SSD config suggestions

[Inconsequential]

Basically this is what is happening in the 4 internal bays:

1. 1Tb Documents/Music/Other Storage & Bootcamp
2. 1Tb Photo Library 1
3. 1TB Photo Library 2
4. 2Tb Time Machine

So that leaves my two drive bay connectors open to do whatever.

I don't particularly want to give up the DVD drive.

My options are:

1. Buy a 160Gb Intel G2 SSD, replace 80Gb, lower drive bay.
2. Buy a bootable and sleepable RAID card to run 2x 80Gb Intel SSDs from with the ability to add to it at a later date.
3. Buy a sleepable internal SATA card to run 2x ODDs + 2xHDDs so the SSDs can use the internal slots (660Mb/sec limit here - not that it concerns me that much tbh).
4. Other ideas?

 

[zorinlynx]

Basically this is what is happening in the 4 internal bays:

4. 2Tb Time Machine

Just a note: You shouldn't have your data being backed up and the Time Machine backup disk in the same machine. If a freak power supply issue fries your machine, it can kill both your data disks and Time Machine disk at the same time.

That would be... kind of bad.

Better: An external USB or Firewire disk.
Even Better: A NAS like a Time Capsule
Best: Make sure you have an off-site backup as well.

 

[Honumaui]

I guess it depends on what you are trying to do ?

for my work in PS and LR I would buy another new one and use that as a boot ? then move the older one off a card like the newertech ones and use the old one as a scratch cache disc ?

 

[covrc]

Photoshop and Lightroom

I guess it depends on what you are trying to do ?

for my work in PS and LR I would buy another new one and use that as a boot ? then move the older one off a card like the newertech ones and use the old one as a scratch cache disc ?

I want to partition my 1TB Samsung F3 drive and use it as a scratch disc for PS and LR, can they share the same scratch disc?

Or do I partition the 1TB and assign LR and PS their own portion of the partitioned drive?

If they can share the scratch disc, is 200GB large enough and what can I do with the remaining portion of the drive?

Thanks

 

[Honumaui]

I want to partition my 1TB Samsung F3 drive and use it as a scratch disc for PS and LR, can they share the same scratch disc?

Or do I partition the 1TB and assign LR and PS their own portion of the partitioned drive?

If they can share the scratch disc, is 200GB large enough and what can I do with the remaining portion of the drive?

Thanks

yes they can share the disc just fine also you can set bridge to cache out to whatever disc you want ?
not sure what your boot drive size is ? but usually 200 gigs is plenty room ? but it also depends how big you set your cache for LR ? so you could go say 300 ?

a quick note cache is used by LR and bridge
think of cache as writing files that are then referenced again and again and they stay on the HDD
where PS uses scratch which is temporary and goes up and down depending on what you are working on with each file etc..

in LR and Bridge you set the EXACT location meaning folder for the cache and it will write a ton of files ! with PS you just set it to the disc !

so on my scratch disc I just have a folder called
Bridge cache
LR cache

and I point my LR and bridge cache to those just to keep it clean and easy to dump one or the other if I need ?

in LR when you build your preview files ? this is what cache is
also note
in library mode the 1:1 previews are used
in Develop Module is where standard Previews are used

so if you really only work in develop module you only need to build the standard ? the 1:1 make the library mode a bit quicker ? just a side thought

 

[mjsmke]

Im planning on buying an SSD too and having the following setup:

SSD - Boot/Apps
x2 1TB RAID0 - Working files/scratch
x2 2TB - Finished work files
External Time Machine backup.

Ive always tried to keep it as simple as possible. But just have too much data now.

 

[covrc]

Honumaui, Thanks for replying.

I have the OCZ Vertex 120GB for Boot drive and will back that up off computer on external drive.

I do use Lightroom in Develop Module most all the time and have never used Bridge.

Sooo, what would be the best way to use the WD 640 Caviar or Samsung F3 Spinpoint 1TB as a scratch disc?

Thanks.

