SSD and HDD ‘workflow’

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Alan
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I have just had delivered a new PC which has 500gb SSD and 4tb HDD.

My main storage will be my photos and videos and the intention is to use the SSD for processing and Office and the HDD for the bulk storage.

Do any of you have a regular, routine, simple way of transferring the data to the HDD storage other than copy/paste or move? Or is that the way?

I hope this doesn’t sound naive but I have only ever had a PC with HDD and backed up photos to external HDDs by copy/paste.
 
If you have LR you could import raw to ssd, then once complete drag/move the edited files to a folder in your HDD. All via LR.
 
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If you have LR you could import raw to ssd, then once complete drag/move the edited files to a folder in your HDD. All via LR.

I copy new photos to my SSD On my Mac and back up to second & third external HDDs. Once I have finished editing I simply move the file to the HDDs Using LR. Don’t drag files around outside of LR. I have caused major issues doing so myself .... :(

I do find that LR is really slow when I access edited files on my HDD. I have a couple of newish HDDs and the difference in speed between accessing the SSD and HDDs is quite striking. I have just been looking into buying a 2Tb SSD external drive to cut out the initial saving to the Mac but the cost needs to come down slightly before I commit funds. Care also needs to be taken regarding buying suitable external drives that give you good transfer speeds. This is not as straight forward as I originally assumed.
 
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I have a (really fast) M2 for the operating system, apps etc and a (pretty fast) M2 called Quickly for working files. Often I'll shoot tethered to the MacBook so before I leave the shoot, everything is backed up to a SanDisk Extreme along with an LRCAT.

Ingest files from Extreme to Quickly, back up to Slowly (my HDD - I think it's 4TB). Bin all the junk. Edit on Quickly. When images are finished export high res files to Slowly. Leave the edited raw files and PSDs on Quickly. Once images are delivered and invoiced, either move edited raws/PSDs to a different folder on Slowly or delete them.

500GB Extreme cost me £70. 1TB M2 is about £150 so a very fast workflow costs less than £250.

I'm mostly shooting portraits for businesses so if somebody really wants a file 3 months later it's perfectly acceptable to say "nah, I deleted it - would you like to book another shoot?" :)
 
I import images into LR. Process them and when the images have been posted to Flickr/Facebook/Instagram/printed or whatever i then copy/paste to 2 external SSD hard drives then delete the images from my main PC's SSD drive. Then in Lightroom i delete the empty folders. If I need to re-do an image i just re import that file back into Lightroom. I do this once a month....ish
 
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Import to hd.

Lr catalog on ssd.

Lr smart previews on ssd.
 
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I have just had delivered a new PC which has 500gb SSD and 4tb HDD.

My main storage will be my photos and videos and the intention is to use the SSD for processing and Office and the HDD for the bulk storage.

Do any of you have a regular, routine, simple way of transferring the data to the HDD storage other than copy/paste or move? Or is that the way?

I hope this doesn’t sound naive but I have only ever had a PC with HDD and backed up photos to external HDDs by copy/paste.


How many monitors do you have? And if you only have one monitor, is it a wide screen monitor?

If you have two monitors, you could have one folder open on one monitor, and another folder open on another monitor, or SSD drive on one monitor, HDD drive on the other. All you have to do is just drag-and-drop the files. That's what I do, as I have three monitors.

If you only have one monitor but it is a widescreen, like a 1920x1080, you could have two separate windows open, each window showing different folders (same as above), and you just drag-and-drop, like if you have two monitors.

I have SSD and HDD. But generally, mine tend to be the SSD for Windows and all application software. The HDD for work and archives. I tend to save files I am currently working on, in a Workflow folder on my HDD, and when I've complete it, I move the finished files to an Archives folder (on the same HDD but in a different location.)
 
Firstly, note that I'm not a pro shooting assignments for paying customer, so I don't need massive storage capacity, RAID, etc.. However, I shoot sport so I may return from an event with 1000 raw files.
My Windows desktop has a 500 gb SSD with the operating system and applications, and an interna 2tb HDD used exclusively for data and photos- this drive is backed up hourly to an external hdd.
When I return from a shoot I don't want to transfer 1000 files to the data drive as everything, including junk images, will be backed up to the external drive, filling it up, prematurely, with rubbish. I use Lightroom 6 to copy the files into a scratch folder on my ssd ( and don't delete them from my memory card yet). Then, in Lightroom, I inspect and cull the files on my ssd, sometimes doing some editing. When happy with my keepers I delete unwanted flies and transfer the rest to the internal HDD, using Lightroom so that that the catalog keeps track, happy in the knowledge that they'll be backed up. From then on, I work on the files using the internal HDD - I don't find I have a problem with speed of access etc but, as I said earlier, I'm not a pro.
 
