Hard drive advice

[Ryan_]

Hello

Last year I changed my old macbook's set up. I took out the CD drive and put a 120GB SSD in there, and put a 1TB HD into the normal HD space. The SSD is running the OS and Lightroom and Photoshop. And all of my photos are on the 1TB drive.

Now, I need to move to a new 1TB hard drive, as my current one is quite filled up. However, my 120GB SSD only has 20GB left. In the past, everything was on 1 hard drive, so this was easy to move to a new drive. My original plan was to keep the SSD with the OS in the computer, format it, and start fresh on that drive too. (so that I have a fresh install of the OS, and other programs, to start a fresh Time Machine backup). I don't know if I'm making much sense, as I'm quite lost on how to proceed. I will absolutely figure this out, but just hoping someone can chime in with some advice on this of some kind.

One question that I actually have. Time machine backs up all of the internal drives (at least on my machine it is). So what happens if I try to restore the back up? Do I need 2 identical type of hard drives in the computer that it originally backed up? Honestly I use Time Machine because its integrated and easy, and mostly I use it simply to back up all of my RAW files (and some random other files laying around). But I wonder how difficult it would be to restore 2 hard drives from one backup? Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[fugu82]

My advice would be to use a USB3 external HD or large capacity thumb drive. Download and install the OS to the external, and make sure your laptop will boot from it. After you replace the internal HD you can boot from the external, format your SSD using Disk Utility, and reinstall the OS and apps.

 

[DrwMDvs]

First off, which model and size screen of macbook do you have? Also, do you have TRIM enabled for the SSD (if you have OS X Yosemite installed, and it's supported)? If not, and you can enable TRIM, I would highly recommend it as is the only way for an operating system to tell an SSD to free up space from deleted files, as this doesn't occur even if you have deleted the files in the trashcan. TRIM wasn't supported for third party drives until OS X Yosemite unless it came with an SSD installed from Apple themselves. This also helps keep the SSD performing at optimum speeds because as the drive fills up it won't be back logged with old, deleted data.

What I do as far as photos goes is that I have backup drives for my old files over a year old that I know I won't touch. Using Lightroom, I transfer those old files (so that it maintains the folder structure) onto a portable hard drive that I use as my backup, just for photos. I'll periodically purge my photos off of the main drive to keep used space to a minimum. Granted I do this because I only have the one hard drive in my laptop. This is also good because if I just need to the photos themselves, then I have the portability of taking the drive where I need without a laptop. Basically in short, I only keep the photos on my laptop within the last year, the rest are on externals. That way it's not all in one place in case of failure.

This will also make it far easier for you in terms of not having to reinstall all of your software and change all your settings back if you did a fresh install.

 

[Ryan_]

My advice would be to use a USB3 external HD or large capacity thumb drive. Download and install the OS to the external, and make sure your laptop will boot from it. After you replace the internal HD you can boot from the external, format your SSD using Disk Utility, and reinstall the OS and apps.

My laptop is USB 2.0 at most, from late 2008. But instead of doing what you suggested, couldn't I just format the drive from within Yosemite?

 

[Ryan_]

First off, which model and size screen of macbook do you have? Also, do you have TRIM enabled for the SSD (if you have OS X Yosemite installed, and it's supported)? If not, and you can enable TRIM, I would highly recommend it as is the only way for an operating system to tell an SSD to free up space from deleted files, as this doesn't occur even if you have deleted the files in the trashcan. TRIM wasn't supported for third party drives until OS X Yosemite unless it came with an SSD installed from Apple themselves. This also helps keep the SSD performing at optimum speeds because as the drive fills up it won't be back logged with old, deleted data.

What I do as far as photos goes is that I have backup drives for my old files over a year old that I know I won't touch. Using Lightroom, I transfer those old files (so that it maintains the folder structure) onto a portable hard drive that I use as my backup, just for photos. I'll periodically purge my photos off of the main drive to keep used space to a minimum. Granted I do this because I only have the one hard drive in my laptop. This is also good because if I just need to the photos themselves, then I have the portability of taking the drive where I need without a laptop. Basically in short, I only keep the photos on my laptop within the last year, the rest are on externals. That way it's not all in one place in case of failure.

