Which HDDs and arrangement for photo editing?

[Triggaaar]

I'm planning on a medium term PC build in the next week or 2, which will involve buying new HDDs. I'm currently using Lr, and one of the suggested ways of helping it run quickly is to use different drives for different data: eg,

1) Lr software
2) OS pagefile
3) Lr Catalog database, (*.LRCAT), and the Preview cache (*.LRDATA folder tree)
4) Original image files
5) The ACR cache, which will impact only the Develop module

One suggestion I've read is leaving the Lr software on the same drive as your OS, but putting items 3, 4 and 5 on separate drives. I can see this being fairly simple for me, because I could have 3 & 4 on two 1TB (say) drives, which also act as a backup for each other (not raid, just manually backed up). I could then have 1, 2 & 5 on two 300gb drives I already have, which will again backup each other (I will have other data etc on these drives too).

But...
Having 4 drives permanantly spinning doesn't sound like a great idea. So:
1) I could get a 3 port SATA backplane that would allow me to add the 1TB drives when needed, and also replace them with new ones when they're full.
2) Would it be better to use software to stop them spinning when I'm not using Lr?
and are 5400 (ish) rpm eco drives a better choice for storing the original image files, to keep heat down?

Any suggestions on good ways of settings these things up, much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[petersmart]

You can disable any drive you want without any special software.

Just go Control panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Disk Drives - then disable any drive you want by clicking on it and selecting "Do not use this device" in the bottom box.

At least that's how you do it on Windows XP - not sure about any other OS.

Just make sure you don't disable your OS drive - but I think Windows might prevent that.

Just reverse the process to enable any drive.

As far as I know that would stop them spinning.

Having said that I have 4 drives on my "editing" PC and it doesn't seem to cause any probs leaving them running all the time.

I aslo have a 1Tb "Eco" drive and that seems to work quite well.

This is the one I bought and it seems quite cheap here:

http://www.ilgs.co.uk/products.asp?partno=WD10EARS

Approx £45.00 for 1Tb.

.

 

[hollis_f]

Don't fanny around with loads of different drives, all you need is three internal drives.

1. An SSD, capacity 100-160 GB, for the OS, Program Files, LR Catalog and working images.
2. A 1TB HDD for data, music, video and completed images.
3. A 1.5 TB HDD for backup of drives 1 & 2

 

[Triggaaar]

You can disable any drive you want without any special software.

Just go Control panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Disk Drives - then disable any drive you want by clicking on it and selecting "Do not use this device" in the bottom box.

Thanks

Don't fanny around with loads of different drives, all you need is three internal drives.

1. An SSD, capacity 100-160 GB, for the OS, Program Files, LR Catalog and working images.
2. A 1TB HDD for data, music, video and completed images.
3. A 1.5 TB HDD for backup of drives 1 & 2

Thanks for the reply. There are some issues with that setup though:
- SSDs are very expensive
- When using lightroom, you keep your original images on one drive, you don't move them - and I don't simply download my images, work on them and move to storage drives, I work on different images at different times

I was planning on 4 drives, which is only 1 more than you are suggesting, and cheaper (since SSDs cost a lot more)

 

[hollis_f]

Thanks for the reply. There are some issues with that setup though:
- SSDs are very expensive
- When using lightroom, you keep your original images on one drive, you don't move them - and I don't simply download my images, work on them and move to storage drives, I work on different images at different times)

Yes, SSDs are quite expensive. But they're more than worth it.

Why do you think you have to keep your images one just one drive when working in Lightroom? It's very easy to move images from one drive to another from within Lighhtroom. Even if you keep your images on a slow HDD, having the LR catalog and previews on an SSD makes it a lot faster.

 

[Triggaaar]

Yes, SSDs are quite expensive. But they're more than worth it.

That obviously depends on the application. Les McLean did some comparisons, and it seems that image loading isn't much different (it's just the initial access time). It might be that having the Catalog on an SSD makes a good difference, do you know how the Catalog works?

Why do you think you have to keep your images one just one drive when working in Lightroom? It's very easy to move images from one drive to another from within Lighhtroom.

I think moving the images is more likely to lead to mistakes and lost data, and it's more trouble than it's worth.

If an SSD is a good value improvement for Lr, then I'd get one - and by good value, I mean the improvement is better per £ spent than spending on ram or cpu.

Thanks

 

[hollis_f]

That obviously depends on the application. Les McLean did some comparisons, and it seems that image loading isn't much different (it's just the initial access time). It might be that having the Catalog on an SSD makes a good difference, do you know how the Catalog works?

