EDIT: OP: It sounds like you have a dual drive setup now, is that right? If so, how did you manage the installation or migration from your original HD to the dual drive setup? Did your speed problem start or remain unchanged after the move?
Hey Dale,
Yeah, I now have a dual drive set-up. To build the new drive, I used carbon copy cloner to copy my main drive from the old HDD to the new SSD. I posted in thread on MR asking about this:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1644775/ but basically with some Googling, you can find what you need. CCC allows you to clone the drive, but you choose to leave out the home folder, which should most of the time have all your media, etc. on it. About 50-60GB was copied over.
Two issues I found: 1) iTunes needs a "Shared" user in the user folder in the same drive where iTunes resides. In my case, when I copied over to the SSD, I didn't copy any of the users, so I had to create an empty shared user folder on the SSD. I found an Apple KB article on how to create this properly, complete with terminal commands. Sorry I don't have the link anymore.
The other issue was I had was I had to re-point LR to the new location of the library of photo masters.
Theoretically, I could delete the OS off my HDD, but as I still have room on the old HDD, and this was done mainly for performance, I am keeping the old OS install for now, just in case any issues crop up.
ON THE SPEED ISSUE: I knew going into this that this likely was not my issue. With the CPU hitting 100%, it had to be a processor issue. That's been proven true. The SSD helps tremendously in speed of shut down (not sure why), start up, and launching apps (especially MS office suite). And maybe in general, speeds up a bit navigating in an app. I suppose that depends on how the app is loaded as you use it.
Overall, I think I'm keeping the SSD, but I'm not 100% sure I'll keep the laptop. I'm going to wait to see what the next refresh and Maverick is like. This at least bought me some time, and keeps me distracted with something new a shiny to test/play with
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MY SUMMARY -- for whoever might be reading this. I've updated my MBP a couple of times, chasing LR performance.
1) I did RAM first, and that was a HUGE help. At 8GB, I never max out RAM when running LR only. This is cheap, so do this first.
2) There are a lot of ways to tweak LR, from building 1:1 previews early, to expanding the RAW cache, etc. I think making sure you have these right is a good second step. And, yes, I think more RAM is a higher return than the tweaking, though LR tweaks certainly cost less. But, without the RAM, it almost doesn't matter.
3) I think based on this experience, I would recommend upping the processor next, if speed is the critical thing. This is, of course, the most expensive option.
4) SSD helps somewhat, and gives the computer an overall much snappier feel, but doesn't impact LR that much. If you want a MBP refresh, get an SSD. It impacts everything else. If you must have faster LR performance, get a new Mac (or a second mac, or, if you have a Mac Pro, update the processor)
I don't know if graphics cards updates would help at all. As I prefer the 13" MBP footprint, my choices are limited. I would think graphics cards would NOT help, so I believe this point to be moot, though perhaps other people who know more than I do would like to chime in.
I think RAM and Processor are your biggest hardware levers, and do the tweaks. Get an SSD anyway, but it's not driven by LR needs.
