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Why so large of a boot drive

R

rmitchell248

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 30, 2010
412
4
Liebsthal, Germany
I have done some searching here on this site and was going to pick up a 120 gb ssd boot drive after seeing so many recommendations to do so. But after checking out my system when having a clean install of everything I run with OSx, CS5 LR3 and all of the other programs I run I am only using 20GB worth of drive space. What is the benefit of going 120 GB on the boot over 60 for the extra 100? I absolutely will not be purchasing/installing another 40Gb to fill it and I cannot even see myself with another 10gb that would take to bring it over 50%.

Tell me what I am missing or are these guys who need 120 just running that much more software than I am?


Here is what I am running, the SSD is the only variable at this point as I have not purchased that yet

6 core 3.33 16 GB ram
Bays
1. 60 or 120 SSD Boot (in question)

2. 1TB scratch that I will partition off to the size of SSD boot drive as a clone of the boot for a rainy day. I feel this will not hurt performance of the scratch as it will not be accessed.

3. 3tb 7200 hitachi for all media

4. 3tb 7200 hitachi clone of media





Thanks in advance I do appreciate any input.
 
probably have a lot more software, also things tend to get larger as time passes, some games take up 50GB on their own.
 
I have a 160Gb SSD with 90Gb used. The space is used up by the catalog files and the caches of LR3 and CS5.

Makes LR3 previews pop up very quickly which is perfect :D
 
you would be a good user of an intel 80gb ssd you are not going to write over and over on it and 80gb is plenty of head room for you. A lot of people push sandforce controllers as the best for ssd's the fact is sandforce has it problems just like most ssds do. intel is very reliable and since you are not writing a lot the slower write speeds are not important. here is a link for an 80gb ssd from intel


http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstr...UTAYAJ8RK&s=electronics&qid=1296736138&sr=1-1

you may get this at a lower price if you look around
 
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These things are very personal. Some may have only 20GB but others may have 200GB of data they want to put in the SSD. Big app suites like Final Cut, Adobe Master Collection and Logic take fairly a lot space. Some people also like to store their most recent work files in the SSD to speed things up.

If you only need 20GB, then 60GB will be fine for you. 120GB has been a sweet-spot in terms of price so that's one of the reasons why people go for that.
 
What has to taken into account when considering a small SSD is the required space for cache and swap files.
Those files can be fairly high, so don't buy a SSD that just fits for OS X and apps.
 
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When I get an SSD I know I'll want not only OS X and apps, but my Aperture library as well for speed... This grows in size pretty fast, so 120GB is my absolute lowest requirement.
But as you only need 20gigs, definately take advantage of the prices of those 60GB drives !
 
SSD prices keep dropping so getting a smaller one now is a good option and then getting a larger one in a year or so.
 
thanks guys for all the input. Those intel 510s look pretty sweet!

So to you guys that keep your lightroom catalog on your boot disc how exactly do you lay it out? Are you importing your new files into lightroom 3 and creating a copy in your media drive then deleting them out of lightroom 3 and off the boot drive when finished with them while exporting the finished Jpegs right to your media storage drive? Then loosing the work flow history? Or is there another way you guys are working it? There is not an SSD that could support me leaving my library on the SSD... if there is it would cost far too much as I am concerned about only having the 3TB as my main media storage.

Thanks again
 
Concorde Rules said:
I have a 160Gb SSD with 90Gb used. The space is used up by the catalog files and the caches of LR3 and CS5.

Makes LR3 previews pop up very quickly which is perfect :D
Click to expand...

How often do you have to move images out of your SSD catalog? I suppose I should mess around with this all on the 1 TB drive acting as if it were an SSD and see how much I really need. I obviously want this thing to operate quickly but may not be understanding fully where LR3 and CS5 put everything such as caches catalogs or better yet I may not be sure where I want to put it all!

With OSX and all of my software on the SSD boot drive I will expect to see quick start up and quick opening of the applications correct? What draw backs will I see having all of my media pulled from my 3 TB disc and my scratch on the 1 tb disc? I would assume slower performance when operating in LR and PS than if I ran it all on SSD drives?

I cannot tell if the added time that the file organization would require (seeing how I could fill my 120GB SSD in 10-14 days with images alone) could add up to as much or more time than I would gain from the speed that larger SSD running boot and catalog and cache... any opinions would be appreciated there too.


Thanks again!
 
Last edited:
philipma1957 said:
look at this google search on intel 510 ssds

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=intel+510+ssd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Click to expand...

The reported specs of those SSDs (read speeds of 450MB/s and write speeds of 300MB) and the price ranges they'll launched on (120GB for $279, 250GB for $579)... two questions

a) would that faster SSD saturate the sata II bandwidth? would a 2009 or earlier MP benefit from such speed bump (compared with OWCs SSDs/non-Raid)?

b) Looking at the price points of the 510, perhaps one can seriously hope the actual SSDs - such as OWCs and OCZ, that have similar prices today with lower specs - will have a price cut, making them more affordable in the near future...?
 
Last edited:
diazj3 said:
a) would that faster SSD saturate the sata II bandwidth? would a 2009 or earlier MP benefit from such speed bump (compared with OWCs SSDs/non-Raid)?
Click to expand...

