OWC Accelsior 960GB SSD PCI - Thoughts

Distributing OS, Photoshop & ACR, Scratch, Caches, DNGs, and working TIFFs among SSDs

For optimal performance in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5 (I will soon upgrade to CS6 or CC), how should I distribute my OS, apps, Scratch, Caches, DNGs, and working TIFFs among these drives?:

120 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
(connected via internal 6G SATA)
240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
(connected via internal 6G SATA)
960 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD
(connected via Thunderbolt TB1 external OWC Helios unit)

(Also, irrelevant to performance: multiple individual hard drives connected via eSATA and USB3, not RAIDed together [these are for bootable backup of the OS; for backup of all of the above; for archives of past work; for backup of archives of past work, etc.; on site and off site.)

The Accelsior SSD, connected by TB1, is by far the fastest drive. Would partitioning and devoting different parts of it to different functions help?

I'm able to fit the OS, apps, email, etc. on the 120 GB SSD. But I don't assume that I should.

Here's the most relevent info about the rest of my hardware:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac12,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3.4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 32 GB
Boot ROM Version: IM121.0047.B1F
SMC Version (system): 1.72f2

Many thanks,

Mark

manythanks said:

For optimal performance in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5 (I will soon upgrade to CS6 or CC), how should I distribute my OS, apps, Scratch, Caches, DNGs, and working TIFFs among these drives?:

120 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
960 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD
(connected by Thunderbolt TB1 OWC Helios unit)
multiple individual hard drives connected via eSATA and USB3: not RAIDed together

The Accelsior SSD, connected by TB1, is by far the fastest drive. Would partitioning and devoting different parts of it to different functions help?

I'm able to fit the OS, apps, email, etc. on the 120 GB SSD. But I don't assume that I should.

Here's the most relevent info about the rest of my hardware:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac12,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3.4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 32 GB
Boot ROM Version: IM121.0047.B1F
SMC Version (system): 1.72f2

Many thanks,

Mark

Click to expand...

I would put as much as I could on the fastest drive and sell/repurpose whatever I didn't need... I'm not a fan of keeping old drives around and connected for menial tasks just because they're there. I prefer to consolidate and simplify but everyone's different.

VirtualRain said:

I would put as much as I could on the fastest drive and sell/repurpose whatever I didn't need... I'm not a fan of keeping old drives around and connected for menial tasks just because they're there. I prefer to consolidate and simplify but everyone's different.

Click to expand...

Hi Virtual Rain.

My reason for devoting separate drives to separate functions is that I'm accustomed to that being more efficient and minimizing bottlenecking. But perhaps this Accelsior PCI SSD, connected by Thunderbolt 1, is so much faster than the internal SSD connected by 6g SATA that I should keep scratch, cache, and work files on it?

Thanks,

Mark

manythanks said:

Hi Virtual Rain.

My reason for devoting separate drives to separate functions is that I'm accustomed to that being more efficient and minimizing bottlenecking. But perhaps this Accelsior PCI SSD, connected by Thunderbolt 1, is so much faster than the internal SSD connected by 6g SATA that I should keep scratch, cache, and work files on it?

Thanks,

Mark

Click to expand...

Hmm... Are the two discrete drives internal or external? If internal, I guess I would use the 240 for OS/Apps and the external for photos/scratch and not do much with the 120.

VirtualRain said:

Hmm... Are the two discrete drives internal or external? If internal, I guess I would use the 240 for OS/Apps and the external for photos/scratch and not do much with the 120.

Click to expand...

Here is how the three drives are connected to the iMac:

120 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
(connected via internal 6G SATA)
240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD
(connected via internal 6G SATA)
960 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD
(connected via Thunderbolt TB1 external OWC Helios unit)

My choice will be OS on the 240G, everything else on the Accelsior. And schedule a clone operation everyday to make the 120G as a backup internal bootdisk.

h9826790 said:

My choice will be OS on the 240G, everything else on the Accelsior. And schedule a clone operation everyday to make the 120G as a backup internal bootdisk.

Click to expand...

