).

Then a few yeas ago, I decided to buy my first external drive to back up the contents of my PC. During the process of backing up my files, the hard drive in my computer crashed (un retrievable files), and if this wash't bad enough, the external drive was faulty, and didn't copy any of the files from my computer (lesson # 2).

Fortunately, I did have SOME of my files backed up on a second laptop, so all wasn't lost. Anyway, bottom line is that I am determined that I won't loose my files like this again.

Just going back to the iMac / Time Capsule for a moment. The Mac system for backing up files is just fabulous. All of your files are backed up automatically every few minutes, and everything is done in the background seamlessly and imperceptibly. You can also use any type of external drive to take advantage of Apple's "Time Machine" (back up software).

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yes, that is a great system. Automatic is good.