500 Gb Samsung 850 EVO

I am thinking about putting one of these in my desktop. I want to use it for editing photos and videos. Hopefully, speed up the process. I use Photoshop and Premiere Pro. My question is, should I just install Adobe products to this drive and edit my files on this drive or install Windows 10 and my Adobe products on this drive to work with my photos and videos.? Right now I have about 60 gigs on my operating system drive. That includes all my Adobe programs. Just trying to figure out the best way to go. Thanks for any of your input you may have.

When a program like Lightroom 'edits a .CR2', it is NOT doing anything to that RAW file at all, it is only making a list of edit entries in the Lightroom catalog file as a parameterized list of things to do (when creating/updating the Preview image or later when later creating output filles (JPG, TIF)) When you are processor-bound in speed, you will still be processor-bound. It is only when, in the past, you have been limited by the access times to read/write a spinning drive that you benefit.

So the 'speed benefits' of SSD would pertain to

• the catalog file updates and preview file updates a.k.a read/write data...
  
• and/or when the computer needs to fetch a task for LR or Windows a.k.a. read program instructions.,
  
• or to update the Windows virtual RAM area on harddrive,
  

Is this on a different bus than the current start up disk?

If so, what is the difference?

Drive access happens often with importing, editing and output. Everything you can do to put those processes on a fast bus and drive will help.

Definitely install windows and other programs beside adobe in the ssd. It will speedup the startup time for all the apps. Processor speeds determine the in app performance. I am using this ssd in my laptop with 3tb regular HD. I save the raw Files and converted jpg in the regular HD and happy with the overall responsiveness in Photoshop and lightroom.

I would partition it, 50 - 150GB for Windows and programs, the rest for data. My W10 install is 50GB with swap file.

This gives you:

• fast computer and application startup time
  
• data separated from OS/programs, so your OS images with Macrium Reflect (or similar) will be smaller and data backups easier
  
  

Would you partition it if the only data that will be on it is the photos and videos that I edit. Once done with the files I will move them off the SSD.

I've just found this article which was linked on the Adobe web support for Lightroom http://www.computer-darkroom.com …be-lightroom-performance/

"At this point you may be asking why I’ve been chattering on about CPUs and ram. What about SSDs? Well, fact is the CPU and ram are effectively the only components that have any significant effect on the time taken to render previews in either the Library or Develop modules, and since this is probably the most time consuming aspect when using Lightroom it would be pretty silly to ignore either when chasing performance improvements. However, with that said, I think it’s time to look at the impact an SSD will or won’t have on performance. To do so I installed a 240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme SSD, which, at time of writing, reputed to be one of the best around, in place of the supplied 500 GB 7200 rpm disk drive. The disk drive was moved to the slot normally used for the built in optical drive, thus allowing me to use either as the boot drive. In terms of read/write performance this SDD was capable of achieving in excess of 240 MB/sec whereas the disk drive maxed out at around 100 MB/sec.

..."The key point to note from above results table is that irrespective of where the catalog, previews, cache or photos were stored the difference in overall import and rendering times is relatively small (i.e. 26 sec between fastest and slowest). The normal recommendation is to place the application, Camera Raw cache, catalog and previews on the SSD and photos on the conventional disk drive (3); yet this configuration is only marginally faster than putting everything on a conventional disk drive (5). We can also see that the SSD helped reduce preview rendering times when the photos where located on the SSD (4 and 6). Clearly, storing photo files on the SSD isn’t a realistic proposition when typical storage capacities are factored in, but it’s worth keeping in mind for the day when larger less expensive SSDs become available.

..."as the various tests have demonstrated, SSDs are not the magic bullet that some would have you believe.""

IOW, what I said about the only read/write operations during editing are recording edits to the catalog (minimal data being written) and writing/updating preview data...in which process the processor and RAM are the bottleneck in that operation!

Nascar Nut wrote in post #18382848
Would you partition it if the only data that will be on it is the photos and videos that I edit. Once done with the files I will move them off the SSD.

Yes, because your backup image could be taken while you have data files on the SSD.

For example, the SSD with my operating system and programs is around 50GB, but it compresses down to a 20 - 25GB image file. If I put a wedding or family event on there and took an image that could easily double or triple the size of your image.

If you don't plan on taking disk images of your operating system disk you can do whatever you like. Reinstalling an operating system and programs takes maybe a day, so if you can tolerate a day of downtime you might not bother. I do, because getting the OS, Office, Adobe stuff, web browsers, etc, etc installed and configured is a pain in the butt.

You probably don't need a 500GB SSD. The main benefit of an SSD is storing cache and catalog, as it provides rapid access to those many small files. Hard drives are plenty fast enough for storage of RAW files. Putting your RAW files into the place they'll eventually live makes for an easier, more consistent backup system. Prices are pretty low now though, so no real harm getting a bigger one. I actually have two smaller SSDs rather than one large partitioned SSD.

If you have enough RAM the RAW files tend to be cached there anyway. Once I cull a wedding I end up with around 10GB of RAW files, which easily fit into my 16GB of RAM even with the OS and other software running.

I made the mistake of enabling AHCI in bios before I installed Windows 10 on the drive. I could no longer load windows. I was going to just clone windows as it was a pretty fresh install. I ended up doing a fresh install on the new drive. Will enabling AHCI mess up my other 3 ide drives or my USB drive I use for storage? I haven't plugged those back in yet.

Nascar Nut wrote in post #18383448
I made the mistake of enabling AHCI in bios before I installed Windows 10 on the drive. I could no longer load windows. I was going to just clone windows as it was a pretty fresh install. I ended up doing a fresh install on the new drive. Will enabling AHCI mess up my other 3 ide drives or my USB drive I use for storage? I haven't plugged those back in yet.

You should enable AHCI before installing Windows, it has some advantages for SSDs. It needs a different driver, but from memory that was included as early as XP.

Changing to AHCI once Windows is installed used to be more difficult. I don't know if it still is.

It is all running fine now. The drivers were in the windows 10 install. All my drives are working fine as well. You definitely have to do more then just enable it on a drive that all ready has windows on it.

Nascar Nut wrote in post #18383918
It is all running fine now. The drivers were in the windows 10 install. All my drives are working fine as well. You definitely have to do more then just enable it on a drive that all ready has windows on it.

It tends to be easier to enable then install windows.

tim wrote in post #18382825
I would partition it, 50 - 150GB for Windows and programs, the rest for data. My W10 install is 50GB with swap file.

This gives you:

• fast computer and application startup time
  
• data separated from OS/programs, so your OS images with Macrium Reflect (or similar) will be smaller and data backups easier
  
  

Never heard of Macrium Reflect, I've always used clonezilla.

icor1031 wrote in post #18421268
Never heard of Macrium Reflect, I've always used clonezilla.

Macrium Reflect is commercial software with a free version, it's been around for a long time. I know that it works from experience. Clonzilla sounds like open source, and probably works just fine too.