Switching to mac, questions on best place to host reference masters

Question

I am getting ready to switch from PC to Mac and have a question I am hoping I could get some advice on (I have a lot of questions actually, but will start with this one).
I have a large library of photos and videos and plan on getting an imac for my wife and macbook pro for me (I do the tagging/organizing and video editing).
Based on what I read, I am planning on keeping the masters on a separate drive and the aperture library on my macbook pro.
Question is, am I better off keeping the masters on the imac and access that folder as an external folder on my macbook pro for the masters, or should I use a NAS drive for them?
I have an older NAS that I can probably reformat for this purpose, but I often run into complications using a NAS (offsite backup issues, connectivity issues, can't use Time Machine, ...) and have read on the forums about people having issues writing to files on NAS's...
I have a buffalo terastation pro ii, it is about 3 years old.  It is 2 terabytes.  I would get the imac with 2 terabytes and the 256gig ssd drive so the 2 tera could be dedicated to media.
Thanks in advance for any advice, appreciate it.
Peter

Answer 1

plampione wrote:
I am about to buy the macs, so both the desktop and macbook pro will be fast.  I plan on buying the fastest processor, 8gig of ram on the macbook, debating 8 or 16 on the imac, though from the previous thread sounds like it should be 16, and ssd on both (imac with 256 ssd + 2 TB HD, macbook with 512 sad).
I suggest ordering both Macs with the minimum RAM and adding 3rd party RAM yourself.  The task is trivial and will save you heaps.  I bought my iMac with 4GBs (that's two 2GB modules plus two empty slots), and then added two 4GB modules into the empty slots.  So I have 12GBs.  My plan is to try to live with just 12GBs until 8GB modules become affordable, and then replace the two original 2GB modules with two 8GB modules, bringing it to 24GBs.  If needed, I'd ultimately go to 32GBs by replacing the two 4GB modules I have just installed.
I think the MacBook Pro (MBP) still has only two slots, so using 4GB modules, you are limited to 8GBs.  If the architecture of the MBP supports it, you may be able to go to 16GB when 8GB modules become affordable.  But you'd need to check this.
- using an attached harddrive on the macbook pro - Definitely a reasonable idea, but I was hoping to be able to bring up the library from anywhere in the house.  I do have gigabit ethernet throughout the house and can wire in as needed, but again, was hoping to be able to sit on the sofa and do some tagging.
Another way to achieve this still has your Aperture Library and Masters on the iMac as I recommended above.  You could use the MBP to share the screen of the iMac.  It's a standard OS X function, no software to buy.  You enable sharing on the iMac and log in from the MBP.  That way you have the function on your sofa, but the power and capacity of the iMac for your actual work.  This works fine over wifi for me via an Airport Extreme using 802.11N
- Backup - by putting the masters on the imac i was planning on using time machine to back them up onsite, and crashplan to backup offsite.
Good plan.  TM and Crashplan are good products and free.
I'd also recommend making a second onsite backup by cloning to a pair of external drives, and periodically send one of these drives offsite.  You may find that Crashplan for offsite backup over the internet is too slow if you have a big photo shoot.
What if I plug into the gigabit ethernet whenever I am going to run aperture?  Would that allow the imac/macbook model to work?  Concerned about the performance issues described above though, even for the machines themselves.  Would copying the library nightly to my wife's computer work?  How big does a 20+k library get with referenced masters?
Size of the library depends on many factors such as choices for previews, and the amount of editing (adjustments) you do, but here is a data point.  I have 47K images, many RAW and the Library was about 60GBs, the referenced Masters another 280GBs.  I say "was" because I have let it grow by importing recent images into it.
Today we are on PCs and I use windows live photo gallery and tag all my photos, which are stored on a NAS, my wife also runs WLPG and can see all the tagging I do.  This works pretty well and is simple, I just import from the camera, show all 'untagged' photos/videos, and tag them.  I also move them to a basic folder structure to be safe.
I understand this is not as feasible on mac, and if you are wondering why I am switching, it is because I have been having a lot of stability problems with the pc's and have had enough.  I use iphones, ipads, and apple tv's.  Recently got a macbook air and really like it.  Just need to figure out how to manage the photo/video library.
A lot of my concerns about your plan are because I'm impatient.  On my MBP, it was taking about 5 seconds to render each image as I reviewed them.  I typically take a very short time to tag the images, so the computer was slower then me.  Now, with the iMac, I'm the slow link in the chain.
It may be that you are used to a leisurely tagging process, but I have no experience with WLPG.
The great things about Aperture that I really love, having come from a Photoshop background are that Aperture is always non-destructive in its editing and it is non-modal in the UI.
There is a price to be paid for non-destructive editing.  Aperture often has to go back to the Master and then apply your adjustments.  This takes resources.  But it saves you time.  And you don't have to muck around creating another external folder structure yourself, as it seems you do with WLPG.  I just import my images into "Projects" in Aperture (the Masters are Managed), and when I want to selectively change Managed Masters to Referenced Masters, I just tell Aperture to do this and that it should utilize my Project structure as the external folder structure.  Aperture does all the folder creation for me, yippee!
Finally, you may even find that the MacBook Air is good enough to do the tagging on with the shared screen approach I mentioned above, and then maybe you don't have to buy a MBP.
HTH.  Happy to discuss further