Is an SSD worth it for photographers?

eoren1 · July 24, 2011

Just bought a Mac mini and had planned on upgrading ram to 8gigs and adding a 120 gig SSD. Read a very interesting review of the use of SSDs specifically for Lightroom which showed minimal real world improvements from the addition of an SSD. Just wondering what your thoughts are.
Link http://www.computer-darkroom.com/blog/will-an-ssd-improve-adobe-lightroom-performance/
What's really interesting is that Adobe links to this review in their June review of how to optimize LR performance

angevin1 · July 25, 2011

Eyal,

I have two SSD's in my Workstation. I KNOW they help. But I also KNOW that if I had to Choose between RAM and SSD, I'd choose RAM. I could easily deal with a Slower load time trade-off for faster in-app performance. I think it's my RAM that allows me to do so much so easily/seamlessly in any of my Adobe products. Of course much of my time is spent in video-post, so RAM becomes the watch-word there. But I also do Stills, and LR3 is my predominate go-to app. I've never tried loading that many 5Dmk2 files/Stills before so I cannot compare. There are programs that'll allow you to make adjustments and monitor differences on several functions such as graphics, CPU read/write, etc. if you happen to be overclocking, which is what I did.

On the overclocking and performance testing, I was very aware the whole time that Just like a race car doesn't race on a dynamometer, we don't process photos in testing-apps. So I just used a .mov file and rendered it over and over after clearing my cache each time and watched as those render times moved and adjusted my settings that way.

SSD's confront the bottleneck associated with Harddrives. if you gotta read/write or I/O, then SSD's will help that.

Great link btw!

basflt · July 25, 2011

my own experience = no

they are small , useless for storage
expensive
unreliable [ they can quit without warning ]
limited lifetime

they make your PC faster , if you put your OS on it
but thats the only pro i can think of

but then again , that my experience

pmaxwell · July 25, 2011

I have seen a marked improvement in opening photoshop since I installed a SSD. I assume you are planning to store the photos on the SSD (not just the OS).

SSD's can read large files a lot faster than a traditional hard drive. after the file is open, your performance is more ram dependent like angevin1 said.

lifeinfocus · July 25, 2011

I vaguely remember reading that SSD performance was expected to increase significantly toward the end of this year. Have to check it out again.

Phil

ThatCanonGuy · July 25, 2011

I just went from a 5400 rpm drive + Vista to a 7200 rpm + Win7. This has made laptop MUCH, MUCH faster. What's the rpm of your current drive? Because if I noticed a big difference going from 5400 to 7200, and SSD's are faster than 7200... well, you get the point

Then again, the OS upgrade from Vista to 7 may have something to do with it. I have heard that 7 is faster than Vista, but I think the rpm improvement is at least a big part of the reason my laptop is faster.

syntern · August 7, 2011

It definitely helped for me, SSD is good for the OS and the "workspace" whatever you call your drive that you do your work on. For long-term storage I still prefer normal HDDs (because load and save time does not matter that much here), or I'm using cloud storage services (to be more protected against failures).

eoren1 · August 7, 2011

Thanks everyone. Long story but ended up returning the mini for an iMac.
The difference from a 5400 2.5 HDD to a 7200 3.5 one was huge - speeds doubled.
With Lion, the system comes back from sleep instantly (even with a mechanical HDD).
At this point, it seems an SSD would give me faster boot times (but I only restart once or twice monthly) and faster program start times (but Lion and my 12 gigs RAM lets me leave more programs open at a time).
I'm going to wait til SSDs drop in price and will likely then add them via the Thunderbolt enclosure.

stevod · August 9, 2011

I reckon SSD is worth it for everyone. Use it for the OS and apps at least. Depending on your workflow you might also use it for work in progress, which it can speed up massively. Choose the more reliable drives over the fastest on paper, as there's nothing slower than a bricked drive, no matter how fast it was before. I've not had a bricked drive yet though.