This will also make it far easier for you in terms of not having to reinstall all of your software and change all your settings back if you did a fresh install.

I have the 13 inch Aluminum Macbook (5,1 I believe), late 2008. I am running Yosemite, and not sure if I have TRIM enabled. I've heard about it, but there seemed to be lot of mixed feelings about it, so I never bothered with it.

I think we have a similar method of backing up photos. I simply use my hard drive till it almost fills up, and then replace it. Of course I have backups as well. But this is the first time I'm running two hard drives, and its kind of throwing a wrench in the replacement process (due to my lack of knowledge).

As of now, I've ordered a replacement hard drive for the 1TB HDD, but not a replacement for the 120GB SSD with the OS & Apps on it. My rough plan now is to remove the current 1TB HDD. And then format the SSD. And then put in the new 1TB HDD and do as I did before, point my Lightroom catalog to the new 1TB HDD.
How does that sound? Feasible? I suppose I'll find out either way but man I'm not sure this split drive thing was worth the trouble.

 

[DrwMDvs]

If you have more than just photos on the 1TB HD, it might be worth just moving the photos off if it contains other documents or files you use on the regular. That would make less work for having to shuffle through everything to get what you need onto the new HD.

If you keep all of your documents mixed into your 1TB HD it might be worth partitioning a section of that drive and dedicating it to just your photos, that way you can easily see where those are stored and transfer that to another drive when need be. You could put lesser used programs on the HD also to free up space on the SSD. Problem is, that the deleted space might not actually be realized so your speeds will still be slow as if it was full. You might consider also getting a larger SSD if you don't feel comfortable enabling TRIM. Either way, I still feel it would be far less cumbersome to not wipe the SSD if you only use what you say you use it for.

Since you seem to do this more often than not, I would follow fugu82's advice and get a thumb drive large enough to install OS X on it so that you can boot from it. While pushing the power button to boot, hold the option key until it chimes. This will direct you to the startup manager allowing you to select the USB thumb drive as your boot disk, allowing you to reformat your other drives as you see fit.

 

[fugu82]

First off, which model and size screen of macbook do you have? Also, do you have TRIM enabled for the SSD (if you have OS X Yosemite installed, and it's supported)? If not, and you can enable TRIM, I would highly recommend it as is the only way for an operating system to tell an SSD to free up space from deleted files, as this doesn't occur even if you have deleted the files in the trashcan. TRIM wasn't supported for third party drives until OS X Yosemite unless it came with an SSD installed from Apple themselves. This also helps keep the SSD performing at optimum speeds because as the drive fills up it won't be back logged with old, deleted data.

What I do as far as photos goes is that I have backup drives for my old files over a year old that I know I won't touch. Using Lightroom, I transfer those old files (so that it maintains the folder structure) onto a portable hard drive that I use as my backup, just for photos. I'll periodically purge my photos off of the main drive to keep used space to a minimum. Granted I do this because I only have the one hard drive in my laptop. This is also good because if I just need to the photos themselves, then I have the portability of taking the drive where I need without a laptop. Basically in short, I only keep the photos on my laptop within the last year, the rest are on externals. That way it's not all in one place in case of failure.

This will also make it far easier for you in terms of not having to reinstall all of your software and change all your settings back if you did a fresh install.

I have the 13 inch Aluminum Macbook (5,1 I believe), late 2008. I am running Yosemite, and not sure if I have TRIM enabled. I've heard about it, but there seemed to be lot of mixed feelings about it, so I never bothered with it.

I think we have a similar method of backing up photos. I simply use my hard drive till it almost fills up, and then replace it. Of course I have backups as well. But this is the first time I'm running two hard drives, and its kind of throwing a wrench in the replacement process (due to my lack of knowledge).

