Godders, For those of us stingier and more cautious, would there be a performance boost putting LR, the catalog, the cache, or some combination on an SSD?
Rick http://photo.net/photos/RickW On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <godd...@me.com> wrote: > Finally had time to install the Crucial 960G SSD that was my Xmas gift last > December into my Mac mini (late-2012 series, 2.6Ghz i7 Quad, with 16G RAM). > The saga of the installation is a long and somewhat costly bit of > entertainment but would certainly go way off-topic, but in the end I decided > to stick with just one drive internal to the mini. It's up and running since > last evening so I've had time to observe it through my usual range of > operations. The previous drive was the usual nice, solid 1T 5400rpm standard > drive that Apple offers for it, not bad on performance itself. > > The SSD, however, transforms the mini: > > - Boot time with Mavericks and my usual complement of stuff with the 1T HD > ran around 40-50 seconds, with some little bits like the DropBox plugin > taking up to 90 seconds to initialize. With the SSD, everything is loaded and > ready to run in less than 6 seconds from cold start. > > - My working catalog with Lightroom contains 89,000 raw, TIFF, and JPEG image > files (all originals stored on a external FW 800 drive, catalog folder on the > startup drive). With the 1T HD, Lightroom startup ran about 45-50 seconds. > Now, with the SSD, it take five seconds from clicking on it in the dock to > being ready for work. > > - Moving from image to image in Develop module without 1:1 Previews cached > when working with Sony A7 24 Mpixel images would take about 4-5 seconds with > the 1T HD. Now with the SSD, the load time is down to less than a second - > the loading notification just barely flashes onto the screen. > > - Loading a 131 Mbyte VueScan DNG file (scanned Polaroid photo) into > Photoshop CS5.1 from within LR used to take about 45-50 seconds with the 1T > HD. It's down to 9 seconds with the SSD, *including* the Photoshop startup > time. If Photoshop is already running, load time is about 3 seconds. Saving a > full-resolution, 16bit TIFF from Photoshop of that same file takes less than > a second. > > - ALL applications across the board on the system are now substantially > snappier in operation. > > The drive I received last December is the "Crucial 960GB M500 2.5" Internal > SSD", currently available from BHPhoto for $450. I see there's a newer model > full 1T version now that is 20% faster on writes for another $50. That's well > worth the price for this kind of performance improvement. > > The boring part: > > Installing a drive into the mini is not easy. To make the four-day-long story > very short, an attempt to do this myself (and I'm not a total newbie to > changing drives in computer systems, laptops, etc …) was a failure that > resulted in damage to the main logic board. Luckily, my AppleCare is current > and the local Apple Retail Store covered a new logic board and installation > as warranty repair. (No, I didn't lie to them: I told them exactly how I > broke the fan coupling off the logic board. Their response was, "Eh, it > happens. Let's get your machine back together for you.") They had it all done > and back to me in 48 hours. > > However, they would not install a non-Apple certified part like the SSD. > Rather than risk breaking the logic board a second time, I used an external > enclosure to format and clone my configured system and all data to the SSD, > tested by booting it up from the external enclosure, and then paid a good > independent shop that I've done lots of business with before to do the drive > installation (We Fix Macs in Palo Alto, CA). They did a terrific job, turning > it around in a couple of hours yesterday. > > Computer systems to process and render photos are as much a part of camera > equipment as lenses and bodies these days, and at least as important. Getting > this big a performance boost out of a relatively low cost, compact system > like the Mac mini makes it much more efficient and practical to do what I > like to do best: work on and produce photographs. > > enjoy! > > Godfrey > --- > "The fact that nobody understands you doesn't make you an artist." > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
