Buying SSD to speed up photo editing workflow

[eyesnoselips]

Hi everyone. 

Lately I've been thinking of upgrading my storage medium in my laptop from a 5400RPM hard drive to a SSD.

I have a couple of questions that I'd like answered before I go ahead and purchase a SSD.

 

1. There are obvious advantages of a SSD over a traditional hard drive. I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom almost every day and it takes over a minute to load each application. If I were to load these programs from a SSD, approximately how long would it take to load each application?

 

2. I'm looking into purchasing a 480-500GB SSD, and I know that I the actual amount that I'll be able to use is going to be less than that, but my current hard drive has about 560GB of data in it. I'm not looking to transfer everything onto the SSD, so I'll be putting a lot files in my external drive. How easy is it to transfer data from the hard drive to a SSD?

 

3. As mentioned previously, I have an external USB3.0 drive (3TB) that I want to use as a secondary "drive" since my laptop only supports one hard drive internally. I understand the speed limitations of USB3, but I want to be able to put all my photos and miscellaneous files in this drive. If i were to load Photoshop from the SSD and then open a photo from my external drive, will the performance of the program be impacted because of the speed differences between the two drives?

 

4. (Unrelated to the last three questions) Will building a new PC (desktop) facilitate my workflow? My current laptop has a Sandy Bridge i7 processor, 8GB RAM, no dedicated graphics; all I use are photo editing tools, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Word.

 

I apologize for the lengthy questions, but any help is greatly appreciated

 

[deVIZtation]

1. No idea

2. Do you know how to copy and paste?

3. There shouldn't be any performance issues as the program will just be pulling the data from another drive. You should never store pics, movies on a ssd.

4. It's up to you. You probably could benefit from for RAM.

[manikyath]

1: you'll see a speed increase, i cant tell exactly how much, since this depends on where the bottleneck is in the programs, and the speed of the actual ssd.

 

2: i suggest doing one of two things: clean up your HDD as much as possible, and then use one of the disk copying tools to get your information to your ssd.

    what i'd suggest more is backing up your data, and doing a clean install on the SSD.

 

3: i dont think photo editing will be limited by any form of disk speed much. as far as i know it'll only impact the speed at which you load and save the images (which we cant really complain about waiting times with 20MB)

 

4: if you dont need to be mobile, i'd suggest getting something i7, 8 or 16GB ram, SSD and HDD(storage) and perhaps *some* graphical solution like the 750Ti

    desktop is always faster than mobile, while also being more silent, and less furnace-like under load.

[eyesnoselips]

1: you'll see a speed increase, i cant tell exactly how much, since this depends on where the bottleneck is in the programs, and the speed of the actual ssd.

 

2: i suggest doing one of two things: clean up your HDD as much as possible, and then use one of the disk copying tools to get your information to your ssd.

    what i'd suggest more is backing up your data, and doing a clean install on the SSD.

 

3: i dont think photo editing will be limited by any form of disk speed much. as far as i know it'll only impact the speed at which you load and save the images (which we cant really complain about waiting times with 20MB)

 

4: if you dont need to be mobile, i'd suggest getting something i7, 8 or 16GB ram, SSD and HDD(storage) and perhaps *some* graphical solution like the 750Ti

    desktop is always faster than mobile, while also being more silent, and less furnace-like under load.

Do you know of any good disk copying tools? I've never had to transfer my OS from one drive to another.

[manikyath]

Do you know of any good disk copying tools? I've never had to transfer my OS from one drive to another.

linus has a guide on doing the drive copy thing, its meant for desktops, but for laptops its pretty much the same.

 

the issue with doing the drive copy thing is you cant run two drives in your laptop, hence why i suggest doing a fresh install.

 

[eyesnoselips]

linus has a guide on doing the drive copy thing, its meant for desktops, but for laptops its pretty much the same.

 

the issue with doing the drive copy thing is you cant run two drives in your laptop, hence why i suggest doing a fresh install.

 

If I was to do a fresh install, do I need a copy of Windows?

[Blade of Grass]

-snip-

1. For my rig, it take about 5-10 seconds to load Lightroom and 10-15 to load Photoshop (keep in mind, these are estimated). My rig is in my six for reference.

2. Pretty easy depending on what you want to do. If you're looking to move your whole install, use something like Acronis image (if my memory serves correctly), but if it's just file transfer then drag and drop.

3. Yes it will. The performance difference will be most notable when you first open an image and LR has to make a preview for it, but you will also notice when you zoom in (say, 1:1) and it has to generate another preview (this is from personal experience, I moved my photos from an SSD to a WD Re and have noticed this).

4. Best I can say is maybe, maybe not. Do you notice your laptop being maxed out while using LR or Photoshop?

[manikyath]

If I was to do a fresh install, do I need a copy of Windows?

theres a windows key on your laptop somewhere, you need to de-activate it on your current install, and then install & activate on your SSD.

[Koffehh]

All other questions have been answered. But i can answer no1 for you as I use both. PS takes no more than 5-10 seconds and LR no more than 10 seconds.

My specs are in my SIG, but if u use these programs everyday your going to save bucket loads of time with an SSD. Get one now!