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SSD in Your Computer Saves Time


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9 replies to this topic

#1
JRosen

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My fellow shooters, I just replaced my hard-drive with an SSD drive, and if you have not done this, please give it a thought. I know this is a Nikon Forum, but once we've taken the pix, we have to process them so we can make some money!  

 

For starters, let me tell you about my modest little system… iMac mid-2011, 21.5", i5, 2.5mhz, with 20gb RAM and stock 500gb HDD.  Completely low-end iMac with only the RAM bumped-up from the stock 4gb.  With this configuration I made a slide-show of over 400 pictures, and set various music behind it.  Made this in iMovie and exported it.  It was a 37 minute slide-show and took around 36 minutes to process/export.  That was last Friday.

 

I just put in an OWC 6G, 480gb SSD drive ($365.00 @ OWC); and added 16gb RAM (now I have 32gb total RAM).  I cloned my system to this new drive.  I did the surgery myself--it took about 2 hours total, but I was exceedingly careful and followed their superb instruction video to the letter.

 

Once I had the system up and running, I tried exporting that slide-show again… it was instantaneous--it took only seconds versus 36 minutes with a spinning hard-drive.  Adobe Creative Suite… Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator open instantly… well 10 to 20 seconds until they're on the screen.  I have never seen anything so fast in my life!

 

This SSD drive is simply amazing and I am in awe.  No more spinning beach-balls in photoshop while editing photos.  I can't imagine how fast this would be with a faster processor--THIS IS AWESOME!

 

If you haven't done this, I would highly recommend checking this out… its night and day.



#2
TBonz

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The only issue with the solid state drives is the size to cost ratio.  They are wonderfully fast.  I have a MacBook Retina with the 500GB SSD and where I notice the improvement is moving photos from SD Card to the drive.  It takes a minimum of twice as long - usually closer to 4 times as long - to move the photos to a HD.  I move them to the SSD, import to Lightroom, process, export the good stuff and then archive everything to external sources when I'm not in a hurry to get the editing done...Typically, originals are removed from the SSD after archiving and the good stuff sticks around through the season.  If I could have a multi terabyte SSD built into my MacBook I might never remember to archive, but it does get to be tough during the spring season when I'm shooting multiple games of multiple sports every week.  The 500GB along with everything else I have on my OS drive in addition to photos doesn't always leave me enough room!  But I LOVE the speed of the drive!



#3
Adam

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I just bought a new desktop and I put in a 120Gb sandisk SSD for the primary drive.  I have 2x 4TB hard drives for storage and backup, but the fast primary drive means the computer boots in a number of seconds, as of course you never have to wait for the disk to spin up if it's sleeping :)  So yup, SSD's are the way to go.



#4
morticiaskeeper

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I have two 120gb SSD drives, one for Ubuntu and one for WinXP, when I HAVE to use M$. Two SATA drives are used for storage, with a 1tb USB drive for backups.

Having the OS on SSD really speeds things up.

#5
K-9

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I get too many power outages at my house to risk using an SSD.



#6
TBonz

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I would expect an SSD would not be any worse off than a standard HD...actually it might be the better choice if you have frequent power outages...



#7
Daniel

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I get too many power outages at my house to risk using an SSD.


We have a few power outages every few months as well here in the country but I use continues or close to continues battery backups on my computers with built it surge protectors as well I have a second surge protector between the battery back ups and computer. Works great and saves your hard drives from being fried as well as not losing data when there is a power failure.

I would like to try the SSD some time soon. Sounds awesome.

#8
morticiaskeeper

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We've had quite a few power outages in the last few weeks, courtesy of a faulty tumble dryer, all drives have been fine, although I still don't like it :-(

#9
Thumper

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SSD's are definitely the way. It is good that the solid state drive technology has improved their write life. Solid state drives have a limited write life, which if you have ever had a favorite thumb drive that you used a lot, then suddenly it won't work or is blank, then you have experienced the draw back to solid state drives. SSD's have a huge edge over regular platter drives in their speed and lack of moving parts that can wear and fail, but they aren't perfect, and they don't last forever, so it is still very important back up your data on external drives, and do so reduntantly if you can.

UPS's are a really good idea for a lot of reasons. Getting the ones with surge protection is a must. I deployed UPS's to all of the workstations at work. If the power goes down, the UPS will keep the workstation (laptop and desktop) up long enough to save any work and gracefully shut down the computer should the power outage last longer than the UPS can provide battery power to the computer.

And save your work often.

#10
CanadiaNikon

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Yep!  I love my Corsair Neutron 120Gb SSD.

 

Start-up is under 15 seconds and I installed my post processing software on the SSD for blazing fast workflow.

 

Great tip to share, JRosen!