Backup and workflow

[jimfastcar]

I currently download pictures from my Sony camera to MacBook using a USB C cable.

From there, once the pics are in Photos folder I edit in Affinity.

Since i only have about 100 GB available, am concerned with space and am considering an external drive option.  

Does anybody download directly from camera to external drive and then work from there keeping all the originals and modified files on the external drive ?

Looking for the most efficient workflow - Thanks 

[MEB]

Hi jimfastcar,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

At this point we don't recommend working directly from external/NAS drives or cloud synchronised folders as this may corrupt the files or lead to loss of work. Affinity apps do NOT load the entire file to memory at once for performance reasons and if for some reason the app lose track of the original file you may end up losing work.

[R C-R]

@MEB I understand the concern about losing the connection to a NAS or to cloud-based storage, & for a laptop computer that is not always connected to an external drive, but I would think that for a desktop computer with an always directly connected USB (ideally USB 3) or possibly Thunderbolt-connected drive this would not be much of a concern.

[jimfastcar]

How about doing all the editing on the Mac and saving finished files on external drive and Dropbox ?

i would save space that way 

[MEB]

Hi jimfastcar,

You can use external/NAS drives or cloud synchronised folders for storage, no issues with that. Just avoid edit files opened directly from them. Copy the file to the desktop/computer first then edit it from there.

[IanSG]

57 minutes ago, jimfastcar said:

How about doing all the editing on the Mac and saving finished files on external drive and Dropbox ?

i would save space that way 

Speaking as a hobbyist, I never know when I've finished - there's always the temptation to try just one more edit.  I've just had a play with a USB3 connected HD and had no problems at all!

 

<edit>

Not quite "no problems" - if the connection to the external drive is lost there's no option to try again.  A recovery file was created and worked as expected, so it was a very minor problem!

[MEB]

On 4/12/2018 at 8:51 PM, R C-R said:

@MEB I understand the concern about losing the connection to a NAS or to cloud-based storage, & for a laptop computer that is not always connected to an external drive, but I would think that for a desktop computer with an always directly connected USB (ideally USB 3) or possibly Thunderbolt-connected drive this would not be much of a concern.

 

There shouldn't be issues with external drives, but since there was a few reports involving external/NAS drives/cloud synchronised folders which we are still looking into i'm being cautious until this gets cleared. I think for now it's preferable than telling a user to use them and risk losing work.

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, MEB said:

There shouldn't be issues with external drives, but since there was a few reports involving external/NAS drives/cloud synchronised folders which we are still looking into i'm being cautious until this gets cleared. I think for now it's preferable than telling a user to use them and risk losing work.

Do you know if any of these reports involve external USB 3 drives connected to a computer, or specifically to one connected to a Mac?

 

I ask because sometimes I boot my iMac from an external USB 3 drive that runs an older OS X version. When I do this, the internal drive is not even mounted at boot time (because I added an /etc/fstab 'noauto' entry for the internal drive in the external drive's file system) so nothing is being read from or written to the internal drive's file system. I do this in part so I can run apps that High Sierra does not support at the same time I run the Affinity apps. Considering that Apple says the next macOS version will not run 32 bit apps at all, I expect to be doing this more frequently in the future. Consequently, it would be useful to know if it is risky to run an Affinity app under these conditions.

[MEB]

Hi R C-R,

I also do it (booting from an external drive) for other reasons but i don't believe this is also applicable on these situations as the whole OS is being loaded from there rather than accessing a drive that can be disconnected for whatever reason. In any case i've passed this issue to the dev team to clarify whether or not is safe to use external drives to edit affinity files directly at this point. I'm still waiting their reply.