What is a good workflow using iphoto and or aperture to work with a big photo library involving NAS? Local hard drives are becoming overly taxed with the amount of data from high res pictures. I have to mention I am just an average photo amateur not a Pro. The possibilty of sharing the library between users in the family would be great too.
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
Neither Aperture libraries not iPhoto libraries can be stored on a NAS. The filesystem on the drive needs to be MacOS Extended (journaled) and the library needs to be on locally connected drive, because the internal databases do not support network transactions. You would be risking library corruption and data loss on a NAS. Also, the access time is much slower than on a locally connected drive, so the response time would be unnecessary slow, when working with large raw files.
See Apple's recommendation for Aperture - the same is true for iPhoto:
Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library
To share a library among several users, move it to an external drive and set the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag, see this document: iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users
Local hard drives are becoming overly taxed with the amount of data from high res pictures.
How many photos are you talking about? Aperture has been designed to deal with really huge libraries, and 1or 2 TB library size is working for some posters here.
-- Léonie
Neither Aperture libraries not iPhoto libraries can be stored on a NAS. The filesystem on the drive needs to be MacOS Extended (journaled) and the library needs to be on locally connected drive, because the internal databases do not support network transactions. You would be risking library corruption and data loss on a NAS. Also, the access time is much slower than on a locally connected drive, so the response time would be unnecessary slow, when working with large raw files.
See Apple's recommendation for Aperture - the same is true for iPhoto:
Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library
To share a library among several users, move it to an external drive and set the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag, see this document: iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users
Local hard drives are becoming overly taxed with the amount of data from high res pictures.
How many photos are you talking about? Aperture has been designed to deal with really huge libraries, and 1or 2 TB library size is working for some posters here.
-- Léonie
One can't use an iPhoto or Aperture library on a NAS. The NAS doesn't support the file system used in those libraries and will corrupt the library.
To handle larger libraries or share usage of a library between users in the family put the library on an external hard drive formatted OS X Extended (journaled) with ownership set to be ignored,
connect the drive to a desktop or host Mac and run the library from there and let the other users either connect from their Macs to the host to access the EHD or access it from their account on the host Mac.
The bottom line: NAS is verbotten, i.e. a big NO NO! 🙂
OT
Well, currently I have about 120 GB in the library. But the size is growing. So yes it's big, not huge. On the other hand the notebook with 512GB SSD drive will be maxed out soon at the current growing rate. Looks like I do have to get a fast external storage. The other part of the solution might also be to split the library and archive older years. But that defeats somewhat the purpose not being able to use iPhoto to look at the kids' pictures from 3 years ago.....
I might also look into formatting the NAS in Mac OS extended. That could help for older years stored there but imported back into the iPhoto library I guess.
Seems like there isn't good solution other than buying bigger and bigger machines every year...sigh!
NAS systems can not be formatted Mac OS extended - you can put a correctly formatted idsk image on some and use that although that is a best inconcenient and at worst uncessful - and you should not access the iPhoto library over a newtwok but on a wired connection like USB, thunderobld or firewire
LN
Put your library on a 1 or 2 TB external drive, connected by a fast connection for a high response time - Thunderbolt or USB 3 would be perfect. That should suffice for a few years. When you really fill up that drive, don't split the library but upgrade to Aperture. That will allow you to distribute your photo library over more than on drive by referencing the original image files. But your library will still be one library.
Looks like I do have to get a fast external storage.
I have one of these and with the Firewire (use with a Thunderbird adapter of the Mac doesn't have FW) it's fast enough to boot and run from if so desired: OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro USB 3.0 & 2.0 / FireWire 800, and 2.5" SATA Portable External Hard Drive & SSD. Also it's not much larger than a mouse (computer type that is) 🙂.
What is the intended way to organize a big photo library?