Does Lightroom make use of the extra speed SSD’s provide compared to HDD’s for raw file storage when processing them? For Lightroom catalogue storage I can see the SSD is the best place for it but for RAWs I was told recently when spec’ing a new PC that RAW file processing wouldn’t need them stored on a SSD (I was thinking of adding a 1TB SSD just for storage of this year’s RAWs that I would be working on).
 
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Does Lightroom make use of the extra speed SSD’s provide compared to HDD’s for raw file storage when processing them? For Lightroom catalogue storage I can see the SSD is the best place for it but for RAWs I was told recently when spec’ing a new PC that RAW file processing wouldn’t need them stored on a SSD (I was thinking of adding a 1TB SSD just for storage of this year’s RAWs that I would be working on).
In my experience, the SSD has made a huge difference in performance of lightroom for loading and organising files.

My workflow is a little different from others here, mainly because I find lightroom incredible slow when culling through images.

My preferred workflow - and to answer the op - in their system would be as follows:
Import all images to SSD
Use FastStone Image Viewer to view the files and move the keepers to another folder for editing (faststone allows a keyboard stroke m to do this)
Import to lightroom and edit
Export all the images back into a separate folder of the raws files on the ssd (if you want to keep the raw files that is)
Copy the whole folder once complete to the HDD for longer term storage

I have stopped keeping raw files - unless it's a paid assignment as I've never gone back to them later!

If you're not planning on keeping the raw files, then have lightroom export direct to your hdd and delete the raw files from the ssd after the export
 
I do find that LR is really slow when I access edited files on my HDD. I have a couple of newish HDDs and the difference in speed between accessing the SSD and HDDs is quite striking.

I have this same issue. I use a SSD as my boot drive, with all the apps on it, and the LR catalogue, but the RAW/DNG files are all on a RAID set of two 'High Reliability' HDDs. Accessing these is the bottleneck; they are very slow compared to SSDs, and slow even compared to other HDDs. But they are reliable, which is the main consideration. I'm sure there's a way of speeding things up though.
 
And Lightroom backup catalogue on HDD

321 principle on backup.

You can just about pull a 300dpi 9" off a smart preview at a push as well.

We fill about 4-6tb per year, so it can get a bit of a chore.
 
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I'm likely in the very small minority of people who just don't hang onto RAW files once I'm done with them. I never do re-edits, one I've processed an image - that's it, the only back up will be copies of the end Jpeg file. I've only recently got my first SSD [it's a 500GB nvme so very fast] - I have the OS obviously, and LR/PS on that along with my most played games. Atm I just have a 1TB HDD besides, and I export from LR to that and then back up to an external. As I don't tend to keep RAWs [unless they are absoloutely important, like if I did a paid shoot] I don't clock up much space on the go, but I will add another SSD I think. A 1TB SSD alongside the 1TG HDD should be all I'd need for a long time.
 
I'm likely in the very small minority of people who just don't hang onto RAW files once I'm done with them. I never do re-edits, one I've processed an image - that's it, the only back up will be copies of the end Jpeg file. I've only recently got my first SSD [it's a 500GB nvme so very fast] - I have the OS obviously, and LR/PS on that along with my most played games. Atm I just have a 1TB HDD besides, and I export from LR to that and then back up to an external. As I don't tend to keep RAWs [unless they are absoloutely important, like if I did a paid shoot] I don't clock up much space on the go, but I will add another SSD I think. A 1TB SSD alongside the 1TG HDD should be all I'd need for a long time.


I`m like you too Keith with Raw files, only keep them for a week at the most then wipe the lot off then.
 
I used to keep hundreds of RAW files from a shoot, have disks of them, and never time to sort through. For some time I have only kept the edited JPG files and their RAW and sidecar files. Rarely will I keep anything else unless I think it might later become topical and sell. For instance, shot around 30 images of a recently reopened local household recycling facility, cars queueing and entering. 4 images used, only saved those and their associated files, the rest deleted. Used a backup HD and Dropbox.
 
If you have LR you could import raw to ssd, then once complete drag/move the edited files to a folder in your HDD. All via LR.

This is what I do, renaming the folder to fit my storage format at the same time ... works for me :)
 
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