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Archive 2014 · New SSD - organization suggestions?

  
 
mhp_sd
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


Hi,

I'm probably not the only person moving to Lightroom right now, so I thought I would throw this out and see if anyone has suggestions.

I am a hobbiest - so no professional workflow with which to deal. I see myself shooting exclusively raw moving forward as opposed to the raw+jpg I was using for iphoto.

Up to now I have used photo mechanic to import images (raw and/or jpg) from my camera and have stored them on an external drive (plus a backup). I then take my selected images and drag them into iphoto for library management.

With the decrease in SSD prices and the fact that my 256G ssd filled up last week, I have a new 512G ssd to format and put in my Macbook Pro. I would like to have my image catalog on my internal drive with backups on the external.

Is there any advantage to partitioning the drive? If so, which partition would you put the LR catalog?

Would anyone recommend continuing to use photo mechanic to cull prior to importing to lightroom?

Thanks for the help,
Mark




Aug 11, 2014 at 06:36 PM
EB-1
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


You can used multiple partitions or not, but an SSD does not benefit from short stroking a partition as an HDD does. I keep a separate 240GB boot SSD and store data on other SSDs and HDDs. Why don't you keep the 256GB in addition to the 512 and separate the workload?

EBH



Aug 11, 2014 at 06:56 PM
mhp_sd
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


EBH-I would love to keep the 256 - but wouldn't I have to lose the optical drive in my MacBook Pro (17" mid 2009)?
Thanks



Aug 11, 2014 at 07:13 PM
EB-1
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


Oh, I was not thinking about it being a laptop. I forget the Apple nomenclature.

In laptops I'm using the new 1024GB Crucial M550 with two partitions, OS/Apps and data. I do replace the internal optical drives with a second hard drive (2TB), but I don't use optical drives enough to need an internal.

I can't wait for 2TB SSDs next year.

EBH



Aug 11, 2014 at 07:59 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


OK suggestions for using LR on a laptop (ie with limited storage at times)

install your LR on you (only) internal drive . and have your CAT file on there as well , when i installed mine the mac put the cat file in the pictures folder (at least I cant remember doing that myself)

if your new to LR then you need to know that lightroom uses Catalogues and these are called *.LRCAT (you can have more than 1 cat file but for now I would only run a single catalogue .

Along with the LRCAT file are auto generated 2 preview files (Previews and Smart Previews) . these have to be in the same folder as the cat file .

You can let LR move imported RAW (or Jpegs) images to an external drive to save you space on the internal . if your USB3 then thats plenty fast enough

Now as your using a small(ish) internal drive and are likely not to be connected to your image drive ALL the time you may want to have LR create smart previews on import (they can be created/deleted later as well) . these will allow you to view and edit your images when you not connected to your image drive(s)


Oh and yes I would probably drop the internal optical drive unless your using it alot . you can pick up a bus powered DVD drive really cheap (get the super dive if you want stick with apple) . I bought a cheap used external Bluray drive for my imac (didnt have an optical drive) which hardly gets used .
given the choice of a built in optical or an additional hard drive id go with the HDD


EDIT:
I just saw that your on a 2009 MBP . so thats USB2 or FW800 . in that case I would definitely look into changing the DVD drive out for a HDD .
USB2 is ok for most things but moving large amounts of RAW files will be slower . I let LR import a large set of of raw files to the wrong drive . A USB2 data drive i have for general stuff rather than the USB3 image drive i have , and it took much longer .

FW800 drives are an option i guess but i dont see many current ones with FW800 ports now



Aug 12, 2014 at 02:59 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


For the best performance the following need to be on one or more SSDs:
- Lr previews (preview images of various sizes for each image in your library)
- Lr catalog (the database where all edit instructions, etc., are stored)
- ACR Cache (holds partially converted raw file data. Don't make it too small.)
- Smart previews (DNG versions of off-line images allowing browsing and editing)

Use 1:1 previews if you can afford the space and time to generate them. Doing so speeds up browsing in the library module even when you have zoomed in.

My MBP has two 480GB SSDs running as a striped RAID. My photo library is growing faster than my culling efforts and so if I started again I would use two 1TB SSDs. However, the new MBPs only hold a single SSD and 1TB is the maximum. At least they have thunderbolt for speedy external drive access.

I expect that your MBP has an ExpressCard slot. You can get a compact USB 3 card for it that will give you faster access than USB 2 ever will but it will not work at specified USB 3 speed because the ExpressCard port seems to have a restricted bandwidth. An eSATA card works but plays havoc with MS Office activation software - every time you add or remove an eSATA drive it thinks you have new computer hardware and insists that you re-activate Office. That fails because you've already done it and then you telephone MS to get the code. Then wait for it to happen again.

The optical drive can be replaced but you will need to pull the computer apart. OWC sell the bracket and provide excellent instructions. It's a lot more fiddly than doing the same thing in a Windows laptop, but it's not difficult. You can buy a case for your old drive or you can get a more up-market external drive.

The DVD drive port will probably only be for SATA II (3 Gbps instead of 6 Gbps) and so you might consider buying a bigger, slower, cheaper SSD rather than the fastest SATA III SSD. In future when you upgrade to a new computer that SSD will still be a useful faster-than-HDD external drive.

When buying any SSD for potential external use be sure to check the current draw. USB 2 ports can only supply 500mA, and USB 3 ports can only supply 900mA. I got stuck with Sandisk drives that need 1200mA and therefore need an external power supply to let them work in an external case.

An internal HDD is still faster than any of your external HDD options because of the interface limitations. You can get a 2.5" 1000GB 7200rpm drive with 32MB cache for good performance.

If you will be using an external HDD and can tolerate the size, then get a 3.5" drive and case with eSATA / USB 3/ FW800 interface. The bigger drives work faster than the smaller drives of similar vintage.

- Alan



Aug 12, 2014 at 08:37 AM
jerrykur
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


mhp_sd wrote:
EBH-I would love to keep the 256 - but wouldn't I have to lose the optical drive in my MacBook Pro (17" mid 2009)?
Thanks


Do you use the optical drive a lot, or only occasionally? If you only use the optical every once in while you can do what I did. I got a diskdoubler bracket that fits right where the optical drive did. I installed the old SSD in that spot. I put the optical drive in an external enclosure that has a USB connection. So for the few times In need the optical drive I just plug it in to a USB port.




Aug 23, 2014 at 12:00 PM
gdanmitchell
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


Good thread — I've already learned some new stuff about SSDs, especially from the Mac laptop user's perspective. Thanks.

Dan

(I use a Macbook Air, but only as a second computer for travel purposes. My main machine is on the desktop.)



Aug 23, 2014 at 12:34 PM
15Bit
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · New SSD - organization suggestions?


I did some testing on SSD impact a while back. Results here: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1220523

It's a bit controversial i know, but i found the impact of the SSD to be much lower than you might expect. I'm currently running my catalogue from a local spinning disk with images stored on a NAS, and it doesn't perceptibly feel all that much slower than having everything on a local SSD. It just has some lag at startup as it connects to the NAS.



Aug 23, 2014 at 03:32 PM





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