New computer advice, please (Page 6): From a generalization, look at computers that are configured for gaming. The CPUs are generally fast and almost all have separate high speed...

stangage

From a generalization, look at computers that are configured for gaming. The CPUs are generally fast and almost all have separate high speed graphics card (separate plug in on mother board, not an onboard IC or built into the main CPU). Computer sales are slow right now so many preconfigured units are substantially discounted. I bought an HP Omen unit last December with 1 T internal SSD, 32 G RAM and 8G Nvidia graphics card. Similar units now list for ~$1k. Be sure to get Win 11 pro and be prepared to spend some time getting accustomed to the differences from Win 10 if that's what you currently use. I linked this up with my older 4K level BenQ monitor.
This all works well with Lightroom, Photoshop and the Topaz suite of programs.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Longshadow wrote:

The old methods fade away.....
I did, MANY, many years ago, have a micro-cartridge tape drive.

I had two PCs at work with tape backup drives in them. Both PCs' hard drives failed. Neither tape backup worked!

I never wanted another tape drive after that. Tape was great for audio and video and mainframe computers, but those stupid cartridges never did work. Several others in my office had the same issues with them.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

stangage wrote:

From a generalization, look at computers that are ... (show quote)

Just don't by a gaming MONITOR. They are not optimized for image accuracy. They are optimized for high brightness, high contrast, and fast refresh rate, three things you do not want for still image editing.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

burkphoto wrote:

I had two PCs at work with tape backup drives in them. Both PCs' hard drives failed. Neither tape backup worked!

I never wanted another tape drive after that. Tape was great for audio and video and mainframe computers, but those stupid cartridges never did work. Several others in my office had the same issues with them.

Interesting. I never had a problem with the tape drive. The only thing I disliked was that it was sequential access.
I started with backing up to floppies.
Then graduated to the small tape cartridges.
Then CDs.
Then DVDs.
Then external HDs.
Then added the cloud.
I believe I'll be with HDs for a lot longer than the others.

(One test system I programmed too many years ago, used 8-bit punched fan-fold paper tape....
Another used a tape cartridge that looked kinda like an 8-track.
Another used regular 9 track mag tape reels.)

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

DirtFarmer wrote:

Could you expand on your advice with reasons?

The OP is using a laptop. Laptops AFAIK only have one internal drive. It that fails you risk losing everything on the HD/SSD unless you have a complete backup of that drive. That is why I would never keep my LrC catalog on a laptop HD/SSD.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

BobHartung wrote:

The OP is using a laptop. Laptops AFAIK only have one internal drive. It that fails you risk losing everything on the HD/SSD unless you have a complete backup of that drive. That is why I would never keep my LrC catalog on a laptop HD/SSD.

Every time I back up my photos I also back up the LRC catalog.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

DWU2 wrote:

Every time I back up my photos I also back up the LRC catalog.

Note the OPs first post. He "lost a lot of images" when his 8 year old laptop crashed. This implies that he did not have any backup - on computer or off computer. Beside Lightroom Classic can accumulate TB of photos and not many of us have backup with TB of internal storage even with the newer SSDs - his laptop was 8 years old.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

"not many of us have backup with TB of internal storage" - why internal? Currently, you can buy a 4TB external drive for 90 bucks.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Longshadow wrote:

I would buy another Toshiba in a heartbeat if they were still manufactured.
Not sure why they got out of the personal computer business.

Probably too much competition. Our first computer was made by IBM; our second by Compaqt. We even had one Mac, but we found that they cost too much for what you get. Our latest desktop computer was built my our daughter and her husband, runs Linux. Interesting, we got our IBM computer {this was 1988} when our newborn daughter {her} made our running off to our offices {we worked in academia, where the entire department shared one desktop computer} awkward.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

BobHartung wrote:

The OP is using a laptop. Laptops AFAIK only have one internal drive. It that fails you risk losing everything on the HD/SSD unless you have a complete backup of that drive. That is why I would never keep my LrC catalog on a laptop HD/SSD.

I tend to keep photos on our desktop computer, and periodically copy them to an external unit.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

rehess wrote:

I tend to keep photos on our desktop computer, and periodically copy them to an external unit.

