Thoughts on new laptop / desktop

[weewillo]

Hi Team,
Thanks so much for the information. From the information contained above I have decided on getting a desktop, I have had a look at the 27' imac but with all those inclusions of what you guys suggest, it's going to cost upwards of 3800 with the 3.1ghz / 16gb / 1tb + 256gb SSD. With this in mind I think that I can definitely do a lot better building a system myself and just purchasing a 27' Dell monitor.

Can someone give me a basic rundown as to how you manage / transfer / store your your images because I am a little confused; (SSD / HDD / OS on a different disc)

I am guessing that you store your pics on a stand alone HDD - but what do you use to work on your images so that it's quicker!

Thanks again
Tony

[DLS]

Hi Tony,

I store my originals on my HD. I use 2 externals for back-up. I do not work off the externals as its too slow.
I don' use a card reader - I use the manufacturer-provided USB2 cable, connected from my camera to my computer, to transfer images to my HD. I then import the images into my editing program which is Lightroom 3.
As I edit the originals, I delete the rejects off the HD from LR3. When I am satisfied I have the originals wittled down, I back up to the 2 externals.

That's how I do it for now...until I get a RAID drive, that is, and work off of it, lol

Damian

[jfritz]

Hi Team,
Thanks so much for the information. From the information contained above I have decided on getting a desktop, I have had a look at the 27' imac but with all those inclusions of what you guys suggest, it's going to cost upwards of 3800 with the 3.1ghz / 16gb / 1tb + 256gb SSD. With this in mind I think that I can definitely do a lot better building a system myself and just purchasing a 27' Dell monitor.

Can someone give me a basic rundown as to how you manage / transfer / store your your images because I am a little confused; (SSD / HDD / OS on a different disc)

I am guessing that you store your pics on a stand alone HDD - but what do you use to work on your images so that it's quicker!

Thanks again
Tony

Here's what I do:

I use a card reader, and after a shoot (sometimes days later, if I'm feeling lazy), I pull the pictures off the card, buy I do not recycle the memory card yet. The pictures are copied to a work directory. Here I sort the good from the bad, and do any other postprocessing. Once this is done, I move the entire project folder to the archilve (include all raw files, any intermediate HDR of Gimp (I'm too cheap to get photoshop) to my archive, and burn a copy to DVD, and copy the archive to another machine.

Once this is done, then I reuse the memory card. I will reformat it when I insert it into the camera. This way, there is a clean filesystem and less chance for file fragmentation, in case I ever need to recover lost data.

Note that I am an amateur, and this is not foolproof, but it is good enough for my sense of comfort.

-joe