As of now, I've ordered a replacement hard drive for the 1TB HDD, but not a replacement for the 120GB SSD with the OS & Apps on it. My rough plan now is to remove the current 1TB HDD. And then format the SSD. And then put in the new 1TB HDD and do as I did before, point my Lightroom catalog to the new 1TB HDD.
How does that sound? Feasible? I suppose I'll find out either way but man I'm not sure this split drive thing was worth the trouble.

If your only OS is on the SSD you won't be allowed to format it [you can't format your boot drive]. So you will need an external OS that can boot your laptop, and then use it to format the SSD within the laptop.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

When I purchase a new hard drive (OS) for my PC, I use a utility Acronis or the like to clone the original drive to the new one(Acronis works for Mac). You usually get a utility when you buy a new SSD. I just bought a 960GB SSD for my new PC, at under $200, it was not a big deal. I use 4TB drives for data.

As noted, a esata, USB or other external/ internal connection is needed to copy or clone your drive. You can generally install a clean OS and restore a backup after updating the OS. Since you have a port for a second drive, remove the data drive, connect the new ssd, and run the clone utility. No need for a extremely slow USB2 drive to do that job.

Trim is really important on a SSD. It removes the files you deleted so they do not have to have slow overwrites. This is like using a SD card, it has to have a low level format to keep its speed. Trim does that only on the memory cells that contain deleted data rather than a low level format of the entire drive. CF cards do the trim function automatically.

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Mt Spokane.
Statements like this really bother me, not because I think it is incorrect, but because SSD's are a much newer implementation of the similar technology (at least how I understand it) yet they omitted such an important function that has been included, and therefore its importance well understood, on such similar devices.
What was going on when the designers of the standard decided to 'leave it to the OS to provide and user to turn on if they want to even though many (most?) don't understand its importance.'

Cheers, Graham.

Trim is really important on a SSD. "snip" CF cards do the trim function automatically.

 

[DrwMDvs]

Hi Mt Spokane.
Statements like this really bother me, not because I think it is incorrect, but because SSD's are a much newer implementation of the similar technology (at least how I understand it) yet they omitted such an important function that has been included, and therefore its importance well understood, on such similar devices.
What was going on when the designers of the standard decided to 'leave it to the OS to provide and user to turn on if they want to even though many (most?) don't understand its importance.'

Cheers, Graham.

It might be because they didn't expect a user to install an operating system on something such as a CF card. The operating system will be able to differentiate between system files or anything else compared to the hard drive itself, making it far more universal than having to be OS specific. Just a guess though.

 

[Ryan_]

Time machine is nothing more than differential backup; theoretically you should be able to restore a time machine backup back to your machine, assuming the OS drive doesn't change IE you keep your 128GB SSD for OS and apps and upgrade just your 1TB which contains data only.

Have I done it? No. If I were in your shoes, I'd go the safe route and reinstall and manually backup. But if you're asking is it probable to work? Yes. 100% bulletproof tested? No. Low probability of failure but high cost of failure = risk avoidance in my book.

Dumb question, couldn't you just swap out the 1TB and put it in an external enclosure, and put the bigger drive in and then move the data? It's not the OS drive, so, what's the problem?

Not sure what you mean reinstall and manually backup? Are you saying to not use Time Machine and just backup my photos by dragging to external HD? Truthfully I use Time Machine because its so easy and simple, and I do have some documents that need backing up as well, along with photos from my phone which I backup to the computer. So instead of me going through and figuring out which folder needs backing up, I just buy bigger external hard drives and back up everything via Time Machine. For me it just works.

 

[Ryan_]

Anyways I forgot I have a Mavericks install on one of my old external drives, which I've used to install a fresh OS to a new drive before. So I think I just take out the 1TB data drive, put in the new one, format it, etc. And then format the SSD with OS on it by booting from the Mavericks install, and freshly install Mavericks (or maybe I'll download and put the new OS on there) to it.

Any last minute advice? The drive is coming today. What about TRIM? If I format the SSD, does it do a "low level" format? So its REALLY clear?

 

[Ryan_]

Finally did it! New 1TB HD for data is installed. The SSD with OS is cleaned out but I didn't format it. Just told Time Machine to forget the old back up drives, and I will start with 2 new ones.

