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Participant
November 30, 2021
Question

External hard drives for newest MacBook Pro

  • November 30, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1494 views

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?

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2 replies

Participant
November 30, 2021

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
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 1, 2021

(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
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 2, 2021

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

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 30, 2021

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
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 30, 2021

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