Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
On 16/6/14, Charles Robinson, discombobulated, unleashed: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/54-Bit-Driver-Kit/IF145-022 I was *just* telling the wife that I need to replace my craptastic mini- driver set with something higher-quality. Would be very interested to see what you think when they arrive. -- Cheers, Cotty ___/\__Broadcast, Corporate, || (O) |Web Video Production --www.seeingeye.tv _ -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
On Jun 16, 2014, at 21:00 , Godfrey DiGiorgi godfreydigio...@me.com wrote: I'm glad you got it done without issue. For me, I didn't get past step three. Removing the fan connector … gently as I could imagine … ripped the connector socket block right off the motherboard. From how the folks at the store reacted, I think this is not uncommon. It's a very delicate little component. I've damaged connectors like this before when attempting to bring trashed digital cameras back to life. I've been there. Maybe I got lucky with that connector this time (shudder). Hopefully I'll never have to go back in there! Agree with the external TimeMachine drive... even if it makes the desktop a little less neat. -Charles -- Charles Robinson - charl...@visi.com Minneapolis, MN http://charles.robinsontwins.org http://www.facebook.com/charles.robinson -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
On Jun 17, 2014, at 04:44 , Steve Cottrell co...@seeingeye.tv wrote: On 16/6/14, Charles Robinson, discombobulated, unleashed: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/54-Bit-Driver-Kit/IF145-022 I was *just* telling the wife that I need to replace my craptastic mini- driver set with something higher-quality. Would be very interested to see what you think when they arrive. I have to decide between the driver set or the $65 entire tool-roll... I will report back when one or the other arrives at home! -Charles -- Charles Robinson - charl...@visi.com Minneapolis, MN http://charles.robinsontwins.org http://www.facebook.com/charles.robinson -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
Yeah, at this point, I don't have need of a second drive in there either. My only point is having to go into the machine twice is twice the opportunity to screw it up. I just figure having someone else clean up my mess will cost me less if I combine all of my mistakes into one operation. On 6/16/2014 10:02 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: ifixit.com is great. I've used them a lot. As I wrote to Charles, I didn't see the point of putting another drive into the machine in the end and revised my original plan. Plenty of disk space free and all my photo data is on external drives anyway, both for safety and for best performance. Yes, doing RAM is a no brainer. But I already have the mini maxed out with 16G RAM; bought it that way. G On Jun 16, 2014, at 11:06 AM, John sesso...@earthlink.net wrote: The day I got a Mac mini I started looking at upgrade options. I found a place called ifixit.com that has a lot of guides tutorials. Replacing the hard-drive on the Mac mini looks to be a real bear. If I was going to attempt it, I'd want to go ahead and add the second drive at the same time so I didn't have to go in there twice. Adding RAM doesn't appear to be too much of a challenge though. -- Science - Questions we may never find answers for. Religion - Answers we must never question. -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
On 15/6/14, Godfrey DiGiorgi, discombobulated, unleashed: 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. Thanks for the report - very interesting! Totally concur re the SSD. Ever since I installed them - first in Stefan's 2008 13 inch MB - and later in my 2011 15 inch MBP - performance has rocketed. As you know I'm a heavy user, especially recently with video editing, and neither drive has skipped a beat. Both are Samsung 250MB units. Next year I'll be upgrading to 1 TB units for sure. Recently, Stef's iPhone 4S top mic ceased working. The usual suspect of crud inside proved not to be the cause and after much cleaning and reassembling there was nothing for it but to get a new one. It comes on a ribbon cable with the volume buttons and 3.5mm jack amongst others and was a total stripdown job. The iFixit videos and slide shows of the process are brilliant. I have a pair of magnifying lenses on a head brace I wear for anything like this and thoroughly recommend them for anything like this. My jeweller's screwdriver kit was getting a bit long in the tooth and home-made spudgers and probes all a bit tired, so I also got one of these, which is BRILLIANT. To anyone who's still looking to settle with a high quality tool kit with ALL the goodies you'll ever need, that won't break the bank, this is it. The iFixit 54 piece driver set: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/54-Bit-Driver-Kit/IF145-022 UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/iFixit-Bit-Driver-Screwdriver-Toolset/dp/B00D2CRZ2E Amazing kit, great quality. The driver is lightweight aluminium and holds the bits via magnetic female bay. Nice touches like the rubber grips on the outside and rotating palm grip. Great range of tools, all types covered including security bits. For the money you can't get better. -- Cheers, Cotty ___/\__Broadcast, Corporate, || (O) |Web Video Production --www.seeingeye.tv _ -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
