SSD for Photos Only

tijuana taxi

tijuana taxi

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Name
Rich
Edit My Images
Yes
Would installing an SSD in my less than new Windows PC speed up viewing photos.
They are currently taking up about 300gb on the solitary HDD that has everything else on it
I DO NOT want to start messing about transferring Windows, just plug in an additional drive.

Thanks
 
Yes, if you install a second SSD drive in addition to the current HDD, and move your images (and things like LR catelogue) to it, then these will be accessed faster.
The improvement will not be as much as if you instead cloned your current HDD to an SSD, as the software will still be on the HDD (but it is a simpler option).
 
Thanks both, its a fairly old i5-7400 processor with 16gb ram.
Did think about using my portable SSD, but that is restricted by the usb 3.0 in my machine.
 
Depending how old, you will also be limited by the SATA port interface

"SATA III is a third generation SATA interface, and it runs at 6.0Gb/s, although the actual bandwidth throughput is up to 600MB/s, due to 8b/10b encoding."

Archived: What Is SATA, SATA II, and SATA III, and Which Controllers Have Support for It? - NI

knowledge.ni.com

For viewing only , depending how slow it is, might be better to get a larger hdd for the same price and then once the images are cached it would be fast anyway

USB 3 isnt much slower than SATA 3, 5Gb vs 6Gb
 
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tijuana taxi said:
Thanks both, its a fairly old i5-7400 processor with 16gb ram.
Did think about using my portable SSD, but that is restricted by the usb 3.0 in my machine.
Click to expand...
Knowing which motherboard you have will inform whether you have SATA III 6Gb/s connections. Plus what capacity is your single HDD and how much free space does it have?

Again IMO another advantage you copying your 300GB of image files to another drive is to reduce reduce the seeking time on the HHD (bearing in mind it is doing the heavy lifting of the OS & running programs). Note I say copying.......to add a bit of redundancy/backing up to your copies of files.
 
Id save your money, let all your picture cache for viewing, unless there is something particularly slow
 
Myself personally, I would replace the HDD with a SSD.
It's very easily done, especially if you purchase a Samsung SSD as they provide cloning software. You could clone the HDD to the SSD and not only will your images be viewable faster, your whole computer will have a new lease of life. It's the single best upgrade for any aging PC imo.
 
have to say i would buy a new SSD and rebuld the PC using a bootable USB flash drive, way easy to do just check youtube
 
Looking at that motherboard and someone can correct me if I'm wrong but that looks like an nvme slot at the bottom so you should have no problems with transfer speed. Even just over SATA an SSD is a huge improvement for picture viewing because of the much faster access times, when I'm browsing through photos on a hard drive I can hear the drive chugging away as it spins round to get the data but with an SSD it's just instant pretty much. SSDs are very cheap at the moment so it's a great time to be thinking about it.

You can certainly just install the drive then go into computer management, initialise it and you'll see it as another drive in This Computer that you can use as you wish. However I'd echo the recommendation to clone your existing hard drive to the SSD as it gives a noticeable boost in performance, Windows 8 worked pretty well with hard drives but I find Windows 10 performance is poor with them.
 
I agree, John. It has an NVMe slot so no messing about with cables and 2TB NVMe SSDs are well under £100 at the moment.
The only thing to check is that the tiny retention screw needed is present.
 
I was staggered by how much replacing the HDD in our 2012 Win10 PC with a SSD improved things. Startup times went from minutes to seconds! Mine was a Kingston kit from Mr Memory. I'm a complete flop at DIY but did the changeover in an hour or two. Apart from cloning (tool included) the biggest holdup was figuring out how to use an adapter to allow the smaller SSD to be held in the same space as the (physically) larger HDD. I am _really_ glad I did it; without it we'd be on an unnecessary new PC by now!
 
Snapsh0t said:
I agree, John. It has an NVMe slot so no messing about with cables and 2TB NVMe SSDs are well under £100 at the moment.
The only thing to check is that the tiny retention screw needed is present.
Click to expand...
Would that be the bit that says M2 SSD?
If so I put a M2 card in that and secured it with the tiny screw.
Only problem is this motherboard limits it to 250gb, its where all my music resides now.
 
tijuana taxi said:
Would that be the bit that says M2 SSD?
If so I put a M2 card in that and secured it with the tiny screw.
Only problem is this motherboard limits it to 250gb, its where all my music resides now.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's the right part. Sorry I'm not quite following you, do you have an SSD in there already? Where are you seeing the 256GB limit?
 
