Portable, affordable solution for intensive photography work

[thekev]

• Mac Mini Lion Server 2011
• 16GB RAM
• 120GB SSD + 500GB HDD (7200rmp)

I'm thinking of partitioning the SSD to have half allocated as a scratch disk and the other half for the OS and some apps.

Bad idea? Should I keep the OS and apps on the 500GB HDD?

I can say that if I was on the market for a mini, that's about what I'd buy. I'd probably look at the price tag and want a mac pro instead, but you're traveling with this so it makes a lot of sense.

I knew the partitioning question would come up. I'm not sure on that one. With an HDD I would have called that a bad idea due to wear from a lot of navigating between partitions and potential disk thrashing. With an SSD i'm really not sure. Applications launch faster off an SSD. The system will boot faster from one. I'm thinking over a lot of little drive quirks and stuff, and it's the kind of thing I'd personally test. I don't like to recommend things I haven't tested. Someone else might have an answer. If this system still bogs down at all, I guarantee it's just tweaking settings.

Also if your file save times are still unacceptable, this will disable layer compression when saving an image.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/902/cpsid_90248.html

That means a larger file written to disk so at that point you're limited to how fast those firewire drives can write, but you no longer wait on a poorly threaded compression algorithm. It's up to you whether or not you want to use this, but I finally found it 🙂.

 

[Designer Dale]

Madam P: In considering upgrades to your current machine, it helps to find the model identifier number. It will verify if something is compatible with your computer. Click About this Mac under the Apple menu and then click the More Info button. The top lines of "Hardware" give you the model and ID. It's probably MacBook Pro4,1 like mine. If you aren't sure something will work with your laptop, look at the model ID for that product.

The Optical Bay hard drive solution noted in another post here isn't for your model. Other World Computing has a back stock of adapters for my 4,1 17 in. MBP, but doesn't state it will fit the 15 in. MCE Electronics has one and it looks the same except that it's turned around in the photo. It's an unnerving process to open the cases on these things, but people do it all the time. I survived putting a 7200 rpm HD in mine. Only dropped one screw 😀

BTW: Is the HD in your computer the stock 5400 rpm one or a 7200 rpm?

Before you do anything rash with the current system, keep in mind that it has a current sale value of maybe $700.

Links

Optibay for 15 in MBP

Dale

 

[Designer Dale]

I'm always late to the party. The Mini should serve you well. In regards to how big an SSD needs to be for OS and Apps, use get Info to see how big these folders are on your current machine. My Applications Folder is 8.85 GB and my System Folder is 4.76 GB. My Pictures Folder, on the other hand is 104 GB, and yours is much larger. You will have plenty of room on the SSD for a scratch disk and maybe a Working Files folder.

Dale

 

[Phrasikleia]

I can say that if I was on the market for a mini, that's about what I'd buy. I'd probably look at the price tag and want a mac pro instead, but you're traveling with this so it makes a lot of sense.

Well, the bottom-of-the-line MacPro costs about double what I'll spend on my proposed set-up (which will total about $1,350 all told, including tax and shipping). The MacPro is not an option regardless because of my travel needs, but...just sayin'...the mini is far less expensive and will be better configured with 16GB of RAM and the dual-drive configuration that includes an SSD. 🙂

I'm always late to the party. The Mini should serve you well. In regards to how big an SSD needs to be for OS and Apps, use get Info to see how big these folders are on your current machine. My Applications Folder is 8.85 GB and my System Folder is 4.76 GB. My Pictures Folder, on the other hand is 104 GB, and yours is much larger. You will have plenty of room on the SSD for a scratch disk and maybe a Working Files folder.

Dale

OK, thanks, Dale. My current internal HD has about 120GB of data on it, but I could trim that down quite a bit to fit it into a 60GB partition. I was more concerned about fragmentation or heavy usage of an SSD containing system and application files. The alternative would be to keep the SSD completely clear and dedicated to serving as a scratch drive.

