MacBook Air Storage Issue

[TwinDad31]

Hey gang, I'm new to the forum. That means I'm obviously looking for advice. I have a MacBook Air that was purchased a little more than two years ago. I absolutely love it, but lately I'm having storage issues. I've gotten a warning a few times, but since I use it for work I've been bypassing it to solider on.

Today I did some investigating and it appears as though I have too many photos uploaded to my iPhoto library. That will happen with two-year old twins. I have a external hard drive to backup via Time Machine, but I was wondering if there are any recommended external products for housing images -- specifically with iPhoto. I need something that is reliable and will give me piece of mind to know that I can delete a good portion of what I have on my MacBook without worrying that I'll lose them forever.

I've attached some screen-grabs that might make issuing advice easier. I've got about 9,000 photos and videos stored!

Thanks!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

You have reached the point where you can't dismiss the warnings. You need to free up some drive space, as you are getting close to the point where the Mac will run very sluggishly and may not even fully startup. Macs really need ~10% of free drive space to operate properly.

Of the ~9000 items in your iPhoto Library, I would bet the videos are taking up the majority of the 97GB. You can actually move the entire library to an external drive. You would need a second hard drive to use as a Time Machine backup of the MBA and that drive. You could also use an external hard drive in a RAID configuration, which would provide some data safety.

-What size budget?
-Do you want a portable or desktop solution?
-Have you possibly opened the new Photos app yet? If so, is there a Photos Library, as well as an iPhoto Library in your Pictures folder? If so, then your photos/videos could have been duplicated and are taking up double the space.

C

 

[TwinDad31]

Hello and welcome.

You have reached the point where you can't dismiss the warnings. You need to free up some drive space, as you are getting close to the point where the Mac will run very sluggishly and may not even fully startup. Macs really need ~10% of free drive space to operate properly.

Of the ~9000 items in your iPhoto Library, I would bet the videos are taking up the majority of the 97GB. You can actually move the entire library to an external drive. You would need a second hard drive to use as a Time Machine backup of the MBA and that drive. You could also use an external hard drive in a RAID configuration, which would provide some data safety.

-What size budget?
-Do you want a portable or desktop solution?
-Have you possibly opened the new Photos app yet? If so, is there a Photos Library, as well as an iPhoto Library in your Pictures folder? If so, then your photos/videos could have been duplicated and are taking up double the space.

C

Thanks for the reply.

I'd like to stay under $80 (US) and have a portable solution.

I checked and the photos are my duplicated.

 

[honestone]

Yes, a portable external drive is convenient. When I replaced the (slow) 1 TB 5400 rpm drive that was inside my Mac Mini with a 256 gig SSD, I installed the 1 TB inside a nice, slim external case, and it has come in handy, especially when I travel.

I have a MacBook Air also, so I suspect you also only have 2 USB ports on it. For the external drive, there is of course 1) the size of the drive mechanism, 2) the connectivity (USB, or Thunderbolt (if you have a Thunderbolt port)), and 3) the speed of the drive mechanism itself. Here is a link to the external portable drives offered by Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Portable-Exte...Cat-External-HardDrives_2-_-VisNav-_-Portable

The drives that "play nicely" with Macs the best are ones by Seagate. If 1 TB is enough space for you, there is this Seagate one (from that page):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178744

But, that special price ends today.

I suspect Amazon has a decent selection also. Sometimes if Best Buy has the same drive, they will price match ones you see via a mail order firm. Best Buy has one of the best price matching policies I have seen, and I have taken advantage of it quite a few times.

Regarding backups, if you move all your Photos to an external device (and no longer have them on your internal drive), then of course Time Machine will not be backing those up. Not sure if Time Machine can backup a partition (containing your photos, movies, etc.) from one external device to another. If it can't, you can do a drag and drop. However, you would then need to have a regular "schedule" to do that. The other choice, of course, is when you save subsequent photos/videos, etc., you could do the save twice to each separate partition on each external device.

 

[Cory Cooper]

I checked and the photos are my duplicated.

No problem.

-Does that mean that there is an iPhoto Library AND a Photos Library in the Pictures folder?
-If so, are they roughly the same size?

If you answer yes, then we should be able to simply move one of the libraries to an external drive and free up that amount of space on the MBA - problem solved. Then we could explore permanent backup solution for your budget.

C