Yup. Same here. I don't need to clutter the laptop with a copy of all the images. Plus, I can get to the images on the desktop from my laptop via the router if I need to grab an image. (network places). Slower because data is encrypted, but I can do it.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

BobHartung wrote:

Note the OPs first post. He "lost a lot of images" when his 8 year old laptop crashed. This implies that he did not have any backup - on computer or off computer.

I have four copies of everything.

A full image archive is stored on each of two external drives (I don't keep any archived images on the internal drive), one is a 3TB portable drive that goes with me when I travel. The other is a 4TB drive which stays home, and is kept in my 'gun safe' when we're out of town. Then there's a back-up on iCloud and finally two 512GB memory sticks which are stored in a fireproof document safe. The memory sticks get update with new files from the laptop at the end of each month, while the two external drives are always up-to-date. I also have an old, DVD-based set of archives, which admittedly are about six-months out-of-date, stored at our son's house in Texas, as a worst case scenario (I plan to replace that 'copy' using high density memory sticks one of these days). Note that as of today, there are 54,267 images in the archive, as well as the database application itself.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

BobHartung wrote:

As a Mac user my only suggestion is this: Do Do NOT store your Lightroom (I presume Lightroom Classic) Catalogs on the Internal HD. I would always use an external HD.

DirtFarmer wrote:

Could you expand on your advice with reasons?

burkphoto wrote:

I'll offer: br br > If you use a laptop, and i... (show quote)

BobHartung wrote:

The OP is using a laptop. Laptops AFAIK only have one internal drive. It that fails you risk losing everything on the HD/SSD unless you have a complete backup of that drive. That is why I would never keep my LrC catalog on a laptop HD/SSD.

Of course. Backup is the answer. With a good backup paradigm, it doesn't matter if you keep the catalog on your internal drive. Backup will back up your internal drive.

LR can be set to back up the catalog at predetermined intervals or every time you close it. You can choose where the backup goes. Just make sure that you place the backup somewhere that is backed up with your regular backup procedure/software.

Sometimes I just assume that people back things up. I believe they should, but not everyone thinks like I do (probably a good thing sometimes).

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

DirtFarmer wrote:

Of course. Backup is the answer. With a good backu... (show quote)

With Apple Silicon Macs, the internal storage options are very expensive. Using external drives can be a lot less costly, especially when the Lightroom Classic catalog and images are on an external RAID 1 device. Of course, you can always merge catalogs, too, so if you need LrC to edit on the road, you can create a separate catalog for that.

I elected to get 1TB internal storage on my MacBook Air. It fills up FAST, especially during video projects. That's why I use external drives for much of my work.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

TriX wrote:

But the other reason to have an optical drive (in addition to loading old SW on disc and moving DVD and audio to HD or cloud) is that most Blu ray drives also play and record MDisks, currently the most robust archive media in existence. They are available in sizes up to 100GB and are favored by photographers and media producers for archive. An excellent local backup (much more reliable than disc) for those files that you really want to keep for a LONG time.

burkphoto wrote:

Good point! $10/100 GB disc is a little steep, but the longevity seems worth it. I do worry about availability of a mechanism and driver software to read the stored files a generation or two down the road, though.

I have not considered MDisks for my backup because of the 100 GB limit.

100 GB used to be a lot of data. Not any more. My photos take up 2000 GB. So I would need 20 MDisks just to back up my photos. Probably another 10 to back up other stuff. So now I have 30 MDisks. Which one contains the file I want to restore?

A good database would provide me with the link between the MDisk number and individual files, but that will require data input to record which file is on which MDisk. So now, I have another Catalog of files in addition to my LR Catalog of images. I suppose it can be done and there may be someone who can provide the software to manage that catalog, but it is never mentioned when people recommend MDisks for storage.

And Bill's concern about the reader can extend to the drivers available a few OS generations down the road.

MDisk capacities of 1 TB would help, but we already have external drives that can handle 10 TB. MDisks have some catching up to do to be viable (IMHO).

I should add that file names are not enough for the catalog. Take a look at the files used by any large program. The names mean nothing unless you wrote the program. You need a full description of the file to be able to figure out which file you're looking for.