 

[thekev]

OK, thanks, Dale. My current internal HD has about 120GB of data on it, but I could trim that down quite a bit to fit it into a 60GB partition. I was more concerned about fragmentation or heavy usage of an SSD containing system and application files. The alternative would be to keep the SSD completely clear and dedicated to serving as a scratch drive.

It's a valid concern as you'll push a lot of data through that. It also allows you to reformat/zero out that partition at times. Fragmentation isn't normally a huge issue with modern hard drives and OSX, but you're correct in being concerned when you're talking about large portions of the drive space on a regular basis.

http://macperformanceguide.com/PhotoshopCS5-performance-DisallowFlateCompressedPSD.html

Apparently he had a section on that plugin too (and he agrees with me that it should be a preference setting). I found the plugin itself via google earlier. If files are still taking too long to save with your newest setup this is an option. With your current setup you must realize that during compression it does write a lot of scratch data, so you were taking a double hit on saves (slow scratch and a lot of "poorly threaded" cpu work compressing data as in it doesn't efficiently use all cores).

Oh and the mac pro comment is basically for internal drives, powerful gpus, massive amounts of ram, and as much cpu power as possible. If I can afford it I'm going twelve core next time. Keep in mind this is for way more than just photoshop.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Huh? You confused me. It sounds as though you did exactly what I am proposing doing, except that I would partition the SSD first. May I ask how big your SSD is and if all is well with however much RAM you have?

I went with the 256 SSD the only difference would be I ended up getting an iMac (long story of inner debate on that) and I put in 16GB of RAM. So I have the 256 SSD & a 1TB, both internal and then an external used for my scratch disc because I didn't change that yet. The 256 contains all my programs, the 1TB will house all my saves and final projects and a FW800 has been the scratch because it was setup that way from using my 17" MBP prior to getting the iMac.

I can't say if RAM or SSD has helped but fwiw no beach balls and the Mac Mini Server seems to run nice for a lot of folks here on MR. I was going to go that route with the Mini, max it out but then I still needed a screen so in came the iMac (I do tend to like them 😉)

Sorry to confuse just saying your idea, it sounds like a sound way for you to go for the most bang for power and the $$.

 

[Designer Dale]

Some closing links for you.

Optimizing Photoshop (Adobe)

Optimizing Lightroom (Adobe)

Will an SSD Improve Performance in Lightroom? (Computer Darkroom)

Dale

 

[thekev]

Some closing links for you.

Optimizing Photoshop (Adobe)

Optimizing Lightroom (Adobe)

Will an SSD Improve Performance in Lightroom? (Computer Darkroom)

Dale

I don't know as much about lightroom, but yeah that is more cpu intensive than photoshop. The rest of the stuff in those articles basically agrees with what I've stated 🙂 that includes ram, setting an SSD as a scratch disk (even 7200 RPM laptop drives are significantly slower than desktop equivalents). In the past the thing was to set up small raids as scratch disks if you were already topped out on ram and operating below peak cpu efficiency. Now it's cheaper and more effective just to use a small SSD, especially as it lacks the seek times of an HDD and the cpu overhead of a software controlled raid.

 

[TheReef]

Having both your OS swap and Photoshop scratch on the same physical drive will incur a performance penalty.
I can't say if this will still be faster than using a platter drive though.

Another thing to keep in mind is that solid state drives have a limited number of writes before the drive will start rejecting write requests.
By using them as swap/scratch you are performing a lot of write requests.
Of course this causes more wear on traditional platter drives as well but not in the same sense.
Then again by the time the drive does wear out replacements will be cheaper and the technology will have evolved. In the meantime you will have enjoyed the speed of SSD.
SSDs have been out for a while now so will have improved, but I would still do some research here.

An external RAID array of 10000rpm Raptors via Thunderbolt might be another option.
This could provide a clean solution for not only scratch, but expandable for archive storage as well.


But yes RAM is crucial, and keep in mind Lion chews A LOT. Much more than Snow Leopard.
You could max out your MacBook Pro's Ram and add an external RAID controller.
Dropping a 4GB chip into my Macbook Pro worked wonders for Lion.

