Aperture use and external H.D. for workflow and storage of photos

Question

I was giving Aperture 2 a trial run before I buy, and am liking the things it can do. I take alot of Photos
so storage is always going to be something to deal with on a constant basis. My question is this, in order to not impact the speed or amount of HD space I have available on my imac can I download the Aperture program onto my imac then use a external HD as the place where the photos are imported to,
then worked on, and stored? If this is able to be done then what or how do I back up the photos on the external? (burn a dvd, as this is how I do it now). Does any of this make sense? Or am I worrying
to much about my HD space? My files for my photos are large, 11, to 12 mb per image so space is going fast.
As I have been into the apple world for only a year, let alone computer use in general, I am kinda a newbie to alot of this so please forgive my asking what to some maybe a dumb question.
Thanks for any help to my situation. Jeff

Answer 1

roverlr3 wrote:
My question is this, in order to not impact the speed or amount of HD space I have available on my imac can I download the Aperture program onto my imac then use a external HD as the place where the photos are imported to, then worked on, and stored?
Yes. You have described the use of Referenced Masters that IMO is very preferable for anyone with hard drive capacity limited in any way, especially for folks with single-internal-drive Macs like yours. Another choice would be to use a Managed external Library setup the way Terence described in the previous post, but putting the Library on an external drive is likely to slow operation.
Hard drives slow as they fill (a good rule of thumb is not to fill any drive more than 70%, and for best speed keep important drives no more than 50% full), so you will want your Masters on one or more external Firewire 800 (not USB2) hard drives. OWC <http://www.owcomputing.com/> drives are one good source.
To "Reference" Master images, when you go to import, on the right hand side of the import window select "Store files in their current location." Trying to keep Master originals on a single internal drive usually sooner or later overfills the internal drive.
The Library itself can usually live on any connected drive, including the (preferable!) internal drive, so long as Masters are stored externally. A Library of in excess of 100k images will remain small enough to keep on most well-managed internal drives. As long as the internal drive is kept underfilled it is preferable from a speed standpoint to have the Referenced-Masters Library reside on the internal drive.
If this is able to be done then what or how do I back up the photos on the external? (burn a dvd, as this is how I do it now). Does any of this make sense? Or am I worrying to much about my HD space?
Again yes, you are making total sense. HD space is a huge issue with modern DSLR capture from a standpoint of speed, security and overall images management. We all need to be concerned! As to burning DVDs, IMO they are ok for delivering work to clients but for photogs' usage multiple redundant on and off-site hard drives are more secure and much, much faster.
Note that iMacs and laptops in general are limiting to the performance of heavy graphics apps. In addition to good hard drives management, maximizing RAM will also help optimize Aperture performance on your iMac.
Good luck!!
-Allen Wicks