New Surface Pro i7 16GB RAM 1TB storage
- Thread starter Boscolate
- Start date
Welcome to the forum, @Boscolate .
The Surface Pro should be a very good premium computer for the uses you list.
The Surface Pro should be a very good premium computer for the uses you list.
Thanks. But my question was if it is worthy to invest into a Surface Pro i7 16GB Ram and 1TB storage? Or too much hardware for the required use? Thx
ScottyS
Active Member
I guess it all depends. If the money is burning a hole in your pocket and you have to have the best.
Seems to me the extra $500 for 1TB storage over the 512GB model may not be worth it. You can add storage with a mSD card and if you use OneDrive you can have files stored there (and not locally). Unless you have to have that much local storage.
Seems to me the extra $500 for 1TB storage over the 512GB model may not be worth it. You can add storage with a mSD card and if you use OneDrive you can have files stored there (and not locally). Unless you have to have that much local storage.
Thanks. I have more than 500gb in photos at the moment. And think you can not run a catalogue in Lightroom with photos stored in the cloud, Dropbox i.e
MickeyLittle
Active Member
I don't know much about Lightroom but as for your 500gb in photos I think I would be tempted to store those on a couple of external hard drives. One to work from and the other to back up changes to once a day or every few days depending on the amount of work you are doing.
From the little I've read I would guess that with photos an i5 8gb would be enough for photo editing. Might be a different story for video editing.
From the little I've read I would guess that with photos an i5 8gb would be enough for photo editing. Might be a different story for video editing.
convergent
Active Member
The short answer to your question is that you don't need anything more than an i5 for a good Lightroom experience. SSD is the biggest thing that makes a difference.
I use Lightroom heavily and currently have 3.5TB of photos which are stored on a NAS and backed up from there to another NAS. The Lightroom libraries with full sized previews for these take up only 48GB. The library needs to be local. I keep the Lightroom libraries on OneDrive so that they replicate between my laptop (Surface Pro) and desktop (Mac), but are also local in the OneDrive folder on each machine. You just can't use both machines at the same time or you'll have a sync problem.
My workflow is the following:
- Take photos on SD card... planning to try the microSD Samsung EVO so it can then be inserted directly into the Surface Pro.
- Copy image folder from a shoot from SD to local drive. (you now have 2 copies)
- Import images on local drive to Lightroom (without moving them).
- I start sorting the keepers while its going through building previews (make sure its setup to always build full sized previews).
- Then I start processing and editing.
- When I'm back at my home office at some point, I copy the folder of source images from local drive to NAS. Eventually as space is needed I'll delete the images from local drive. I don't do this until they are backed up... always want two copies of master images. At this point, I don't frequently need to do anything with the images after that. If you were to go back into Lightroom and need to access those images, you can still do most things like editing from the full size previews. If you want to output rendered images, you need the originals. All you have to do is right click on the folder in Lightroom (it will give you an indication that the originals are not found) and tell it where you moved the originals and you are good to go. Usually if you are using good naming and folder structure, once you tell it where one of the folders has been moved, it will find the rest automatically (if you moved more than one).
So bottom line is I would recommend getting the i5, 8G, 256G Surface Pro, and get a good device for storage... USB3 external RAID drive, NAS, etc. That is, unless you have money to burn. Just make sure you have a good backup plan so you always have two copies of everything.
I use Lightroom heavily and currently have 3.5TB of photos which are stored on a NAS and backed up from there to another NAS. The Lightroom libraries with full sized previews for these take up only 48GB. The library needs to be local. I keep the Lightroom libraries on OneDrive so that they replicate between my laptop (Surface Pro) and desktop (Mac), but are also local in the OneDrive folder on each machine. You just can't use both machines at the same time or you'll have a sync problem.
My workflow is the following:
- Take photos on SD card... planning to try the microSD Samsung EVO so it can then be inserted directly into the Surface Pro.
- Copy image folder from a shoot from SD to local drive. (you now have 2 copies)
- Import images on local drive to Lightroom (without moving them).
- I start sorting the keepers while its going through building previews (make sure its setup to always build full sized previews).
- Then I start processing and editing.
- When I'm back at my home office at some point, I copy the folder of source images from local drive to NAS. Eventually as space is needed I'll delete the images from local drive. I don't do this until they are backed up... always want two copies of master images. At this point, I don't frequently need to do anything with the images after that. If you were to go back into Lightroom and need to access those images, you can still do most things like editing from the full size previews. If you want to output rendered images, you need the originals. All you have to do is right click on the folder in Lightroom (it will give you an indication that the originals are not found) and tell it where you moved the originals and you are good to go. Usually if you are using good naming and folder structure, once you tell it where one of the folders has been moved, it will find the rest automatically (if you moved more than one).
So bottom line is I would recommend getting the i5, 8G, 256G Surface Pro, and get a good device for storage... USB3 external RAID drive, NAS, etc. That is, unless you have money to burn. Just make sure you have a good backup plan so you always have two copies of everything.
ScottyS
Active Member
500 GB of photos?! Then a Surface with 1TB storage is a dream come true .