That said Mac minis are great machines, we have three.
I use a mini extensively with Aperture and works great, but make little use of Photoshop so cannot help you much there.

P.S great info thekev.

Good luck! 🙂

 

[xStep]

OK, so I've done a bunch of research in the directions suggested by this thread. It's clear now that CPU and GPU options will not make a big difference for my needs.

I'm interested in where you found information that the GPU will not make a big difference. It hasn't been mentioned in this thread directly. Does Photoshop not take advantage of the GPU? Or, is it just that we all agree that you are currently very short on RAM?

I don't disagree that RAM is King in this case and a good scratch disk is valuable, I'm just curious about Photoshops use of GPU technology.

 

[Phrasikleia]

http://macperformanceguide.com/PhotoshopCS5-performance-DisallowFlateCompressedPSD.html

Apparently he had a section on that plugin too (and he agrees with me that it should be a preference setting). I found the plugin itself via google earlier. If files are still taking too long to save with your newest setup this is an option. With your current setup you must realize that during compression it does write a lot of scratch data, so you were taking a double hit on saves (slow scratch and a lot of "poorly threaded" cpu work compressing data as in it doesn't efficiently use all cores).

Thanks for the link. I actually found that yesterday and tried it out. Unsurprisingly, it made no difference at all with my current system. I will definitely give a try with the new one if saves are still taking eons to finish.

Having both your OS swap and Photoshop scratch on the same physical drive will incur a performance penalty.
I can't say if this will still be faster than using a platter drive though.

Another thing to keep in mind is that solid state drives have a limited number of writes before the drive will start rejecting write requests.
By using them as swap/scratch you are performing a lot of write requests.
Of course this causes more wear on traditional platter drives as well but not in the same sense.
Then again by the time the drive does wear out replacements will be cheaper and the technology will have evolved. In the meantime you will have enjoyed the speed of SSD.
SSDs have been out for a while now so will have improved, but I would still do some research here.

Thanks for the info, Reef! OK, so maybe the best idea would be to keep the OS on the internal HDD so that if the SDD does wear out, my OS won't be affected?

An external RAID array of 10000rpm Raptors via Thunderbolt might be another option.
This could provide a clean solution for not only scratch, but expandable for archive storage as well.

That's the sort of thing I might do if portability weren't such an issue.

But yes RAM is crucial, and keep in mind Lion chews A LOT. Much more than Snow Leopard.
You could max out your MacBook Pro's Ram and add an external RAID controller.
Dropping a 4GB chip into my Macbook Pro worked wonders for Lion.

But the RAM in my MBP is already maxed out at 4GB. Supposedly it can unofficially take another 2MB, but that's it. I need a lot more RAM than that. Photoshop isn't the only problem area with regards to RAM; I'm also struggling to be productive with only a skeleton crew of applications running at any given time because I can't have all that I need open at once.

I'm interested in where you found information that the GPU will not make a big difference. It hasn't been mentioned in this thread directly. Does Photoshop not take advantage of the GPU? Or, is it just that we all agree that you are currently very short on RAM?

I don't disagree that RAM is King in this case and a good scratch disk is valuable, I'm just curious about Photoshops use of GPU technology.

While I was researching I looked into the benefits of a GPU for 2D needs and discovered that there is a resounding consensus on the issue: it's a non-issue. Graphics cards long ago surpassed the needs of Photoshop for 2D projects. Even my current Nvidia 8600 GT (yes, the doomed one) is fine for my needs, and the Mac Mini has one that is even better than that. The fancier graphics cards are helpful for 3D, video, and gaming. I don't do any of that.

 

[Laird Knox]

While I was researching I looked into the benefits of a GPU for 2D needs and discovered that there is a resounding consensus on the issue: it's a non-issue. Graphics cards long ago surpassed the needs of Photoshop for 2D projects. Even my current Nvidia 8600 GT (yes, the doomed one) is fine for my needs, and the Mac Mini has one that is even better than that. The fancier graphics cards are helpful for 3D, video, and gaming. I don't do any of that.