PS.
Any tutorials on how to change the pathway of my Irdata and Ircat files?
If I change the location of my iTunes Library per MPG
http://macperformanceguide.com/SettingUp-Relocating-iApps.html
Is it OK to put it on a RAID 0 Volume?

Many Thanks

 

[Inconsequential]

Just a note: You shouldn't have your data being backed up and the Time Machine backup disk in the same machine. If a freak power supply issue fries your machine, it can kill both your data disks and Time Machine disk at the same time.

That would be... kind of bad.

Better: An external USB or Firewire disk.
Even Better: A NAS like a Time Capsule
Best: Make sure you have an off-site backup as well.

I have multiple offsite and onsite external HDs so to be honest I'm not that bothered time machine is internal

Besides removing it frees up one slot, which doesn't help, it just makes buying a SATA expansion card even less worth it...

 

[Inconsequential]

I guess it depends on what you are trying to do ?

for my work in PS and LR I would buy another new one and use that as a boot ? then move the older one off a card like the newertech ones and use the old one as a scratch cache disc ?

Now that hadn't occurred to me...

However the only issue there is OS X + Apps uses 30Gb and the lightroom library is 80Gb... and expanding so it has to be RAIDed to make use of all the space I have because I can't be bothered splitting the library files...

I could get one of these:

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2799

Which gives me 8 drive bay spaces...

 

[Honumaui]

Now that hadn't occurred to me...

However the only issue there is OS X + Apps uses 30Gb and the lightroom library is 80Gb... and expanding so it has to be RAIDed to make use of all the space I have because I can't be bothered splitting the library files...

I could get one of these:

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2799

Which gives me 8 drive bay spaces...

the library meaning all your photos ? I take ?

LR works with a cache which you set from the preferences what it does is stores some info in that cache to help generate the final image you see when working on images ?
so you can set the cache size to what you want ?
I really only use it for current raw jobs and its not that big 40 gigs for me is plenty

if one does not work in develop mode much then the faster cache is not a big of deal ?

the cache is a set size say 40 gigs if you set it so as it fills up the older stuff just gets pushed out or deleted to make room for new jobs so its a set and forget thing and it wont grow larger than you set

the catalog meaning the lrdat files and such as long as they are on a drives like your 2TB with your images putting these on the SSD in my tests showed no real difference in speed since they can get larger its fine to keep them with the images

not sure if that answered but feel free to ask more of course

 

[Inconsequential]

the library meaning all your photos ? I take ?

LR works with a cache which you set from the preferences what it does is stores some info in that cache to help generate the final image you see when working on images ?
so you can set the cache size to what you want ?
I really only use it for current raw jobs and its not that big 40 gigs for me is plenty

if one does not work in develop mode much then the faster cache is not a big of deal ?

the cache is a set size say 40 gigs if you set it so as it fills up the older stuff just gets pushed out or deleted to make room for new jobs so its a set and forget thing and it wont grow larger than you set

the catalog meaning the lrdat files and such as long as they are on a drives like your 2TB with your images putting these on the SSD in my tests showed no real difference in speed since they can get larger its fine to keep them with the images

not sure if that answered but feel free to ask more of course

The 50,000 RAW images are on a 1TB WD Black.

The Lightroom Library files along with the previews are currently on a 300Gb Velociraptor.

The caches are wherever default is, which from what I remember is in my home library folder which is on the SSD.

I want *everything* bar the RAWs themselves to be on an SSD...

 

[Honumaui]

The 50,000 RAW images are on a 1TB WD Black.

The Lightroom Library files along with the previews are currently on a 300Gb Velociraptor.

The caches are wherever default is, which from what I remember is in my home library folder which is on the SSD.