Thank you all for your help and advice.

One last question though. My SSD drive thats for OS and Apps (pretty much only Photoshop and Lightroom) is 120GB. However it says it only has 44.74GB free. I thought OS was only ~8GB? And Photoshop and Lightroom even less than that? The big space hog is "Other", taking up 54GB. Anyone know if this is normal? I've googled it but have yet to find a clear answer.

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Ryan.
I don't use Mac so I don't know if it is similar at all to Windows, but I was wondering where a chunk of my 'C' drive was disappearing to, it was the hibernation file (don't know if Macs have this or if you are using it) which is apparently at least as big as your installed ram (and any virtual ram you may be using I think) and has to be on the same drive as the OS.
Just a thought.

Cheers, Graham.

Finally did it! New 1TB HD for data is installed. The SSD with OS is cleaned out but I didn't format it. Just told Time Machine to forget the old back up drives, and I will start with 2 new ones.

Thank you all for your help and advice.

One last question though. My SSD drive thats for OS and Apps (pretty much only Photoshop and Lightroom) is 120GB. However it says it only has 44.74GB free. I thought OS was only ~8GB? And Photoshop and Lightroom even less than that? The big space hog is "Other", taking up 54GB. Anyone know if this is normal? I've googled it but have yet to find a clear answer.

 

[Ryan_]

Hi Ryan.
I don't use Mac so I don't know if it is similar at all to Windows, but I was wondering where a chunk of my 'C' drive was disappearing to, it was the hibernation file (don't know if Macs have this or if you are using it) which is apparently at least as big as your installed ram (and any virtual ram you may be using I think) and has to be on the same drive as the OS.
Just a thought.

Cheers, Graham.

Finally did it! New 1TB HD for data is installed. The SSD with OS is cleaned out but I didn't format it. Just told Time Machine to forget the old back up drives, and I will start with 2 new ones.

Thank you all for your help and advice.

One last question though. My SSD drive thats for OS and Apps (pretty much only Photoshop and Lightroom) is 120GB. However it says it only has 44.74GB free. I thought OS was only ~8GB? And Photoshop and Lightroom even less than that? The big space hog is "Other", taking up 54GB. Anyone know if this is normal? I've googled it but have yet to find a clear answer.

Thanks for the idea! I googled and yes the Mac has a very similar function (at least in a certain sleep mode). So that could explain some of the space being taken up. However I doubt that accounts for much of the 54GB.
I should note that I did delete an old iPhone backup, and that cleared a nice chunk out (forget exactly how much). So there could be more things like that that I'm not thinking of.

Thanks Graham

 

[gjones5252]

Thanks for the idea! I googled and yes the Mac has a very similar function (at least in a certain sleep mode). So that could explain some of the space being taken up. However I doubt that accounts for much of the 54GB.
I should note that I did delete an old iPhone backup, and that cleared a nice chunk out (forget exactly how much). So there could be more things like that that I'm not thinking of.

Thanks Graham
[/quote]
Also remember that wherever your lightroom catalog is there will be the storage related to that. So if your catalog is large and its on that SSD it may be part of that 54gb.

Doing a regular and continual backup of my computer is starting to just become the norm. I use two 3tb hdd run in raid to backup whole different sections of my photo and video work- weddings on two, personal another, video projects take up a few etc.

 

[Ryan_]

Also remember that wherever your lightroom catalog is there will be the storage related to that. So if your catalog is large and its on that SSD it may be part of that 54gb.

Doing a regular and continual backup of my computer is starting to just become the norm. I use two 3tb hdd run in raid to backup whole different sections of my photo and video work- weddings on two, personal another, video projects take up a few etc.

Hmmm. My catalog was on the HDD photos drive, so not on the SSD that is in question.
But since you bring this up, I think I will try putting the catalog & previews onto the SSD, at least for now to see how it goes. Before retiring my previous drive, the catalog and previews were taking up only about 9GB, and thats associated with the ~1TB of photos on the other drive, so should be plenty doable on my current SSD.