That is true for what is being drawn on screen, however, modern video cards can do more general purpose computing. Properly coded applications can take advantage of all that horsepower to aid in computations.

Can Photoshop take advantage of a high end video card? I don't really know. When researching my current computer I didn't find a lot of information on the subject. I figured that if it does then that is a bonus but I didn't design my system around the hope that it does. In theory it does but I don't know how much real life performance that equates to.

 

[thekev]

Thanks for the link. I actually found that yesterday and tried it out. Unsurprisingly, it made no difference at all with my current system. I will definitely give a try with the new one if saves are still taking eons to finish.

If you installed that plugin and made sure to remove the ~ from the name (which tells photoshop to ignore it), it should save as fast as your drives will allow. At that point caching data becomes kind of a non issue and it's literally dumping data to disk.

The files become larger, so drive speed is an issue there. I can try to offer some suggestions if it's a problem with the new system, but you would gain some speed on compressed files (without that plugin) as you'd now have a faster cpu and scratch space for performing these calculations, and a smaller file size. My guess is that your drives might be full enough to where writing an uncompressed file pushed it to a slower part of the HD looking for contiguous free space. Firewire 800 can get up to around 80MB/s on writes depending on the speed of the underlying drive. There are some ways to test that too, but as I said, your save speed should improve without that plugin.

That is true for what is being drawn on screen, however, modern video cards can do more general purpose computing. Properly coded applications can take advantage of all that horsepower to aid in computations.

Can Photoshop take advantage of a high end video card? I don't really know. When researching my current computer I didn't find a lot of information on the subject. I figured that if it does then that is a bonus but I didn't design my system around the hope that it does. In theory it does but I don't know how much real life performance that equates to.

Outside of a couple obscure functions found in the extended version including (I think) vanishing point, and the 3d OpenGL previews for CGI users basically for things like previewing shaders without leaving photoshop, it can take "some" advantage of the gpu. For working on photos in general, the OpenGL drawing of a layered image is no more gpu intensive than Angry Birds 😛. The OP isn't using 3ds max or maya or any of that. It requires something like shader 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0 for maximum performance, so it's more about supported protocols than raw specs. This has been a silly rumor ever since photoshop added OpenGL drawing.

That link is actually a good one anyway. It lists card specific bugs under OSX and Windows, but really the gpu is the least important thing for photoshop. Up until CS4 zooms and panning were redrawn in tiles via cpu instructions rather than OpenGL. Now the intel integrated graphics specifically do not support OpenCL, but I don't know of Adobe using that at all. That's basically an open standard made to employ gpu calculations similar to CUDA without the restriction of running only on NVidia hardware. The two should not be mixed up 😉.

 

[Laird Knox]

Outside of a couple obscure functions found in the extended version including (I think) vanishing point, and the 3d OpenGL previews for CGI users basically for things like previewing shaders without leaving photoshop, it can take "some" advantage of the gpu. For working on photos in general, the OpenGL drawing of a layered image is no more gpu intensive than Angry Birds 😛. The OP isn't using 3ds max or maya or any of that. It requires something like shader 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0 for maximum performance, so it's more about supported protocols than raw specs. This has been a silly rumor ever since photoshop added OpenGL drawing.

That link is actually a good one anyway. It lists card specific bugs under OSX and Windows, but really the gpu is the least important thing for photoshop. Up until CS4 zooms and panning were redrawn in tiles via cpu instructions rather than OpenGL. Now the intel integrated graphics specifically do not support OpenCL, but I don't know of Adobe using that at all. That's basically an open standard made to employ gpu calculations similar to CUDA without the restriction of running only on NVidia hardware. The two should not be mixed up 😉.

Yeah I understand all that, I was just passing along that there *might* be some small advantage to video cards. 😉 I agree that a video card is the last option to look at in the Photoshop equation.

On a related note, I was dismayed when purchasing computers for our group about five years ago. Corporate insisted we buy Nvidia Quadro cards for our engineering workstations. You know - software engineers need text rendered as fast as possible, right? 🙄

 

[thekev]

Yeah I understand all that, I was just passing along that there *might* be some small advantage to video cards. 😉 I agree that a video card is the last option to look at in the Photoshop equation.