I ran a test on Lightroom 2, creating 1:1 previews - images and catalog on SSD vs images and catalog on HDD. The SSD was around 45% faster. Now that really surprised me as I'd presumed that it'd be a fairly processor-intensive task and that it would do most of the disk operations in parallel with the calculations. And everybody I've encountered online who have swapped over to an SSD say that the speed increase working with LR is substantial.

If an SSD is a good value improvement for LR, then I'd get one - and by good value, I mean the improvement is better per £ spent than spending on ram or cpu.

Yes, I do believe the performance gain is better than spending more on ram and cpu - as long as you've got a decent enough cpu and 4GB of ram already. Having loads of really fast ram and a blistering CPU is great - until you realise that they're sitting around for a lot of the time, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for data to get fed to them.

When I wanted to upgrade my machine last year I had a choice of going from 4GB to 8GB of RAM or adding an SSD - both were around the same cost. I went for the SSD and was astounded at the change - absolutely everything was noticeably faster. This year I did the RAM upgrade and I've hardly noticed any difference.

 

[Triggaaar]

I ran a test on Lightroom 2, creating 1:1 previews - images and catalog on SSD vs images and catalog on HDD. The SSD was around 45% faster.

Thanks. I've been checking out the lightroom and windows7 forums - I think suggestions are putting the Catalogue and ACR cache on the SSD. But getting a decent SSD is a bit hit and miss at the moment.

When I wanted to upgrade my machine last year I had a choice of going from 4GB to 8GB of RAM or adding an SSD - both were around the same cost. I went for the SSD and was astounded at the change - absolutely everything was noticeably faster. This year I did the RAM upgrade and I've hardly noticed any difference.

The prices I'm looking at for a decent PC build next year puts the SSDs at over £100 (even for 64gb) vs about £75 for 8gb vs 4gb - but if the SSD is a much better improvement, who cares.

Looks like I'll definitely get an SSD, but I'll wait until
a) they're a bit cheaper and more reliable.
b) I build a new i7 PC next year

Thanks for your help

 

[hollis_f]

Looks like I'll definitely get an SSD, but I'll wait until
a) they're a bit cheaper and more reliable.
b) I build a new i7 PC next year

a) Cheaper is very likely as more and more people buy them. More reliable is not very likely as they're already ultra-reliable, much more so that that 19th-Century technology that relies on bits of magnetised media. If you get a trim-enabled drive and a trim-aware OS (like Win7) then performance degradation is a thing of the past. And, although they do have limited read-write cycles, even a heavy user isn't going to be reaching that limit for a decade or so. (My drive has had 3.6 TB written to it over the last year - that's around 25 read/writes to each bit of the drive, so even a pessimistic limit of 1000 read/writes means I've got another 40 years left).

b) Yes, I'm waiting for USB3 and SATA-3 before I put together a new PC. I'm hoping that SATA-3 will really shine with SSDs - with real-life speed advantages around 20 times that of HDDs.

 

[Triggaaar]

More reliable is not very likely as they're already ultra-reliable, much more so that that 19th-Century technology that relies on bits of magnetised media. If you get a trim-enabled drive and a trim-aware OS (like Win7) then performance degradation is a thing of the past.

There are plenty of reports of reliability problems, although they mostly say Trim enabled helps. That 19th-century (you know it's 20th right) technology is tried and tested and works well.

Yes, I'm waiting for USB3 and SATA-3 before I put together a new PC.

Do you mean you're waiting until USB3 and SATA3 are more common, because presumably you can get those now?

 

[hollis_f]

That 19th-century (you know it's 20th right)

Nope, 19th. 1878 the first patent filing for storing information my magnetising bits of wire.

 

[Triggaaar]

You need to get out more

 

[Donki]

I use 4 1GB Samsung spinpoint drives, 1 operating system and programs/games, 1 for pictures, 1 for music/movies and 1 as a backup to the rest, the forth isn't need yet butwill be soon. I keep my LR library stored in my pictures drive and everythin loads FAST I have no issues with slow previews or accessing libaraies via LR, yes I would love a SSD for my OS and programs but 1, there are to exspensive for what they offer IMO and 2 they just arnt big enough, I use 600GB for OS, programs and games.

 

[lensworx]

80GB SSD - Essential Programs
500GB 7200rpm - Non Essential Programs and Data

My Home Directory (OSX) is moved to the 500GB drive in case of failure of the SSD, this can be done with windows too.

I also have my 500GB backing up over the network to an old machine with 3 1TB drives setup in a RAID 5 Array each night, which is also backed up to external drives once a month.