Configuring a MacBook for Dive/Photography Travel

One of the first things I do when setting up a new notebook, in my case a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 500 GB SSD, is partition the hard drive. A 110 GB allocated space for the operating system and all the apps like Photoshop I am going use in the first partition, leaving the second half the drive exclusively for file storage - images, video, documents. It makes it easy to find everything, not to mention keeping the system running smoother.

Thanks Walt! My new machine is supposed to arrive this week so your timing is perfect. I'm still reading up and watching videos on how the Finder works.

Cheers,

Steve

Steve, you find Finder is really simple to use, and readily identifies Abobe Bridge. A lot of times when I am sorting organized image or doc files I can have both a Finder window and Bridge open at the same time, dragging and dropping or copying and pasting from files between the two.

Walt, regarding your previous commend about partitioning the drive. As an old PC user, when people still had to reinstall the operating system once in a while to speed up your comuter, your suggestion was a valid one. However, nowdays with SSD drives and without the option to change just one harddrive if it fails, the suggestion just adds shortcomings. You run into the risk of running out of space for your pictures/movies on your secondary drive and still have room on the primary, or the other way round. Finding files (with spotlight) will not be quicker with your way, since most of the system-files (/Library for instance) is excluded in the search, and most other are hidden from finder.

SSDs (that face it, most laptops run on these days) servers up data just as quickly from the first block as from the last, and its actually better for the SSD to be able to use the whole drive to even out the writes on the HD (SSDs have a finite numbers of writes per block) then to force it into specific partitions. So while your suggestion was valid say 5 years ago (at least use an SSH drive for the OS and another for storing your data) the same usage on a modern laptop with just one SSD is not somthing I would suggest do.

/Best regards, Björn

Hey Steve, I bought one last year and it's the only computer I've ever had that didn't crash two hours into photoshop retouching If I may make a suggestion, definitely up the ram, it's solid state so they can't add more later on, and also if you'd planning on doing any color work on a laptop I would suggest investing the $189 bucks for the spyder5 pro calibrator, I just got mine this week and it's BADASS. Completely worth the money and makes my life sooooo much easier. I hope this helps!

Thanks Katy,

I've had my Macbook Pro Retina laptop for a few months now and love it. I just picked up a new Dell U2515 (2560 x 1440) monitor so I can use the laptop as my main desk machine. It's light years faster than my old PC when processing large complex images in LR. I'm in the middle of backing up my old files to new 4TB hard drives as I'm typing this. I've spent the last few days going back through some old images on the higher res screen and being amazed. The journey into the light has been easier than I thought it would be.

Cheers,

Steve