I suppose one question is whether anyone out there has increased the capacity of their aging iMac's HDD to store data and media internally and then used a dRobo or Time Capsule as a primary backup solution?

Thanks for the response. 🙂 So I may have a dud Firewire interface on the computer or the dRobo. EDIT: Or even a dud firewire cable. Geez, if it's a simple as replacing the firewire cable...

I want the photos in one location called "Lightroom Master".

When I was still using Aperture, I had split my photos into mulitple libraries but this became inconvenient when I wanted to make an album of images from multiple libraries.

Your are dead right though, the Lightroom Master folder is "only" 422.17 GB, when I thought it was over 700 GB.

I think I just prefer all the data/media files (which includes iTunes movies) to be in one location and I know there will be more home movies in the pipeline when soon... but the slow file transfer is no fun.

I don't even know what "Pro Res" is. 🙂

Yeah, I think the Firewire cable came from Hong Kong via eBay. Will get one from an Apple store this time, which probably still came from Honk Kong or "the mainland", but there may be better quality control. 🙂

I should probably still consider increasing internal HDD capacity. Can throw the old 1TB HDD in the dRobo... maybe... if the dRobo is worth keeping. 🙂

Thanks heaps for the comments and suggestions.

I'll go shopping in a minute.

>>>I personally would never store all my images in one folder. All my year folders and the subfolders are all in mt LR catalog.<<<

Yeah, I have year subdirectories within the "Lightroom Master" directory:

...and more specific dates within the year...

I think people may normally add a project/event name to the above dates as a reminder of what occured during a selected date range.

>>>The images don't all need to be in one folder or on one hard drive. They can be placed anywhere you like and imported to the LR catalog.<<<

I would have thought keeping the files in one location makes them easier to locate and manage... unless there is a hardware issue like a crappy dRobo or Firewire cable... or both. 🙂

Scott Bourne - an advanced Aperture user who recently moved to Lightroom - advises here:

"You can leave..." your photos "...on the hard disk in your computer where you run LR but you will soon run out of space so I suggest an external drive. I am using a 12 TB drive so I’ll have plenty of space. Then create a master folder on that drive. It can be called “photos” or “Lightroom Master” or whatever you like. But create that folder because that is where all your images will eventually end up. HINT: Whatever strategy you decide now – be sure it’s sound. It will be a big pain in the you know what to change this later so pick a strategy and stick with it."

Two other Lynda tutorials I looked at have advised similar.

>>>Recent files on the internal and older one that you have already worked on, like years ago, placed on a external drive.<<<

Yes, we do things differently. If I can get the hardware working properly, then I'll be happy. 🙂

>>>Where are you located?<<<

Sydney. 🙂

>>>You can buy better quality FireWire cables other than Apple. I find Apple's own cables to be cheaply made.<<<

Okidoki, I'm listening and thanks for the tip. 🙂

>>>Forget about increasing the internal storage size of your HDD. You need to see if your bottleneck is, in fact, a bad FW cable or something with your RAID array.<<<

So I suppose the need for a new cable is the first step. Maybe they sold me a FW400 cable instead of the FW800 I requested. 🙂

>>>You still haven't answered any of my questions.<<<

Sorry, Looks like I missed them.

>>>How many drives do you have on your RAID array?<<<

Three 2TB Seagate HDDs.

>>>And how full are they?<<<

Drobo Dashboard says "2.03 TB Used Space 57%" with 1.54 TM Free Space (43%).

>>>Drives can fail. If the problem isn't a bad cable, You need to test to see if any of the drives on your RAID may be failing.<<<

At the moment Drobo Dashboard indicates the system is healthy and has sufficient capacity but a second opinion would be nice. The trouble with the dRobo is it seems to manage itself and I am not aware of third party software that can get in an have a look at it. If the new Firewire cable does not help and the issue is not my iMac's Firewire interface then maybe I should get a 4GB external something else that hopefully has FW800, Thunderbold and USB3 connectivity. 🙂

Thanks heaps. 🙂