[Reinier]

Hi there,

 

This is not really a computer forum, but my questions is related to photography, so I hope one of you or more of you can give me some advise.

 

I have (still) a self build PC with Windows 7 Home Premium with an Intel i5-2500, and 16GB memory. Inside I have a SSD sata2 next to a conventional HDD of 2Tb. It is pretty fast, but large photo-files can take a while to save. So, I called a computer store and asked for advise. He said I could swap my SSD sata2 for a SSD3? But other then that I was limited by Windows 7.

 

But it seems strange to me that the speed of saving files to my HDD will increase when changing my SSD. Does a new and faster SSD not only affect the speed of my operating system and software?

 

 

 

Kind regards,


Reinier

[popo]

Are you saving the photo files to SSD or HD? If saving to HD, the SSD wont make any difference. Also, just how big are these photo files? Are we talking a multi-shot HDR, layered, stitched psd? Or just a single jpeg? Any SSD, even the cheap ones, will have a write rate in the ball parks of hundreds of MB per second. HDs are typically slower but could still be in the ball park of 100MB/s assuming there isn't massive fragmentation.

 

I wonder if the speed limit lies elsewhere. For example, what's the CPU and ram usage like during a save?

[Reinier]

Hi Popo,

 

I am writing to my HDD and not to the SSD. I really don't know what the CPU and Ram usage is during file saving. How can I look that up?

 

 

 

Kind regards,


Reinier

[popo]

You can load task manager. Easier if you can put it on a 2nd screen to see it real time but it does do a short history chart too.

 

Having said that, I failed to note the hardware spec in the original post, and that level of PC while somewhat older now, is still reasonable. It could be that the 2TB drive is slowing things down a bit.

 

How long is "a while" to save? And as before, how big are the files? Defrag the HD if it isn't already done by the OS.

[JJ_SO]

If you save your files to the relatively slow HD, a faster SSD will change nothing except a slightly quicker start of your apps. 2 TB of SSD will currently cost you round 1000 $ I think, so if you want to change the drives it will empty your pocket. Apple introduced some hybrid drives which are big HD and little fast SSD in one housing. The SSD buffers the files quickly and sends them to the HD which feels fast, I guess.


I'm sure drives like that are also available for PC, they just have the risk, if one part fails, you might loose some buffered files. And one cannot make partitions on them.

[popo]

Large capacity SSD has dropped a lot and is not insane now. Per capacity it can work out cheaper than multiple smaller ones. I picked up Sandisk 960GB and Crucial MX200 1TB for £150-160 each in UK (equiv. US$220). However I use those primarily for application/game installs, and still use HDs for data storage. These aren't high end SSDs in performance terms, but still kill any HD.

 

JoJu, not sure what type of hybrid drive you're talking about. Western Digital made a combined SSD + HD in one package, exposed to the system as one disk. The recommended configuration was to make two partitions, one covering the SSD for high performance, one covering the HD part for storage. I don't think this ever caught on as the only benefit is not needing two separate physical drives in a small form factor to implement the fast OS,+slow bulk arrangement. Seagate instead made SSHD, which is a HD with a smaller SSD cache. I think the one I have is 750GB capacity with 2GB SSD cache. I got one of these to play with on a laptop, and in terms of real world performance, it still feels like a hard disk. The SSD cache might help some read scenarios but I'm not sure it offers a write benefit.

 

Overall, I think we still need to understand where the bottleneck is and address that.

[Guest]

I would not throw money at this problem. If you decide to buy a new system and obtain a large pcie ssd then it will make a huge difference.

 

The other option is to go with a stripe raid and two hard drives. There are a lot of problems with hybrid drives and I would avoid them. For general task I guess they might have their place (esp with slow laptop hard disks) but personally I find their negatives worse.

 

sata2->sata3 isn't going to help much with a single hard drive. There are some advantages beyond speed but again your not going to see them with your work load.

-

I could recommend replacing your hard drive with an ssd but if you require the full 2tb it will cost $700 today.

--

Btw how long does it actually take for you to save your image ? A quality hard drive should be able to write > 20-50MB a second if the data is contiguous.

[wim]

Hi Popo,

 

I am writing to my HDD and not to the SSD. I really don't know what the CPU and Ram usage is during file saving. How can I look that up?

 

 

 

Kind regards,

Reinier

 

This is your real problem.

 

1 TB Samsung SSDs are currently on offer for around 300 euros. Use one of these as a data drive, and it should solve your problem.

 

HTH, kind regards, Wim

[Reinier]

Hello Everyone,

 

Thanks for all the comments!

 

Sorry I forgot to mention the spec of my PC, here they are:

 

- Intel Core i5-2500 CPU 3.30 GHz

- Ram 16GB (4x4 GB)

- 64 bit Windows 7

- SSD - OCZ 120 Gb Sata

- HDD - WD Caviar green 2 Tb ( I just found out that I have this HD, I thought I had a black or other normal one)

 

I will look into all the options you have mentioned. It is much appreciated!

 

Kind regards,

 

Reinier

 

P.S. Hello Wim, I didn't know you were still here. Unfortunately i am very limited(physically, very little energy), so I sometimes over look things(names) easily, so perhaps that's the case. Maar leuk dat je er ook nog bent.

[JJ_SO]

JoJu, not sure what type of hybrid drive you're talking about. 

I was talking of a Fusion drive, but the name didn't burn in my brain