On Jun 16, 2014, at 04:28 , Steve Cottrell co...@seeingeye.tv wrote: My jeweller's screwdriver kit was getting a bit long in the tooth and home-made spudgers and probes all a bit tired, so I also got one of these, which is BRILLIANT. To anyone who's still looking to settle with a high quality tool kit with ALL the goodies you'll ever need, that won't break the bank, this is it. The iFixit 54 piece driver set: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/54-Bit-Driver-Kit/IF145-022 I was *just* telling the wife that I need to replace my craptastic mini-driver set with something higher-quality. Now I know what to do, thanks! As for drive installation in a Mini - I just swapped a 1TB drive into my mid-2011 Mini (replacing the original 500GB) and I didn't have to move the logic board at all. The instructions SAY you should use the logic-board removal tool to shift it out of the way a bit, but my experience was that that particular step of the process wasn't necessary at all - the drive slid into place just fine with the logic board fully installed. However, if I ever want to stack up a second drive in the mini, then the board would have to move. That will be a while yet. -Charles -- Charles Robinson - charl...@visi.com Minneapolis, MN http://charles.robinsontwins.org http://www.facebook.com/charles.robinson -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
The day I got a Mac mini I started looking at upgrade options. I found a place called ifixit.com that has a lot of guides tutorials. Replacing the hard-drive on the Mac mini looks to be a real bear. If I was going to attempt it, I'd want to go ahead and add the second drive at the same time so I didn't have to go in there twice. Adding RAM doesn't appear to be too much of a challenge though. On 6/15/2014 7:24 PM, Stanley Halpin wrote: Thank you for the thorough discussion/review. This goes in my file for the next time I work my way through system upgrade options. stan On 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. -- Science - Questions we may never find answers for. Religion - Answers we must never question. -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
Good looking set of tools, Cotty. I probably would have been successful doing the swap myself if I had decent tools. I used the ones that came with the two-drive adaptation kit, and that just didn't work. I've already sent it back for a refund. On Jun 16, 2014, at 9:46 AM, Charles Robinson charl...@visi.com wrote: As for drive installation in a Mini - I just swapped a 1TB drive into my mid-2011 Mini (replacing the original 500GB) and I didn't have to move the logic board at all. The instructions SAY you should use the logic-board removal tool to shift it out of the way a bit, but my experience was that that particular step of the process wasn't necessary at all - the drive slid into place just fine with the logic board fully installed. However, if I ever want to stack up a second drive in the mini, then the board would have to move. That will be a while yet. I'm glad you got it done without issue. For me, I didn't get past step three. Removing the fan connector … gently as I could imagine … ripped the connector socket block right off the motherboard. From how the folks at the store reacted, I think this is not uncommon. It's a very delicate little component. Originally I was going to do the two drive setup and configure the SSD for boot and the second drive for Time Machine. But after the damage to the board, I thought to myself, Well, that's actually dumb, because if the TM backup is external, I can boot up another machine and recreate my entire system without having to dig out the drive if the mini craps out. I don't need more than the 960G single in the mini since my data is all external and my whole system (OS, apps, three accounts, and all their data) leaves almost 500G free space on the boot drive, another reason why the speed up is so extreme. Nothing makes OS X happier than having LOTS of free space on the boot drive to manage temps, auto-file-system defragmentation, its built-in optimization routines, etc. I chose a little LaCie 1T ruggedized drive for the backup volume with Thunderbolt and USB3 interfaces. It rips and operates absolutely silently. ;-) G -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
ifixit.com is great. I've used them a lot. As I wrote to Charles, I didn't see the point of putting another drive into the machine in the end and revised my original plan. Plenty of disk space free and all my photo data is on external drives anyway, both for safety and for best performance. Yes, doing RAM is a no brainer. But I already have the mini maxed out with 16G RAM; bought it that way. G On Jun 16, 2014, at 11:06 AM, John sesso...@earthlink.net wrote: The day I got a Mac mini I started looking at upgrade options. I found a place called ifixit.com that has a lot of guides tutorials. Replacing the hard-drive on the Mac mini looks to be a real bear. If I was going to attempt it, I'd want to go ahead and add the second drive at the same time so I didn't have to go in there twice. Adding RAM doesn't appear to be too much of a challenge though. -- 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