S

basflt · August 9, 2011

i had a bricked SSD twice [ is not funny ]

for the price of one SSD you get three HHD , ten times as big [ times three ]

bundle them into a striped RAID and speed is fine too

no more expensive SSD for me :nono

Art Scott · August 9, 2011

My "C" drive is 500gb ( Right now...next one will be 1TB or so ) and it is fast enuff for me...I have never felt that it was slow or sluggish......When I compare the price to the size of a SSD I cannot justify it.....especiall since I would need 3 copies for safe keeping.......it is not a matter of if a SSD will die...but when.....so I just rotate out my older drives every 3-4yrs and forget it.......

basflt · August 9, 2011

there is no need for a large C:drive
if it can hold OS plus some applications , its fine

photo's and backups should be stored on other disks then the disk that has the OS on it

pmaxwell · August 9, 2011

basflt wrote: »

i had a bricked SSD twice [ is not funny ]

for the price of one SSD you get three HHD , ten times as big [ times three ]

bundle them into a striped RAID and speed is fine too

no more expensive SSD for me :nono

Basfit, as you know not all SSD's are created equally. We use them on some high end products for work. Some SSDs are cheap (relatively) for a reason. We tend to use the more expense SLC (single layer cell) as it is significantly more reliable than the more common MLC (multi layer cell). Intel makes some of the most reliable units both in MLC and SLC from our testing.

Art Scott · August 9, 2011

basflt wrote: »

there is no need for a large C:drive
if it can hold OS plus some applications , its fine

photo's and backups should be stored on other disks then the disk that has the OS on it

I would normally agree....however my 500 is over 1/2 full.....i have 53 applications on this drive......and the size of the MS updates is getting huge...since getting this computer just over 2 yrs ago....the updates to Win 7 have been in excess of 20gb.....I no longer allow auto up dates for anything except my anti virus software and that has been a grand total of 650mb in the 5 yrs of using it.......... no images only applications on the C drive, this includes the OS.......it was not that long ago that I figured I would not buy anything larger than 250gb drives......well they are pretty much non existent, 500's are getting hard to find locally.....but the 1.5tb's and up are every where........As for other disks for storage.....45 HDD's / 3 ranging from 250gb to 1.5 tb just for images alone....another 12 / 3 are for muisic and Software that is purchased as down loads.....and some for record keeping.........so having to have larger C drives will become the norm.......none of my applications are trials......I clear all trials as soon as I have tried them out...haven't used a trial software in a long time and that Genuine Fractals before I bought GF5.........

I do have a second drive in my laptop that is what I call my remote working drive (also a 500gb) and 1 500gb external 2.5"... that is the drive that i installed for travel work....so when I am out of town AI down load my cards to it and run thru LR, PS or whateven then when I return home I move them to their permanent drive thru the LR catalog..........the 500gb 2.5" is my back up for travel and it get locked into any hotels safe I might be staying at...........I carry no 3.5" drives when I travel......

theprincereturns · August 12, 2011

SSD makes the biggest difference on small file read/write, and access time. Photos and Video files generally are pretty big, so sequential access speed is more important for these files, hence SSDs make much less of a difference. The newer Sata 6Gb SSD drives (Vertex 3 for example) have 2-3 times the sequential access speed of most traditional harddrives, but still won't make that huge of a difference becuase of precacheing. Loading programs and OS access many more small files so benefit a lot more from an SSD.

Theoretical Example of loading 30Mb Image in LR3 (assuming not pre cached)
Regular HD:
17ms access time
30Mb/(80Mb/s sequential read) = 375ms
Processing Time ~ 100ms
Total ~1/2 second

Vertex 3 SSD
.1ms access time
30Mb/(300Mb/s sequential read) = 100ms
Processing Time ~ 100ms
Total ~1/4 second

So it theoritically makes around 1/4 second per file access time, but you are likely not going to notice this much as LR will pre cache pictures in memory anyway (more RAM = more pre caching ability). Even if you did save 1/4 of a second per file that isn't going to save you that much time in the long run.

Is an SSD worth it for photographers?

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