JohnMcL7 said:
Yes, that's the right part. Sorry I'm not quite following you, do you have an SSD in there already? Where are you seeing the 256GB limit?
Click to expand...
I do have a small capacity SSD (looks like a pcb) in there already.
The limit advice came from HP and others confirmed it on several websites.
Something to do with the length of the card that will fit in.
 
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I see what you mean but I think the information is out of date and possibly incorrect as well. At the time, a smaller 2230 NVME SSD (the number here is the length) was probably limited to 256GB but these are now available up to 2TB at around double the price of a standard sized SSD. That picture of the motherboard though shows it can support the smaller 2230 SSDs and the more standard 2280 SSDs as you can see from the two screwholes, the one just near the slot I'm guessing is the one you're using but there's a further one to the left that would allow you to use a standard 2280 SSD. If you look at the m2 WLAN slot, that is an example of a slot that can only take a smaller card.

I'm guessing Windows must be installed on the SSD? When prices were higher, it was common to install a small SSD for the operating system and applications then a larger hard drive for storage. You can check by right clicking the start button, clicking computer management and then disk management. It should show the 256GB SSD and the 1TB HDD with the drive having the C: drive on it being your Windows drive.

If you want to leave both these drives alone and add a separate SSD, you may be able to add a SATA 2.5in drive. These are technically not as fast as NVME drives but in practice I still find their performance is a bit improvement over hard drives. Do you have an optical drive on the PC? If so and you're not using it, you could reuse its sata data and power connectors. If there's no optical drive and the sata slot is empty, you'd need to buy a sata cable and double check you have a spare sata power cable on the supplied power supply. It looks similar to a sata data connector but it's wider, it's a flat black connector with an L-shape inside the end of it.
 
John, from what Rich has said, he added the M.2 SSD so I don't think the OS will be on it. 2230 would only have been used for wi-fi cards at the time of this mobo and the description linked to says it has two M.2 slots with different keys so I wonder if we're seeing a stacked M.2 socket and there's actually a 2280 card in there. Rich will have to confirm this.

Rich, I agree with John that any size limitation was probably just the limit of what was available at the time.
 
Thanks for your help, it is appreciated, i'm no computer expert, but can usually work most things out.
Its mainly the terminology that confuses me, but i'm fine with the component installation part.
I am getting a little bit confused which I thought might happen, but here goes from the way I understand it.

@snapshot The M2 card I installed does not have the OS on it, just my music, some photos and a couple of other important (to me) small files.
This is its description, Integral 250GB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x 4 R-3350MB/s W-1350MB/s TLC M2 SSD
From what I remember it fills the entire available gap.

@JohnMcL7 I do have an optical drive if that means a DVD drive, its pretty rubbish and I use a standalone on the odd occasion I need it
The SATA SSD is what I originally had in mind to add, not sure if there is a spare power connector.
Your suggestion of using the optical drive connectors would come in very handy if no spare exists.

If the information I found is out of date a much larger SSD in the M2 slot would be a very good solution.
Often these items are non returnable so I would want to be certain it would work.
The safer bet is probably the 2.5in drive which would still be a marked improvement.

One more thing to muddy the waters.
If I freed up the M2 slot, do they make such a thing as a compatible graphics card to insert there?
I only use integrated graphics which is fine for Lightroom, but other programs like PureRaw take a while to process.
There is only one spare PCIe slot and its filled with a decent quality soundcard.
That is is staying I do not want to use an external DAC, already have one of those on another pair of active speakers
Its not a big thing, I only process the odd photo with the more graphics intensive programs and i'm never in a hurry.

Thanks again and I await the next instalment.

​

 
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You'd need to replace the optical drive if you wanted to fit a SATA SSD as there's only two SSDs on the board so one is in use for your hard drive and the other the optical drive. The optical drive should have the correct power connector but you'd need to check as sometimes OEM PCs have proprietary parts on them.