I'm able to fit my OS and all apps and email and such on the 120GB SSD, so it seems I might as well use the 240GB SSD for something else. You think it's faster to just have scratch and caches on the 960GB Accelsior SSD (along with the work-in-progress DNGs and TIFFs) than to put scratch and caches on the 240GB SSD? If scratch and caches and DNGs and TIFFs were all on the same drive then they would of course be competing with one another for bandwidth, but perhaps the read incompressible rate of 640 MB/s and write incompressible rate of 400 MB/s of the Accelsior connected via Thunderbolt 1 is fast enough so that there's more bandwidth left over for scratch and caches there than there is on the 240GB SSD with its read incompressible rate of 270 MB/s and its write incompressible rate of 170 MB/s? Any advice on how I can know which way of distributing this stuff is faster? --Mark

manythanks said:

I'm able to fit my OS and all apps and email and such on the 120GB SSD, so it seems I might as well use the 240GB SSD for something else. You think it's faster to just have scratch and caches on the 960GB Accelsior SSD (along with the work-in-progress DNGs and TIFFs) than to put scratch and caches on the 240GB SSD? If scratch and caches and DNGs and TIFFs were all on the same drive then they would of course be competing with one another for bandwidth, but perhaps the read incompressible rate of 640 MB/s and write incompressible rate of 400 MB/s of the Accelsior connected via Thunderbolt 1 is fast enough so that there's more bandwidth left over for scratch and caches there than there is on the 240GB SSD with its read incompressible rate of 270 MB/s and its write incompressible rate of 170 MB/s? Any advice on how I can know which way of distributing this stuff is faster? --Mark

Click to expand...

You're overthinking it (perhaps with a dose of old-school HD thinking thrown in there as well). All of your storage is so fast there's very little you could do to stress even the slowest drive. About the only guiding principles that might apply here is to put your scratch on your fastest drive, make sure no drive is over 80% full, and make sure you have a backup of everything. Other than that, I can pretty much guarantee you'll never notice a difference in day-to-day use regardless of what you put where.

EDIT: I also notice you have 32GB of RAM... that's what I have and I notice that most of that is being used as disk cache which mean there's even less demand on your storage system... and I'm not sure if a scratch disk is even relevant anymore with that kind of RAM.

Bottom line: 5-7 years ago when everyone had 1-2GB of RAM and spinning disks, deciding where and how to store data and manage scratch was a critical part of putting a system together. Not so much anymore. I mean seriously, I generally preach to put as much of your workflow on SSD as possible... so you're way ahead of most people... first world problems son!!!

I am wondering if someone can guide me here.
I have a 12 core MacPro 2011 and I have a OWC 60gig for my boot drive. I am running out of space and I am looking for an Accelsior 240 or 480gb. I like them but they seem overpriced.
Most of my work is huge Photoshop files and I am wondering if going the Accelsior route is my best option or if there are cheaper or better solutions out there for my case.
I appreciate any insight.

gugy said:

I am wondering if someone can guide me here.

I have a 12 core MacPro 2011 and I have a OWC 60gig for my boot drive. I am running out of space and I am looking for an Accelsior 240 or 480gb. I like them but they seem overpriced.

Most of my work is huge Photoshop files and I am wondering if going the Accelsior route is my best option or if there are cheaper or better solutions out there for my case.

I appreciate any insight.

Click to expand...

I would suggest a Sonnet Tempo Pro card and a couple of off the shelf SSDs of your preferred brand (e.g. Crucial, Intel, Samsung) over the Accelsior. If you search, there's tons of recent historical advice on this topic.

Or, you could get an adapter and a Samsung flash PCI-e SSD drive, which is covered in another thread here.

Native Apple boot disc/TRIM, high speeds (1tb over 1,000 mb/s). I got a terabyte for 530 dollars, you should be able to get adapter and drive for under 600 I think.

VirtualRain said:

I would suggest a Sonnet Tempo Pro card and a couple of off the shelf SSDs of your preferred brand (e.g. Crucial, Intel, Samsung) over the Accelsior. If you search, there's tons of recent historical advice on this topic.

Click to expand...

CASLondon said:

Or, you could get an adapter and a Samsung flash PCI-e SSD drive, which is covered in another thread here.

Native Apple boot disc/TRIM, high speeds (1tb over 1,000 mb/s). I got a terabyte for 530 dollars, you should be able to get adapter and drive for under 600 I think.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips. I will take a look on these. I like the fact they are more reasonable than OWC. I like their stuff but they for sure are on the expensive end.
Wow, just checked the Sonnet Tempo Pro and it seems very expensive.

I meant to say specifically I was referring to Samsung made for Apple PCI-e drives, which are available on ebay either from the US or Korea, and a chinese adapter by Sintech on ebay that is for the Apple shaped connector on these.

Also, be aware that there is supposed to be a high speed OWC PCI-e drive on the market any day, which might even be faster (but I'm sure at a price). I went Samsung Apple.