On a related note, I was dismayed when purchasing computers for our group about five years ago. Corporate insisted we buy Nvidia Quadro cards for our engineering workstations. You know - software engineers need text rendered as fast as possible, right? 🙄

Oh that is hilarious. Perhaps they don't know the difference between code and cad 😛. There are little advantages. Certain features are supported by certain cards, but they have very little to do with speed. Note that some of the older cards don't support path anti aliasing. Regardless the most likely thing to lag the gpu for 2d opengl drawing with integrated graphics would be ram starvation, and the OP is going with 16GB 😎. If I was purchasing the same machine, I would buy that much too. Even if you aren't using the full amount every second you're in a program, there's something nice about not having any kind of noticeable pause while you're trying to work.

 

[Designer Dale]

Debating video cards is a bit of a moot point on the Mac platform. Other than the Mac Pro, you get by with what Apple gives you.

---------------------

Question: The dual core Mini can be configured BTO with an HD+SSD like the Mini Server. Is the quad core i7 at 2 GHz in the Server edition significantly better than the dual core i7 at a max of 2.7 GHz in the "base" machine?

$1650 for the Max Mini and $1550 for the Server.

Dale

 

[Phrasikleia]

And...the deed is done. I've just placed orders for the computer and 16GB of RAM. I decided I'll get up and running with that combo and then see if I want to dump one of the two internal 7200rmp drives for an SSD.

My first new computer in nearly four years!! I propose a toast (it's Friday evening here in Slovenia, so the timing is perfect for that 😉 ). Cheers, everybody!! Thanks so much to everyone here who chimed in. You guys are the best! I really appreciate your thoughts and help. Na zdravje...as they say in these parts (that's Slovenian gobblety gook for "cheers"). 😀

 

[Designer Dale]

Congrats on the new toy !__🙂__!

Nice seasonal twist on your avatar, too.

Dale

 

[Phrasikleia]

Question: The dual core Mini can be configured BTO with an HD+SSD like the Mini Server. Is the quad core i7 at 2 GHz in the Server edition significantly better than the dual core i7 at a max of 2.7 GHz in the "base" machine?

$1650 for the Max Mini and $1550 for the Server.

Dale

I saw this question after adding my last post here. I'm not doing a BTO because it's ridiculously expensive. A chimp could install RAM in one of the new minis, and my hubby can install the SSD for me (after the deployment of effective puppy dog eyes on my part). 😉 As for which configuration is actually faster...eh...dunno, but I imagine that four cores will be better than two, even if the clock speed is a bit lower, but regardless, I'll be in much better shape than I was. What really matters is that I'll get faster rpm drives (major bonus) and the useful Lion server software out of the deal.

 

[thekev]

As for which configuration is actually faster...eh...dunno, but I imagine that four cores will be better than two, even if the clock speed is a bit lower, but regardless, I'll be in much better shape than I was.

Barefeats had the mini server higher in anything other than gaming. Photoshop is definitely not Maya in terms of gpu use. It scales well to four cores. Lightroom can take advantage of even more, but that's not practical in a travel machine, and even if it was, it's mostly for file processing where it can use quite a few.

By the way, the one reason I didn't suggest a SATA III SSD is due to those silly sandforce controller issues. I think with fast scratch space and a lot of ram, that thing will fly.

 

[Ruahrc]

Congrats on the new purchase, I think you'll be very satisfied! I have a similar setup I got in Sept.- a 2011 mini server w/8GB RAM and a 3rd party OWC SSD. I went BTO and got the dual 750GB 7200rpm HDDs and replaced one with a Mercury Pro 6G 240GB SSD as the OS/scratch disk, all the "big media" gets stored on the HDD. The 240GB SSD is actually a bit overkill size-wise (I think I only have about 30GB used on that) but the 240GB models are actually faster than the smaller models, at least for Sandforce drives, partly why I went with the 240GB drive anyways.