The 2280 SSD is the larger size so you'll have no problems finding one the right capacity. Realistically you can't use the m2 slot for a graphics card*, the only slot the graphics card could go in is the one you're using for the sound card. If you wanted to have a dedicated graphics card and the sound card, you'd need to look at a different PC.

* Technically it is possible to run an external graphics card through the m2 slot but it's more a hobbyist/modder thing to do
 
JohnMcL7 said:
You'd need to replace the optical drive if you wanted to fit a SATA SSD as there's only two SSDs on the board so one is in use for your hard drive and the other the optical drive. The optical drive should have the correct power connector but you'd need to check as sometimes OEM PCs have proprietary parts on them.

The 2280 SSD is the larger size so you'll have no problems finding one the right capacity. Realistically you can't use the m2 slot for a graphics card*, the only slot the graphics card could go in is the one you're using for the sound card. If you wanted to have a dedicated graphics card and the sound card, you'd need to look at a different PC.

* Technically it is possible to run an external graphics card through the m2 slot but it's more a hobbyist/modder thing to do
Click to expand...
Thanks very much John, I thought that would be the case with a graphics card.
Think I will go ahead and get a SATA SSD, probably a Samsung with cloning software (just in case i pluck up the courage to swap it one day)
 
Just to say that an external (USB) CS / DVD drive is a cheap and easy option (£20), so losing the internal one should not be a big issue.
 
Faldrax said:
Just to say that an external (USB) CS / DVD drive is a cheap and easy option (£20), so losing the internal one should not be a big issue.
Click to expand...
Very true, I already have an external drive that is a vast improvement on the existing one.
 
It's a no-brainer fitting an NVMe SSD, you should see the difference straight away providing you purchase a decent SSD
 
tijuana taxi said:
Would installing an SSD in my less than new Windows PC speed up viewing photos.
They are currently taking up about 300gb on the solitary HDD that has everything else on it
I DO NOT want to start messing about transferring Windows, just plug in an additional drive.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes, it would...

But hardly much different to a human being. Opening and viewing an image file in 0.9 second does not look any difference to opening and viewing the same image file in 1 second.

For me personally, it's rather a bit pointless.

Opening an image file would take only a very few seconds, it's not like I'm in an extreme hurry to get to look at any of my image files. Makes no difference to me if the image shows up in half a second or in one full second.

Opening an application software, like Lightroom, Photoshop, Word, Excel, and even the iTunes library, tend to take bit longer, like a dozen of seconds, maybe even two dozens!

That's why I prefer my Windows OS and all application software on SSD to help open them as quickly as possible, while my image files are on HDD.

But if you want to use a SSD for your image files, that's okay, you can go for it.
 
Major Eazy said:
Yes, it would...

But hardly much different to a human being. Opening and viewing an image file in 0.9 second does not look any difference to opening and viewing the same image file in 1 second.

For me personally, it's rather a bit pointless.

Opening an image file would take only a very few seconds, it's not like I'm in an extreme hurry to get to look at any of my image files. Makes no difference to me if the image shows up in half a second or in one full second.

Opening an application software, like Lightroom, Photoshop, Word, Excel, and even the iTunes library, tend to take bit longer, like a dozen of seconds, maybe even two dozens!

That's why I prefer my Windows OS and all application software on SSD to help open them as quickly as possible, while my image files are on HDD.

But if you want to use a SSD for your image files, that's okay, you can go for it.
Click to expand...
Its a fair bit longer than a few seconds when I open a large folder that contains raw and jpeg files.
Not quite sure what your reply did apart from take the p*** a bit and boast how laid back you are.

I'm in no hurry either, more concerned about it putting strain on the solitary HDD.
Don't bother again thanks.
 
tijuana taxi said:
Its a fair bit longer than a few seconds when I open a large folder that contains raw and jpeg files.
Not quite sure what your reply did apart from take the p*** a bit and boast how laid back you are.

