keep all files on external drive?

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123 points

keep all files on external drive?

Hi,

I have a MacBook Air M2with a 500 gb drive. Because I am running out of space, I am toying with the idea of moving all of my personal files (Music, Documents, Pictures. I have already moved all my movies off of it.) to an external drive that will always be connected to it (as it is now.) The external drive also has 27 years worth of files from previous Macs as well as all of these files from my MB Air. I've been syncing it with FreeFileSync every week.*

One thing I've noticed is that my large Photos libraries (20 gb and above) get really slow when I try to use them that way (based on the external drive.) So I have moved the one library I use the most back to my MB Air and it performs as it should. I am thinking of moving the others back too. They amount to 224 gb.

So, one plan would be to have nothing but Photos libraries on the MB Air. All other files would be created on or moved to the external drive and accessed there. The MB Air would not have any other music, pics or documents on it other that whatever any app needs.

What do people think of that?

The external drive is a 4 tb La Cie mobile drive bought in 2021 ,connected via its USB 3.2 to Thunderbolt cable.
I currently sync the MB Air to the La Cie once a week. I back it up to another drive using Time Machine every night. That routine will change. I could do Time Machine backups of the Photos libraries as needed. (I don't add pics to them every day.) I could back up the La Cie to another La Cie 4 tb drive on some sort of schedule.

I haven't read about having all your data on an external drive much. I have tried using a NAS and am not not happy with the results. (You can't use Photos libraries on the ones I can afford and they're slow, can't be indexed, etc..)

*I *think* all of my files from the MB Air are on the La Cie... It's pretty hard to check. I do worry that if I erase them from the MB Air, I might lose some. So far, everything I have checked is on the La Cie but it is a haunting concern and a big step to actually erase things from the MB Air. I've collected many of them over the past 27 years. They are backed up, in theory, in several places but I still worry about actually erasing them on the MB air.

Thanks for any help.

Cheers,

John

MacBook Air, macOS 13.3

Posted on May 10, 2023 7:17 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 24, 2024 12:46 AM in response to lipwak

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Answer 2

May 10, 2023 7:35 AM in response to lipwak

It is expected that accessing files on an external drive would be slower than accessing local files.

I place all my data files on an external SSDs and I'm satisfied with the speed. If your experience is that externally stored files are too slow to access then store the files locally.

Regardless where your files are stored, it is essential that you keep and maintain multiple backups/copies of your data. Drives can and do fail unexpectedly and at any time.

I think micromanaging which files are kept on the external drive is an unnecessary burden. Just decide to keep all, some, or none of your data on external drives then do it.

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Answer 3

lipwak Author

Level 1

123 points

May 10, 2023 7:42 AM in response to BobTheFisherman

lol. I agree. I may just make the bold move and do it. I do have backups, or at least backups that I think are good. It is just a big change from how I've been doing things. I also want to know about any problems doing that. I can imagine problems with apps having to be redirected to the external drive to save their output. I could save newly created files to the MB Air and move them manually. It's just a big change so I want to be aware as best I can before making the big move. Thanks.

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Answer 4

lipwak Author

Level 1

123 points

Jul 13, 2023 6:10 PM in response to lipwak

So... I've been living with the La Cie (La Cie 144, model STHG4000402) connected by its USB 3.1 cable connected to the Thunderbolt port. I'm getting beachballs WAY too often. So I bought a Thunderbolt 4 cable. I got a short one as the drive is still underneath the MBA. I got no better speeds than with the USB cable. 87/70 using BlackMagic. So much for that idea. It wasn't an "active" cable as the La Cie rep had recommended I get.

So I looked around for an "active" thunderbolt cables again. I found one for about $60 (as I had last time) but it was too long. I need less than a foot, 6 inches would be better. Amazon had NO others that would say they were active. The net didn't etiher that were short.

So, I went to Apple to see what they might sell me for a new external drive. None of the drives they offered were recommended for a 2022 M2.

OK.

How about the net? I didn't find any that were 4 tb and affordable.

Do I have to live with beachballs?

What would you recommend?

Thanks.

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Answer 5

Feb 24, 2024 5:20 AM in response to lipwak

lipwak wrote:

So... I've been living with the La Cie (La Cie 144, model STHG4000402) connected by its USB 3.1 cable connected to the Thunderbolt port. I'm getting beachballs WAY too often. So I bought a Thunderbolt 4 cable. I got a short one as the drive is still underneath the MBA. I got no better speeds than with the USB cable. 87/70 using BlackMagic.....

The speeds you are getting are typical for the slow 5400 RPM spinning disk drives that are in the portable drives and no manner of changing cables or changing ports is going to make any difference as the speed is limited by the disk drive itself.

The only way to speed things up would be to get a 3.5" 7200 RPM disk drive which will improve speeds to around 100-120 MB/sec or get an SSD drive which will dramatically increase speeds to anywhere form 600 MB/sec to up to 1000 MB/sec for a USB based or if you want to spend a lot more money, a Thunderbolt 3 SSD could get you speeds of 1800 to 2400 MB/sec or even more.

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keep all files on external drive?

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