I took the spare 750GB HDD and now use it as a backup to my backup (I archive my time capsule onto it and store it off-site).

I've been very happy with the results. Yours should be even better with 16GB RAM. I was actually pretty impressed with the performance of the HDDs in sustained sequential reads (over 100MB/s sustained speed) but obviously the SSD kills even that in read/write speed, but if you want to stick with the HDDs at first it should be no problem. You could even RAID them if you wanted.

Another thing I didn't see mentioned here was that, depending on your workflow, you can just put your active projects on the SSD for fast access, and put the finished projects on the HDD. It should be pretty easy within lightroom, just drag the folders around between the drives and LR will move the files.

The other thing I did since I have the dual-drive setup is that I used symlinks to replace the "key" folders in the home directory, to tunnel through to the external drive. So my home folder is stored on the SSD, but my "pictures" folder is actually a symlink that points to a "pictures" folder on the HDD. The result is that operationally it looks like everything's in one place as if you had a single drive, but really the data is on the second drive, making it easier to segregate.

 

[Phrasikleia]

Thanks for the info, Ruahrc. Yeah, I'm hoping that with 16GB of RAM, my scratch disk needs will be pretty minimal. I'd like to keep the second HDD for its additional capacity, but I will dump it for an SSD if necessary.

I guess you're right about moving things around within Lightroom, though with all of the jumping around I do, that would get tedious after a while (i.e. moving files back and forth between a large HDD and an SSD for fasting working time).

I've never heard of symlinks before, and I'm honestly not clear about what benefits this arrangement you describe actually offers. Why would you want to segregate the data like that?

 

[Ruahrc]

Here are a few reasons why I set up my computer in this way:

1) I would eventually run out of room on the smaller SSD if I stored all my pictures/music/etc on it, and for the most part a spinning platter HD is plenty fast. I do keep my LR catalog and previews on the SSD though, for fast access.
2) Putting it on the larger HD in more generalized folder structures (just "pictures", "music", etc folders at the root level of the drive) makes them more available to other applications and users, instead of having them locked away inside the rights-restricted home folder of one user. Even though I am the sole user of my mac, theoretically I could create another user account, and simply tell iTunes/LR/etc on that account to plug in to the music/pictures folder on the main HD, and I'd be good to go. I think in the "traditional" way of doing it, another user would not have access to the docs/pics/music folder of anyone else's home folder.
3) makes backup/disaster recovery easier since I just have to back up those high-level root folders to save all my images/music/etc. Also if I ever need to reinstall my OS or the OS gets corrupted, I can wipe the SSD and still keep all my data structures intact, just need new symlinks to "plug them back in" so to speak.

However, I do enjoy the simplicity/little benefits of having everything located within your home folder, the way "it's supposed to work". For example, the finder has a hard-coded shortcut key to open the documents folder, shift+cmd+O. If you simply made another folder on your HD and used it as your documents folder, you would lose access to this hotkey since it would just keep opening your (unused) "default" documents folder. Using symlinks tricks the OS into thinking that the target folder is in your home folder, but in reality it can be somewhere else. Therefore, you maintain all the special "privileges" that the OS gives to these special folders, but have the freedom to relocate them wherever you want, in order to take advantage of having 2 physical drives. Also, multiple users can have symlinks that point to the same folder (as described above) so you can more easily share data that way.

It's slightly different than moving your entire home directory to a new drive since you would still run into permissions issues with other users trying to get data from another user account folder, also I only wanted specific folders on the data HD, not the entire home folder, since many apps use the home folder for things like scratch disk space, temporary files, etc. that would benefit from the fast access being on the SSD, and also keep the data drive clutter free. Symlinks allows you to segregate the data on a folder-by-folder (perhaps even a file-by-file) basis, while keeping the illusion that it's all in one spot. Personally, I also think the home folder is still subject to "bloat" or "user rot" (accumulation of junk and obsolete files as time goes on) and so there is incentive to keep the actual data separate from the home folder.

It was a bit of an experiment for me when I first set it up, but so far it has worked out pretty well.