I'm in no hurry either, more concerned about it putting strain on the solitary HDD.
Don't bother again thanks.
Click to expand...
Having used a mix of SSDs and hard drives it's definitely a noticeable difference particularly as you say when browsing large folders full of images, it takes time for the hard drive to load the thumbnails and it constantly grinds away as it tries to keep loading the thumbnails as you scroll through. The 1TB/2TB SSDs are such a great price these days it's not like you're making a huge investment to buy the SSD and if I saw a good price on an 8TB SSD, I'd like one for my photos not just for the speed but the silence when going through the photos.
 
JohnMcL7 said:
Having used a mix of SSDs and hard drives it's definitely a noticeable difference particularly as you say when browsing large folders full of images, it takes time for the hard drive to load the thumbnails and it constantly grinds away as it tries to keep loading the thumbnails as you scroll through. The 1TB/2TB SSDs are such a great price these days it's not like you're making a huge investment to buy the SSD and if I saw a good price on an 8TB SSD, I'd like one for my photos not just for the speed but the silence when going through the photos.
Click to expand...
Thanks John
So to clarify do you think I can use a larger capacity NVME SSD in the M2 slot.
If so would you recommend that over a SATA type.
Thanks again for your assistance.
 
Personally, I'd drop a 2TB NVMe drive into that slot. The 2TB WD Blue SN570 is available for under £80 and is an excellent choice (I have two). You may find cheaper drives but they'll probably use the inferior QLC chips rather than TLC so best avoided.
 
I've put the photo folder that I mainly browse onto the existing M2 Card and its definitely a lot speedier.
For now think i'll keep what i've got and look at getting a new PC next year.
Other parts are less than modern and according to MS its not Win 11 compatible.
Probably no point chucking good money at it when things like the USB card needs updating
Also could do with a spare PCIe slot for a graphics card, can't make a silk purse out of a Sow's ear.

Thanks everyone for your help, made me realise what can and can't be done.
 
I thought I'd continue with this thread since it is mostly along the same lines as the questions I have and the OP seems to have had his questions answered, so no hijack.

At the moment, I have a 500GB SSD NVME as my system device with all the Windows software and the rest of the system stuff on it and I have two further internal SATA HDDs of 1TB and 2TB respectively. The 2TB is used for photograph backup and is fine as it is, but I want to speed up my photo working disk which is at present the 1TB SATA III HDD. I have compared SSD to HDD and noticed that transferring a lot of files from my D850 CFExpress card reader takes considerably longer if I'm copying to the HDD than the SSD, which I would expect. I get transfer speeds of about 375MB/s to the SSD and about 200MB/s to the HDD for the first few photos only then it drops right down to perhaps 24MB/s as the buffer fills.

I want to replace my [internal] 1TB HDD with a 2TB SSD on this old i7 system -- Windows 11, 16GB RAM -- but don't really know what to order. The interface my HDDs use is SATA III, can I get a SATA SSD that will use the same cables as the HDD, will it be as fast as the NVME SSD that the system uses, if so, would I still be able to get the same 375MB/s (ish) using a SATA SSD?

NB The on-board system SSD is only half full so I don't need a bigger system drive unless it would be a better idea to fit a much larger SSD instead. That, of course, would mean re-building the whole operating system, always assuming I could fit one in as the present one is flush with the motherboard.

I'm after speed of access but if I can't change the transfer speeds on my PC significantly then I'd have to start looking at a new PC.

I might add, that since the release of Counter Strike 2, everything runs much hotter than it used to with this game so it may be time to replace the PC anyway, but I'd like to avoid that if all I need for my primary use of photography is faster disk access speeds.

Hope this makes sense and I haven't gone on too much.
 
ShinySideUp said:
I want to replace my [internal] 1TB HDD with a 2TB SSD on this old i7 system -- Windows 11, 16GB RAM -- but don't really know what to order. The interface my HDDs use is SATA III, can I get a SATA SSD that will use the same cables as the HDD, will it be as fast as the NVME SSD that the system uses, if so, would I still be able to get the same 375MB/s (ish) using a SATA SSD?