Ok all this talk got me off my keister and down to Fry's. My 5.2 mac mini main drive was down to 160gb so I picked up a Seagate 1tb sshd drive. The swap has been done and my old drive is now being restored to the new one. Only 4 more hours of waiting. Hopefully the extra room and faster drive will give it a bump in responsiveness. Thanks for posting. -- Bruce Sent from my iPad On Jun 16, 2014, at 7:00 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi godfreydigio...@me.com wrote: Good looking set of tools, Cotty. I probably would have been successful doing the swap myself if I had decent tools. I used the ones that came with the two-drive adaptation kit, and that just didn't work. I've already sent it back for a refund. On Jun 16, 2014, at 9:46 AM, Charles Robinson charl...@visi.com wrote: As for drive installation in a Mini - I just swapped a 1TB drive into my mid-2011 Mini (replacing the original 500GB) and I didn't have to move the logic board at all. The instructions SAY you should use the logic-board removal tool to shift it out of the way a bit, but my experience was that that particular step of the process wasn't necessary at all - the drive slid into place just fine with the logic board fully installed. However, if I ever want to stack up a second drive in the mini, then the board would have to move. That will be a while yet. I'm glad you got it done without issue. For me, I didn't get past step three. Removing the fan connector … gently as I could imagine … ripped the connector socket block right off the motherboard. From how the folks at the store reacted, I think this is not uncommon. It's a very delicate little component. Originally I was going to do the two drive setup and configure the SSD for boot and the second drive for Time Machine. But after the damage to the board, I thought to myself, Well, that's actually dumb, because if the TM backup is external, I can boot up another machine and recreate my entire system without having to dig out the drive if the mini craps out. I don't need more than the 960G single in the mini since my data is all external and my whole system (OS, apps, three accounts, and all their data) leaves almost 500G free space on the boot drive, another reason why the speed up is so extreme. Nothing makes OS X happier than having LOTS of free space on the boot drive to manage temps, auto-file-system defragmentation, its built-in optimization routines, etc. I chose a little LaCie 1T ruggedized drive for the backup volume with Thunderbolt and USB3 interfaces. It rips and operates absolutely silently. ;-) G -- 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.
not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
Thank you for the thorough discussion/review. This goes in my file for the next time I work my way through system upgrade options. stan On 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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
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.
Re: not necessarily OT for some ... Mac mini performance with SSD
On Jun 15, 2014, at 4:25 PM, Richard Womer rickpic...@gmail.com wrote: 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? Stingier … sure … but more cautious? I'm not sure I get that. I imagine there would be a performance improvement for some combinations of the app, the cache, and the catalog. How much of an improvement I couldn't say without testing a configuration. - I think the cache is the least valuable thing to worry about. I've had mine set to 1G, 10G, 20G, etc and noticed very little real improvement on performance. - Similarly, LR access to the original files is important but since, for the most part, it is read-only the best strategy there is to separate it from the volume where the LR catalog is and be reasonably speedy. It would be interesting to have a second SSD on a similar speed bus to test against compared to the FW800 link to reasonably quick external drives, but I don't have the opportunity with the hardware I have to try that out. - Putting LR and the catalog folder on the fastest storage medium is likely the most valuable thing to do. LR talks back and forth with the database and the previews constantly as you work, so making that as speedy as possible is essential. LR also uses tons of temporary space, so making sure that the OS startup volume is fast, that there's plenty of free space, and that there's plenty of free space on the LR catalog folder volume is also probably pretty valuable. - Making sure that the OS services that LR depends upon are also as fast as possible is also pretty important. LR multithreads … a multi-processing environment in terms of CPU and plenty of fast RAM to feed it is important. I short cut all of the above by putting the entire OS, all the apps, the Camera Raw cache, and the LR catalog all on the fastest bus and fastest medium, with a fast quad-core processor and plenty of RAM. My goal was to make a fluid and reasonably priced system to do the photography, and not spend forever trying to find the best configuration for optimum performance. I made access to the original files the slowest link, the FW800 bus to a external drive. The only way to further improve speed with this base hardware configuration would be to see if a Thunderbolt external disk array would net a useable improvement, and at what price. The total system I've put together, including the four external hard drives (for TM backup, working photo repository, two archives) would be about $3500 retail. Not cheap but not off the edge considering the performance. I'm moderately stingy when it comes to buying stuff I don't need or want, this was less expensive in dollars than the original Macintosh + external drive + printer system I bought back in 1984, with more valuable money. The difference in performance and capability (and for the buck) is mind-boggling if your memory stretches back that far… :-) 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.
