SSD + Lightroom+ CS3?? Should I?

[Cloud9]

New Egg is selling 128gb ssd from G.skill for $259.00

I just maxed my ram on MBP 2.4 to 6gb and I have a MCE optibay on the way. I was planning on doing a RAID0 for increased performance. I have tons of externals so backing up for protection is not a problem. What I am really looking for is faster load times, image exporting, and batch processing with cs3. I typically work with hundreds of images at a time. I also tend to have Lightrooom, CS3, Mail, ichat, itunes, and mail running simultaneously.

Will and ssd give me real world performance increase for these purposes? I don't care about start up time, though those you tube videos are pretty neat.

Thanks

[thomahawk]

you'll have a decent speed and performance with it. not much difference form a regular harddrive. the only problem is disk space and thats it

[Cloud9]

I guess I was'nt looking for someone to tell it was decent. I figured that from what I have seen around the net. But its hard to tell if it would increase actual real world tasks, like batch processing images, doing a lightroom render on 600 raw images, exporting images from lightroom. Things like that.

Thanks,

Barclay

[jessica.]

I think you can save your money and buy the Seagate 7200 rpm drive. I recently found it was quite fast and probably almost as fast as the SSD. Some things will differ, but on a MBP it was blazing fast.

[Cloud9]

Would a internal RAID0 be faster then the seagate 7200? Cause I have a optibay on the way and two 250gb 5400 scorpios sitting on my desk.

[drichards]

SSD's benefits are slightly faster read times and lower heat from no moving parts. I'd recommend a 320GB 7200rpm drive; it will cost you about $100 and deliver improved performance over your existing 5400rpm drive, significantly. Its a much better value.

[Digital Skunk]

Originally Posted by drichards

SSD's benefits are slightly faster read times and lower heat from no moving parts. I'd recommend a 320GB 7200rpm drive; it will cost you about $100 and deliver improved performance over your existing 5400rpm drive, significantly. Its a much better value.

This is true, also, doing certain tasks in Lightroom and Photoshop don't depend too much on the HDD. Once you get to a certain speed in your HDD, speed increases will only come from the speed of the processor and type of RAM used.

With a MacBook Pro, even one with 6GB and two HDDs in RAID 0 you won't notice much speed increases in batch processing and long run processes like that from a system with a 7k320 and 4GB of RAM.

[Cloud9]

Well I am multitasking right now with a bunch of apps open while I am photo editing and I see that I have 3gb of page outs. This is with 6gb of ram. Ihave mail, ical, ichat, firefox, itunes, lightroom, cs3 and activity monitor.

If I really will only see moderate gains with an ssd then I will stick with an internal raid0. Otherwise I was thinking of going 128gb ssd system drive and 250gb data drive with active lightroom/photoshop projects stored on the ssd.

But if thats a $259.00 hole in my pocket then I will wait 6-9 mo's before going ssd.

[Digital Skunk]

Originally Posted by Cloud9

Well I am multitasking right now with a bunch of apps open while I am photo editing and I see that I have 3gb of page outs. This is with 6gb of ram. Ihave mail, ical, ichat, firefox, itunes, lightroom, cs3 and activity monitor.

If I really will only see moderate gains with an ssd then I will stick with an internal raid0. Otherwise I was thinking of going 128gb ssd system drive and 250gb data drive with active lightroom/photoshop projects stored on the ssd.

But if thats a $259.00 hole in my pocket then I will wait 6-9 mo's before going ssd.

This is truly the dilemma many users face when it comes to multitasking, RAM, HDD speed, and price.

You will have to pay for the speed that you may want. Sometimes, multitasking will have to suffer to save some green.