Going between to Macs

[kelkolkat]

I recently got a studio and will be working there full time after the first of the year.  For now though, I have to go between editing at home and at work.  I bought a refurbished iMac and I have a Mac book pro.  I am going to keep the iMac at home and take the MacBook to the studio because I have to have something portable to do my viewing appointment off of. 

Do you have any advice on how I can transfer these files back and forth between both computers?  They're are photoshop files so it won't be as easy as loading them in Dropbox and that would be extremely cumbersome.  I am not a Mac guru so is there a way to high res files on both computers without having to save to a portable and transfer each time I have a session?

Thanks for the help.

[Brian]

Ha! I was going to recommend a Cloud Service like Dropbox! How is your internet upload speed at both places?

I do have an idea, and that's using something called a NAS, which stands for Network Attached Storage. Basically, it's your own private cloud / EHD that is attached to your network and not your computer. Some of the better NAS systems allow you to access your files from an external location, via a IP address & port number or even URL, so you will be able to upload / download stuff between home / office. By doing it this way, your files are in a centralized private location, but again, this might be cumbersome for you, in which case you are bringing a external hard drive between places. Plus there is the whole setup of this device. QNAP makes good stuff, and so does Synology. Between the two, QNAP has more options and Synology is easier to setup for a beginner.

The other option is to use a program called Jump, which is a Terminal Program. This will allow you to remote control your computer at home from your laptop at work, but I don't think you want to do this either. You won't be able to be effective when it comes to color management, as with a Terminal Program, it downloads screenshots of your desktop at home. This method is great to control your computer remotely but not for actual editing.

Honestly, and Damien might have a better opinion on this, showing the final JPEGs to your clients might be better instead of dorking around with the master .psd files. They are the files that will be uploaded to your printer / given to the customer, right? Unless you are tweaking things between your iMac and MacBook? If so, that's going to be a royal PITA as screens are different between the two computers. A Calibration Device is a must and depending on the ambient light between the to areas, your colors could be off.

 

[kelkolkat]

My upload is pretty good at both places but RAW files are hard to upload vis Dropbox.  

This NAS sounds like an option.  I might have to check that out.  Is that what I search for or the QNAP?

I would be showing JPEG as the final but really wanted it to be able to edit from both locations.  I know it's a PIA question

Thanks.  I'll see if Damien has any input.

[Brian]

QNAP and Synology are the two name brands that I would buy myself. I will give you a few links in a bit. 

[kelkolkat]

Thanks!

 

[Brian]

Alright, before I start linking stuff, how much are you looking to spend? Because configuring / building a NAS is usually not cheap, especially if you want storage and redundancy. The hard drives that go into NAS units need to be of a higher caliber, meaning they run a LOOOONG time before failing, and you'll need to configure the best RAID option for your needs, which is usually RAID 1 (Drive Mirroring) and RAID 5 (Distributed Parity). There are others, like RAID 10 (or RAID 1+0) which your more technical people will usually recommend over 1 & 5.

What does RAID stand for? Redundant Array of Independent Disks. "Huh?" Basically, it's two or more hard drives working in unison for a single purpose, usually data redundancy; meaning if one hard drive fails, the others pick up the slack and you still have access to your data. The only exception is RAID Level 0 or RAID0.

Still with me? I know this is geeky stuff, but you need to understand this before you go buying things, because the NAS unit and special hard drives could set you back $1500 or so total, depending on how things are configured and what RAID level you choose. Speaking of the levels, here is a basic run-down:
 