I want *everything* bar the RAWs themselves to be on an SSD...

the cache is the big thing to move !
that is where the speed in develop module comes from building standard previews and moving image to image having the catalog on the SSD made about .02 seconds difference avg ? but moving the cache to SSD increased the time the sliders would turn white by about %50

so while its a very very small bit quicker ? weigh the space it takes vs what you need and the money to do that

my cache is on 2 40 gigs in raid 0 the catalogs live with the images on my raid

I might post the info here ? but did a huge test with massive configurations and really get the cache on SSD
if you work in Develop module its the standard previews that are used
if you work in Library mode thats the 1:1 previews
if you go back and forth build both !


I would say test it yourself I used a movie camera and counted the frames to determine how quick things were

 

[Honumaui]

also to note

in one test comparison putting both catalog and cache on a 2 disc raid 0 SSD was quicker than having the cache on one SSD and the catalog on another SSD


also moving the catalog off the raid 0 SSD did not really matter ? again my test was to get through develop module as quick as I could ?

also note using raid 0 the speed increased by about .02 seconds for each SSD in raid 0 ? not much gain

also the second graph was done to try to see how much the new computer helped out ? and I was really shocked to see how much quicker the new machine was over my older 3,1 I did not expect to see that much increase ?
so that .53 of the older chart to my .42 times of the newer chart were after more tweaking configurations and adding more SSD to the boot and such ?


also the times on the 3.2 comparing got quicker on my older machine as I did more testing and found better ways to optimize LR !

I would like to drop say 6 SSD on the Areca controller and see how it does with the cache and catalog and see if that .02 second gain keeps going ?


at least for my workflow and testing the thing to take home is the catalog location is not as critical as the cache ! and the cache on raid 0 is quickest

 

[Inconsequential]

Well thats interesting!

Perhaps I should re-think my strategy then...

Although I have a test for you.

Take a album that you haven't worked on for say, a year, full of the biggest RAWs you have (18MP 7D is mine) and see how long it takes for 20 images in grid mode to load.

My biggest gripe isn't really in develop mode, it's looking at old photographs and waiting for the previews to load.

Ideally i'd like to scroll through tens of images without having to wait for LR to load the sodding previews.

Also im going to buy another 2Gb of ram taking me up to 8Gb

 

[Honumaui]

brought up a catalog of 31500 images way exceeds my small cache as I keep it small and work on so many images I know its not get any of thse in it !

but moving in grid mode everything is pretty much instant ?
when scrolling through one page window a block of 6x9 images so 54 images took maybe less than a second to pop in ? but that was one small chunk and only happened twice
even clicking on the large things move along

now my images are coming off a areca raid 6 array with 8 discs ? so reading my files is going to be quick ?

if you are scrolling through huge older catalogs ? chances are none of them are going to be in your cache ? they are going to have to generate in on their own so the location of files might be more critical in your case ?
but your 1TB black should be fast enough to not have a huge delay ?

now as I understand the thumbs are in the lrdata file ? pretty sure about this ? but could be wrong

as you then go off grid to loupe mode the file will regenerate with a larger one or the cache that can help it ?


I am on LR 3.2 and I know some had issues with updated catalogs ? from previous 2.* versions ?

for you its not as much cache issue it seems as catalog reading times that are hurting ya ?

how full are the discs ?
I know you say you have library 1 and 2 one for each disc ?

I dont know if HUGE catalogs would help to have them on separate discs ? then the files ? I never tested for catalogs over a few thousand images ?

but I wonder if having catalogs for images on drive one store the catalogs on drive 2 ? and vice versa ?

since I do work for other photographers I have a huge range of stuff

my own work is MKII files both 1D and 1DS and 5D cameras ? so my own files are also quick

my client files are small my personal stuff is larger ? but again no slow down on personal stuff ?

feel free to ask whatever I can help with

 

[Inconsequential]

but moving in grid mode everything is pretty much instant ?

This isn't the case on mine :/

Takes a few seconds for the images to stop being pixelated

Although will test when I get back to my MP.

 

[Honumaui]

This isn't the case on mine :/

Takes a few seconds for the images to stop being pixelated

Although will test when I get back to my MP.

bummer ? curious view your memory in activity monitor set it to refresh as quick as you can and go through again ? just curious although LR usually is pretty good with memory ?