External hard drives for newest MacBook Pro

[Beth22006102kh1k]

To be able to upgrade to the most recent versions of Lightroom and Photoshop I have ordered the new MacBook Pro with M1 Max chip.  I am also in need of new external hard drives that will work with it.  Can anyone make some recommendations?

[Conrad_C]

Is there a reason that you need new external hard drives? Is it that you don’t have any yet, but you need more storage? Or do you already have some, and you believe you have to replace them? Are you upgrading from a much older Mac with different ports, and if so, which year and model?

I now have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro, and I simply continued using all of the external USB storage I had before.

Also, do you want new external storage for…

Bulk photo storage for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic?

Improved editing performance in Photoshop and Lightroom Classic?

Backups?

The reasons for those questions is that the right recommendation depends on your goals. For some goals, big cheap hard drives are recommended; for other goals fast solid state drives are recommended. And if it’s just a matter of the ports being different,  many older drives can continue to be used by buying inexpensive adapters.

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, The only thing you might need if you have USB hard disks is a Thunderbolt to USB "A" dock.

[Beth22006102kh1k]

Thanks for your replies.  I use Lightroom Classic and Photoshop and the performance on my old 2015 MacBook Pro w 2 USB 3.0 ports has been painfully slow.  Also that computer won't accommodate some of the newer processing software and my internal hard drive is filling up.  For years I have used 2 external hard drives for my library - one as my "primary" working drive and the other as backup.  But they fill up and age.  Lastyear I bought a 10 TB WD My Book with the plan of copying all the old images to it.  Though I formatted it for use with Mac it has not been working optimally - the "on" light never comes on, unless I dismount it immediately after completing  download (using it as backup) it won't dismount, and it occassionally makes noises that WDs website says indicate inadequate power (has its own plug in the wall power cord.) This year I've been using a 2TB Sandisk SSD drive as my working drive for current photos.  I want to be able to access my old images for processing. I want faster performance, dependable HDs/ reliable backups, easy access to all my photos. Library is now about 7-8 TB.

[PECourtejoie]

(Please disregard, I mixed two threads) Hi, I would recommend to post in the Lightroom forum to see if a workflow with several TBs of files on external hard drives would be supported with Lr mobile...

[Conrad_C]

She says she uses Lightroom Classic, so looking into the Lr mobile question might not be necessary.

[PECourtejoie]

Indeed, I got confused with a thread about iPads... thanks for the notice !

[Conrad_C]

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@Beth22006102kh1k wrote:

Thanks for your replies.  I use Lightroom Classic and Photoshop and the performance on my old 2015 MacBook Pro w 2 USB 3.0 ports has been painfully slow.

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Before you buy any new storage, when you get your (very fast) new Mac see how well your existing drives work with it. See if the performance problems were more about the 6-year-old Mac instead of with the hard drives. The reason is that for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, a decent hard drive, connected using USB 3 ports and cables, should be fast enough for storing originals for editing. I looked at a review of the WD MyBook and the review said it could transfer at around 200MB/sec, which should be fast enough.

If you find that editing from your existing hard drives still feels slow with the new Mac, especially with the older hard drives, then maybe those do need to be updated. Does editing feel faster for the files on the Sandisk SSD?

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@Beth22006102kh1k wrote:

Lastyear I bought a 10 TB WD My Book with the plan of copying all the old images to it.  Though I formatted it for use with Mac it has not been working optimally - the "on" light never comes on, unless I dismount it immediately after completing  download (using it as backup) it won't dismount, and it occassionally makes noises that WDs website says indicate inadequate power (has its own plug in the wall power cord.)

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That sounds like a defective product, so if it’s already outside the warranty period, it’s a good idea to consider replacing it anyway.

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@Beth22006102kh1k wrote:

 I want faster performance, dependable HDs/ reliable backups, easy access to all my photos. Library is now about 7-8 TB.

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It does sound like you need a good hard drive of 10TB or more. (8TB SSDs are extremely expensive.) It is unfortunate that the 10TB WD MyBook is giving you so much trouble. It is difficult to recommend specific hard drive brands because quality can vary by model, but one source of information is the regularly updated reliability review of hard drives by Backblaze. Those are not external drives but bare (internal) drives because they put them into servers, but I no longer buy pre-made external storage. What I do now is separately buy the storage and an empty enclosure, so I can pick any internal drive and it’s easy to update it later by putting in a new drive. For example, I have this type of USB 3 four-bay enclosure that I buy empty, so I can easily update the drives inside as needed for more space or speed. (It says RAID, but I do not use the RAID feature.)

Regarding backups, of course you’ll want to budget for at least three of the type of hard drive you settle on. One to be the primary storage, and two for exact backups of it. Just having one backup is risky, and it’s good to store one backup at a different location to protect against burglary or disaster.

[War Unicorn]

Thanks for your replies.  I use Lightroom Classic and Photoshop and the performance on my old 2015 MacBook Pro w 2 USB 3.0 ports has been painfully slow.

By @Beth22006102kh1k

Before you buy any new storage, when you get your (very fast) new Mac see how well your existing drives work with it. See if the performance problems were more about the 6-year-old Mac instead of with the hard drives. The reason is that for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, a decent hard drive, connected using USB 3 ports and cables, should be fast enough for storing originals for editing. I looked at a review of the WD MyBook and the review said it could transfer at around 200MB/sec, which should be fast enough.

If you find that editing from your existing hard drives still feels slow with the new Mac, especially with the older hard drives, then maybe those do need to be updated. Does editing feel faster for the files on the Sandisk SSD?

Lastyear I bought a 10 TB WD My Book with the plan of copying all the old images to it.  Though I formatted it for use with Mac it has not been working optimally - the "on" light never comes on, unless I dismount it immediately after completing  download (using it as backup) it won't dismount, and it occassionally makes noises that WDs website says indicate inadequate power (has its own plug in the wall power cord.)

By @Beth22006102kh1k

That sounds like a defective product, so if it’s already outside the warranty period, it’s a good idea to consider replacing it anyway.

 I want faster performance, dependable HDs/ reliable backups, easy access to all my photos. Library is now about 7-8 TB.

By @Beth22006102kh1k

It does sound like you need a good hard drive of 10TB or more. (8TB SSDs are extremely expensive.) It is unfortunate that the 10TB WD MyBook is giving you so much trouble. It is difficult to recommend specific hard drive brands because quality can vary by model, but one source of information is the regularly updated reliability review of hard drives by Backblaze. Those are not external drives but bare (internal) drives because they put them into servers, but I no longer buy pre-made external storage. What I do now is separately buy the storage and an empty enclosure, so I can pick any internal drive and it’s easy to update it later by putting in a new drive. For example, I have this type of USB 3 four-bay enclosure that I buy empty, so I can easily update the drives inside as needed for more space or speed. (It says RAID, but I do not use the RAID feature.)

Regarding backups, of course you’ll want to budget for at least three of the type of hard drive you settle on. One to be the primary storage, and two for exact backups of it. Just having one backup is risky, and it’s good to store one backup at a different location to protect against burglary or disaster.

By @Conrad_C

Ditto on that last tip. Redundancy is king for mission-critical documents.