Upgrade Advice Needed

[davemc67]

I currently have a mid 2010 15" MBP , i5 @ 2.53ghz with 4gb ram, 500gb drive

I mainly use it for photography work using aperture (library currently 240+ Gb) and web browsing.

I was thinking of getting the crucial 512gb m4 ssd drive

Am I better off getting this or installing a 1 Tb 7200rpm drive and replacing the 4gb of ram with 2x4gb sodimms . I believe 8gb is the max memory for my machine

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[B...]

I currently have a mid 2010 15" MBP , i5 @ 2.53ghz with 4gb ram, 500gb drive

I mainly use it for photography work using aperture (library currently 240+ Gb) and web browsing.

I was thinking of getting the crucial 512gb m4 ssd drive

Am I better off getting this or installing a 1 Tb 7200rpm drive and replacing the 4gb of ram with 2x4gb sodimms . I believe 8gb is the max memory for my machine

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Go for the SSD. You will notice the difference even more than you would with the extra RAM. For your uses, 4 GB is fine, but think of upgrading down the line. 7200RPM is not so different from 5400; just a little speed,more heat and more noise.

 

[glenthompson]

Use Activity Monitor to check your memory usage while running your normal routine. Are you getting many Page Outs? If so, consider upgrading memory first. SSD will definitely help on speed but you may bump into a space issue when you add more photos. You may need to split your Aperture library nd store some on external devices.

 

[davemc67]

Use Activity Monitor to check your memory usage while running your normal routine. Are you getting many Page Outs? If so, consider upgrading memory first. SSD will definitely help on speed but you may bump into a space issue when you add more photos. You may need to split your Aperture library nd store some on external devices.

Thanks for the tips re: activity monitor and splitting the Aperture library

My biggest problem is slow startup just under 2 mins and lots of spiny beach balls.

Have checked file permissions , ran tech tools on it , no fault found with ram or bad sectors on HDD. Disk smart status checked ok .. Turned off Apps starting at startup

Did an nvram reset knocked about 20secs off boot time .... Currently running an AV/malware scan on the system

The last option is a clean build of osx

 

[snaky69]

Thanks for the tips re: activity monitor and splitting the Aperture library

My biggest problem is slow startup just under 2 mins and lots of spiny beach balls.

Have checked file permissions , ran tech tools on it , no fault found with ram or bad sectors on HDD. Disk smart status checked ok .. Turned off Apps starting at startup

Did an nvram reset knocked about 20secs off boot time .... Currently running an AV/malware scan on the system

The last option is a clean build of osx

Not much malware exists on OS X, so you're more than likely wasting your time.

A nearly full HD will greatly slow down as the blocks will be less dense towards the external radius of the platter, it's good practice to leave at least 20% free to keep performance to a good level.

You sound like a good candidate for a SSD. You could pop your old hard drive in a external TB or FW800 enclosure and use it as a scratch disk for your photo editing, and you'd notice quite a bit of a speed improvement.