SATA 3Gb/s can provide ~285MB/s. Those Intels and all SandForce based drives can saturate that. You will need a SATA 6Gb/s PCIe card to take full advantage of those new Intels

b) Looking at the price points of the 510, perhaps one can seriously hope the actual SSDs - such as OWCs and OCZ, that have similar prices today with lower specs - will have a price cut, making them more affordable in the near future...?
Click to expand...

You can already get 120GB SF-based drives for less than 200$. That's 80$ cheaper. I can't see them lowering the price even more because of these new Intels. Besides, SF-2000 SSDs should be released in the near future and they will outperform these Intels
 
diazj3 said:
The reported specs of those SSDs (read speeds of 450MB/s and write speeds of 300MB) and the price ranges they'll launched on (120GB for $279, 250GB for $579)... two questions

a) would that faster SSD saturate the sata II bandwidth? would a 2009 or earlier MP benefit from such speed bump (compared with OWCs SSDs/non-Raid)?

b) Looking at the price points of the 510, perhaps one can seriously hope the actual SSDs - such as OWCs and OCZ, that have similar prices today with lower specs - will have a price cut, making them more affordable in the near future...?
Click to expand...



for


a) who knows we have got to wait and test them. intel may have a way of running them at 265 to 285 MB/s when using sata II hookups in mac pros



b) I would guess if the new intels work well this will cause the owc ,ocz, pat infernos to all drop in price.
 
Don't know how you guys do it. My boot drive material is about 1/2 Gig. Movies, photos, TV, etc are all on other internal drives but OSX + iTunes + iPhoto + A3 backup libraries pushed past 500MB a while ago. That keeps SSDs out of my range for a couple of years or so I guess.
 
rmitchell248 said:
Tell me what I am missing or are these guys who need 120 just running that much more software than I am?
Click to expand...

You may not be missing anything. People's usage of their drives is...different. For example, Warhammer Online is a 11 gig application. My World of Warcraft install has ballooned up to 21.84 :eek: - and most of that is data, where increased hard drive speed might be beneficial.

So there we go. Two games, nothing I use for work, and no OS, and I've already eaten 1/4th of a 120 gig SSD.
 
Two-Tera-Samsungs are quiet and fast enough. Four of them and you have some serious internal space.
 
I'm about half full on my 128GB Crucial SSD. Would have been almost full if I wanted to keep my entire LR catalogue on it, but I decided to keep only a smaller, "working" catalogue (2011 pix), which I merge with the master cat from time to time (that one residing on one of my other internal drives). So far so good. The SSD has breathed new life into my MP, and I can easily see myself going at least another year and a half with it.
 
Icaras said:
Thanks for that link! I've been waiting for this. Are these the anticipated G3 models?

Edit: After a bit of googling, I guess this isn't. So I guess the 25nm G3s are still up in the air for release?
Click to expand...

25nm Intels are still up in the air for release. Supposedly it will happen during this quarter (nearly 2 months left) but we will see.
 
rmitchell248 said:
How often do you have to move images out of your SSD catalog? I suppose I should mess around with this all on the 1 TB drive acting as if it were an SSD and see how much I really need. I obviously want this thing to operate quickly but may not be understanding fully where LR3 and CS5 put everything such as caches catalogs or better yet I may not be sure where I want to put it all!

With OSX and all of my software on the SSD boot drive I will expect to see quick start up and quick opening of the applications correct? What draw backs will I see having all of my media pulled from my 3 TB disc and my scratch on the 1 tb disc? I would assume slower performance when operating in LR and PS than if I ran it all on SSD drives?

I cannot tell if the added time that the file organization would require (seeing how I could fill my 120GB SSD in 10-14 days with images alone) could add up to as much or more time than I would gain from the speed that larger SSD running boot and catalog and cache... any opinions would be appreciated there too.


Thanks again!
Click to expand...

You've misunderstood :)

The "raw" files (IE the ones out of my 40D/7D) sit on a WD 1TB Black, the Lightroom Catalog files, previews and caches are on the SSD.

This allows for quicker starting, quicker searching through images (loads the previews much quicker), etc.

The raw files never go anywhere near the SSD. :)
 
Concorde Rules said:
You've misunderstood :)

The "raw" files (IE the ones out of my 40D/7D) sit on a WD 1TB Black, the Lightroom Catalog files, previews and caches are on the SSD.

This allows for quicker starting, quicker searching through images (loads the previews much quicker), etc.

The raw files never go anywhere near the SSD. :)
Click to expand...


How large do you find this catalog file to be? This is what I had anticipated putting on the scratch disc and not on my boot disc
 
rmitchell248 said:
How large do you find this catalog file to be? This is what I had anticipated putting on the scratch disc and not on my boot disc
Click to expand...

~70,000 image library = 35Gb library and preview files.

SSD + HDD scratch disk would be slower than having the scratch disk as the SSD.

SSD + another SSD as scratch would be blazingly quick.
 
Concorde Rules said:
~70,000 image library = 35Gb library and preview files.

SSD + HDD scratch disk would be slower than having the scratch disk as the SSD.

SSD + another SSD as scratch would be blazingly quick.
Click to expand...


Thank you for looking up your catalog size for me. This is where the problem lies. I am tired of moving catalogs around and working that way. My current LR3 catalog is 67 GB and it only covers the last month of photos that I have, 23,000 images (this is the LR3 Catalog not the original raw files which are on the media storage drive). At that rate even the 240 GB SSD would not last long and I am not going to pay the price for a 500GB unit right now. So while I would love to put it on an SSD I just cant see it right now.
 
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