NB The on-board system SSD is only half full so I don't need a bigger system drive unless it would be a better idea to fit a much larger SSD instead. That, of course, would mean re-building the whole operating system, always assuming I could fit one in as the present one is flush with the motherboard.
Click to expand...
A SATA SSD will use the same cables as a SATA hard drive with one wider l-shape connector for power and the small l-shape connector for the sata data connector:

en.wikipedia.org

SATA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

In theory a sata SSD is much slower than nvme as SATA3 is limited to 600MB/s while PCIE gen 3 can hit 3,500MB/s and PCIE gen 4 can go even faster at 7,500MB/s. In practice SATA SSDs are still fast and a lot of the improvement in SSD speeds isn't just the raw transfer speed but the much quicker read/write since unlike a hard drive it doesn't need to spin the drive round to get the head to the correct position.
 
Do you think then, that there is any point changing my HDD for a SATA SSD, or should I just suck it up until I finally commit to a new PC (which may be some time)?
 
There are two speeds to look at, the bus speed and the drive speed. I don’t think a spinning HDD will be able to saturate the SATA bus, even if that bus is slower than the faster PCIE bus.
 
Based on your current work flow, I'm not sure it would be worth it

1. What buffer is filling when it slows to 24M/Bs? On my server I get about 175MB continous between drives for large files
2. Go make a brew or watch an episode of something for the initial transfer or leave it overnight - I'd look at fixing the 24MBs issue first
3. Put a good amount of photos 5-10 on both the ssd and hdd and if there is a real world improvement in your workflow 2TB ssds are so cheap now it wouldnt be terrible value if you see a difference
4. Yeah the 2.5 ssd and hdd will both use sata 3 as above
5. Depending on workflow transfer the files you want to work with onto the NVMe. Either way you will pay in time or money for your conveniance and only you can decide with your set up if its worth it
6. If you buy the SSD, and it doesnt help you always have an extra back up disk
 
acrobatic_Citron said:
Based on your current work flow, I'm not sure it would be worth it

1. What buffer is filling when it slows to 24M/Bs? On my server I get about 175MB continous between drives for large files
Click to expand...

TBH, I have no idea, I assumed it was the system memory filling up quickly and then being slowed down by the bottleneck of the HDD. As I said, moving files from my CFexpress to my HDD starts off at well over 200MB/s but after about six or seven files have been moved, the speed drops right down, perks up, drops down, etc. Definitely a bottleneck there somewhere and it has to be in the drive or controller. If I do the same manoeuvre between the CFexpress and the SSD it stays constant at 375MB/s, so no bottleneck.

acrobatic_Citron said:
2. Go make a brew or watch an episode of something for the initial transfer or leave it overnight - I'd look at fixing the 24MBs issue first
Click to expand...

It's not a huge problem, it's just that SSDs are so cheap these days. Also I believe accessing images will be much faster in file explorer or Lightroom as there are definite delays somewhere too.

acrobatic_Citron said:
3. Put a good amount of photos 5-10 on both the ssd and hdd and if there is a real world improvement in your workflow 2TB ssds are so cheap now it wouldnt be terrible value if you see a difference
4. Yeah the 2.5 ssd and hdd will both use sata 3 as above
5. Depending on workflow transfer the files you want to work with onto the NVMe. Either way you will pay in time or money for your conveniance and only you can decide with your set up if its worth it
6. If you buy the SSD, and it doesnt help you always have an extra back up disk
Click to expand...

I think I'll try it, I can always send it back.

I've just noticed something else. My LR catalog is on the HDD and watching the task manager performance monitor shows me that it works very hard whenever I do something in LR.

I have a spare slot so I've ordered a 2TB SATA III SSD, going to put everything on that and use the HDDs as backup only.
 
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One last thing might be worth trying and it might not do anything is try copying through the cmd promt and not the gui. I'm not familiar with windows commands but itll be quite straightforward

Have fun!
 
ShinySideUp said:
I've just noticed something else. My LR catalog is on the HDD and watching the task manager performance monitor shows me that it works very hard whenever I do something in LR
Click to expand...

Have you tried moving the LR catalog to the SSD? I thought the advice was to locate it on the fastist internal drive.
 
Brentor said:
Have you tried moving the LR catalog to the SSD? I thought the advice was to locate it on the fastist internal drive.
Click to expand...

Yes, when the new SSD arrives tomorrow I'll be putting everything not system-related onto it; that will include all my photographs and the LR catalogue.
 
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