• RAID 0 - Typically Two Hard Drives that work in Unison and appear as one big drive. So if you have two 4TB hard drives configured in a RAID 0, you will have 8TB Hard drive, well a little less after formatting...at your disposal. The benefit to RAID0 is SPEED. RAID0 is FAST. It's the perfect drive setup for those who edit video, as the read / write performance on traditional hard drives configured in a RAID0 is much faster than if they were used in a traditional fashion. The downside to RAID0, if one hard drive fails, the other goes with it. You lose all the data on that drive. This is similar to a External Hard Drive that only has one disk in the external case. People that store important data, like your client's photos and current projects, do NOT store them on a RAID 0 Drive. Like I said, RAID0 is great for cache files / scratch disks, etc. Files that are temporary and are created and deleted frequently.
• RAID 1 - Typically Two Hard Drives that are mirrored of each other. So a 12TB RAID 1 will have two 6TB drives that are mirrored. So if one hard drive fails, you have another HD that has a duplicate of the files on the failed drive. This is a form of redundancy. The downside to RAID 1, is if you delete a file, it's deleted from both hard drives instantaneously. If a file gets corrupted on one of the hard drives, the mirrored file on the other hard drive is also corrupted. That said, corruption is rare these days, so it's not that big of a deal. Just keep in mind, that a External Hard Drive that is advertised as a 12TB or 16TB drive, that storage capacity is cut in half if you choose to set it up as a RAID1.
• RAID 5 - This requires 3 or more hard drives to work, and using the same make/model/size seems to work the best. Of course you could use different brands, just as long as the capacities are exactly the same on all three drives. Well, I could go over the exceptions and geek-out, but I'm keeping things simple. You want three or more hard drives, with the same capacities and speed. The benefit to RAID 5, is it's like RAID 0 and RAID 1 combined, conversationally speaking. Like RAID 0, the three hard drives act as one bigger drive, plus has the added redundancy that RAID 1 provides. If one hard drive dies out of the three, the other two pick up the slack and keep going. This allows you to access all of your data. Downside, with a failed drive, things are a bit slower until you replace the drive and it's added back into the RAID. If two hard drives fail out of the three, you lose all your data. (The RAID setup crashes.) Hard Drives are pretty reliable these days and it's rare for two hard drives to die at the same time in a RAID 5. The trick is with RAID 5, if you have a hard drive fail, replace it immediately. This way if another hard drive were to fail, you are still only dealing with one hard drive that has failed. Make sense? In addition, since you need a minimum of three hard drives to build a RAID 5, that's three (or more) hard drives that you have to buy, and that costs extra.
• RAID 10 or RAID 1+0 - This configuration seems to be the one that people like the best these days. You get redundancy and speed, though I still find RAID 5 being used a lot. In a nutshell, take four hard drives and then combine both in a RAID 0 setup. THEN two pairs of hard drives are set as RAID1. So, you'll have HD A&B configured as a RAID 1 (Mirrored) and HD C&D configured as a RAID 1 (Mirrored.) Then all four hard drives appear as one big drive. This method works best if you are using SSD hard drives instead of traditional spinning disk hard drives. I could go on and on with this one, but like I said before, I'm trying to keep things simple.

OK, I know that is a lot to take in, but you need to know this stuff for when you purchase and configure your NAS. There will be different setup options that you will need to pick, and these choices will depend on how many drives you purchase. If you purchase a two-bay NAS, you will only be able to purchase two hard drives, which limits you to RAID 0 or RAID 1. If you buy a larger NAS that supports more hard drives at the same time, there are more options for you. Of course, you could purchase a NAS that has 4-5 bays in it and only purchase two hard drives. (Take a four bay unit and configure two hard drives as RAID 1.) The downside is if you want to add a hard drive, with a two bay unit, you are buying another NAS so you can install more hard drives to get more options available to you. Plus, if you want to add a hard drive to an existing RAID, and want to change that RAID level, e.g. go from Level 1 to say, a Level 5, it's better to delete the whole RAID setup and start all over again. Which means backing up your data on the old RAID setup and restoring said data on the new RAID. Make sense? Yes, I know some technical folks in this forum will say there are options out there that allow you to upgrade/change level with out nuking the RAID, but those type of setups are usually done on fancy RAID controllers in expensive servers and the RAID is typically hardware based, not software. So again, I'm keeping this advice for the average computer user with no experience in setting these things up.

Phew! I'm glad I got that out of the way. Hopefully I didn't scare you too much. Here is a typical Hard Drive meant for a NAS. I usually buy Western Digital HDs and these days would not buy anything smaller than 4TB. In order to get a RAID 1 setup (Drive Mirroring) and have 4TB at your disposal, you would need two of those hard drives, plus the NAS Unit. The NAS units that I recommend are the Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS918+ (Diskless) and the QNAP TS-451+. Between the two, and for what you are looking for, I'd recommend the Synology NAS. The interface is simple and there are plenty of YouTube videos out there to help you configure things. I would personally recommend at least getting two WD 4TB drives and setting them up as a RAID 1, or purchase more and configure things as a RAID 5 (Minimum 3 drives) or a RAID 10 (Minimum four drives.) Of course the larger the capacity, the better.

Now if this is something that sounds over your head, and you want simple, then you are doing SneakerNet with a drive like this.