Solid State Drive + Lightroom = Speedy

[Addy101]

I am wondering what this had to do with Lightroom at all......

SSD's are fast, yes, true, my laptop starts up like lighting but it doesn't have Lightroom at all and it never will....

 

[johannielscom]

So tell me people, is it worth the effort putting an SSD into a late 2009 Mac Mini? It's a 2.14Ghz Core2Duo with 4Gb RAM installed and from what the internet tells me it's the series that can also stomach 8Gb RAM 🙄 so I might be able to thrust it forward for another year if the SSD is a go for it 🙂

 

[GaryLH]

I have a 960G SSD sitting on my desk awaiting a bit of free time to put it into my Mac mini... I've seen the results on other machines: it's well worth it.

I'll add it to the mini as a second drive, configure it to be the startup with all the apps and my home directory. All my photo data is on external drives, so I'm not sure what I'll purpose the other internal (1T) drive to do just yet.

G

How I ended up using the internal HD.

I believe that ssd plus HD can be a better choice for some (fusion is probably better for most people) than the new fusion design that Apple has introduced. Since w/ fusion, the os is constantly trying to figure out least used to move off of the ssd portion. When create a two drive setup of your own w/ the ssd and a separate HD, u can make those decisions your self. I tend to put all of the os plus apps on the ssd as well as the user home directory, so all I need is a 120gb ssd at most. The HD is for storage of media like my music and stuff. This is where the HD is still king cost vs capacity wise. The ssd is used for my temp work area for editing projects like home movies. Once done are moved over to the internal or external HD.. I also keep all my critical stuff on external HD w/ second external HD backup.. My Aperture library is on one external HD and the aperture backup is on the other for example. I symbolically link (Apple calls it alias) when needed between my HD and the ssd those folders or files I use a lot.

If u are into this type of stuff then doing your own ssd setup is the way to go.

Gary

 

[GaryLH]

So tell me people, is it worth the effort putting an SSD into a late 2009 Mac Mini? It's a 2.14Ghz Core2Duo with 4Gb RAM installed and from what the internet tells me it's the series that can also stomach 8Gb RAM 🙄 so I might be able to thrust it forward for another year if the SSD is a go for it 🙂

- Upgrade memory first. Cheapest bang for the buck.
- HD has latency related issues that are not there in a ssd as I mentioned earlier. So long as we are talkin about a sata interface, u should c an improvement.

Three methods for ssd install
- replace existing HD w/ ssd only (hardest)
- replace existing DVD/cd drive w/ ssd (a lot of third parties make kits for this plus the instructions)
- use external enclosure (FireWire or USB 3 - the easiest)

Option one depends on - Are u good at taking apart a mini? HD is located at bottom of the mini. The DVD/cd replacement is easier plus provides beast bang for buck.

No matter which method u need to Use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to clone it. If u have Lion os or later make sure u create a recovery partition first..

In preferences - startup drive - point it to your external HD or ssd in the DVD/sd replacement method.

Going w/ external interface will not be as fast as a internal ssd approach.

Gary

 

[f16sunshine]

So tell me people, is it worth the effort putting an SSD into a late 2009 Mac Mini? It's a 2.14Ghz Core2Duo with 4Gb RAM installed and from what the internet tells me it's the series that can also stomach 8Gb RAM 🙄 so I might be able to thrust it forward for another year if the SSD is a go for it 🙂

It may not be worth it for photograph applications editing larger files or batches.
Until you can get your RAM into the 16-24G range I don't thing you will see the full $$ benefit of upgrading to SSD. You will see some benefit for sure but it won't be like coming to a new machine as such.... IMO 😉

 

[GaryLH]

Os startup time, first screen after user login and application start will be faster w/ ssd. I have a friend who probably is the most intensive memory (ram) user I know (64gb is what he is thinking about next.. He found that going from 2 or 4 gb to 8 gb was the biggest bang for the buck in terms of improvements for normal usage.. After that a lot depended on how many applications u left open (task threads), the type of applications (simulations vs source code editing vs compiling vs video or photo editing), and how much virtual paging u require to be in RAM vs HD. If your HD is really an ssd, the performance difference between ram and ssd vs ram and HD is quite a lot if the os is paging HD virtual vs ssd virtual.

Anyway he is building a 16 core 64gb machine to run his simulation and compiles. For his personal use, he has a 4 core mac w/ 16gb of ram.

Gary

 

[Doug]

So tell me people, is it worth the effort putting an SSD into a late 2009 Mac Mini? It's a 2.14Ghz Core2Duo with 4Gb RAM installed and from what the internet tells me it's the series that can also stomach 8Gb RAM 🙄 so I might be able to thrust it forward for another year if the SSD is a go for it 🙂

MacTracker agrees that your Mini accepts a max of 8Gb... seems to take the same 4Gb RAM modules as my late-2009 iMac. And we both have the 3Gb/s SATA II drive interface. I did a little digging and found that an SATA III drive will work at SATA II speeds on an SATA II bus, so that opens up more SSD drives for us to shop for!

Also, MacTracker says the late-2009 Mini was offered in three processor speeds: 2.26, 2.53 or 2.66 GHz, and neither the preceding nor following Mini offered 2.14GHz...

 

[GaryLH]

Yep sata 3 is downward compatible w/ sata 2.

Gary