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SSD storage for Aperture Library #1
Graham Parker's picture
by Graham Parker
October 24, 2013 - 10:02pm

I am just about to install 8GB ram from 4GB I have at the moment and a new 240GB SSD into my late 2009 MBP. The Disk drive I am going to install into the optical drive bay.
The operating system (mavericks) and apps I intend to put on the SSD and all my data will go on the Disk drive.

Question.
Is there any advantage for speed to store the Aperture Library also on the SSD as I will have lots of space left over from installing the OS. I am not concerned in running out of space on my SSD.
Not related to Aperture but is there any advantage in storing any other data on the SSD as well i.e. PS (am I allowed to say that here!!) and any other high power consuming apps.

Any feed back would be gratefully received.

gfsymon's picture
by gfsymon
October 30, 2013 - 4:44pm

Jim,

yes, more or less. I don’t know what confusion he’s talking about … possibly that some people thought a striped, or concatenated drive is the same as Fusion. Anyway, you do it in Terminal, which seems like a big deal, but it’s really very simple. Takes 5 minutes. 10 minutes if you check everything 3 times before proceeding. :)

NB, Disk Utility in Mavericks knows all about Fusion and reports and repairs them correctly. This wasn’t the case when I made my Fusion about a year ago.

Rob Phelan's picture
by Rob Phelan
October 29, 2013 - 2:25am

I’ve got a fast Samsung SSD and a standard HDD crammed into my 2009 17” lovingly known as “Lapzilla”. What I do is to store an Aperture Library on my SSD into which I import my active projects. Once I handle the initial sorting and management, I move the project to one of my libraries on the HDD. (“Export as New Library” into temp file onto the HDD, Merge into the main HDD Library, delete the temporary). That way, you get the speed when you need it, and you’re not using up your SSD when you don’t.

#nofilter before anyone knew what it meant.

gfsymon's picture
by gfsymon
October 29, 2013 - 2:47am

Graham,

if you feel brave, then make a Fusion drive out of your 2 drives. I have been running a ‘home-made’ Fusion drive in a 2008 MBPro for almost a year (running beta Mavericks for the last 9 months or so). 256Gb-SSD + 750Gb-7200rmpHD. Mavericks knows all about Fusion and you will never ever know that the hot-swapping is going on. Even individual images in Aperture will be moved onto SSD if you look at them frequently. Works well and honestly, after a week or so of use (Fusion has to move frequently used files around to become effective) your Mac will feel like a new machine. If OTOH, your system + Aperture library can all fit on your 240 SSD, then that will be the fastest.

FWIW, Mavericks is a huge benefit for any apps requiring a lot of RAM. It’s one of the major things that Apple have done. It’s ‘under the hood’ but very very significant. Disk swapping (paging) has been greatly reduced.

Graham Parker's picture
by Graham Parker
October 29, 2013 - 7:29am

Thanks guys or your replies.
gfsymon as far as the fusion drive option is concerned it sounds a great idea checked into it http://blog.macsales.com/17624-os-x-10-8-3-provides-fusion-drive-setup-o…
but for me and how I use mbp I not going to jump that way yet as I didn’t realise that if one drive fails then you loose data on both drives.
Did all the install yesterday and my mbp now screams!! so all looks good

Thanks again for all your imput.

gfsymon's picture
by gfsymon
October 29, 2013 - 3:51pm

Graham,

you know your own working needs better than I do, but for those reading that may not fully understand the implications :

For as long as I can remember, pros have fed their need-for-speed by striping drives together. I’ve striped drives for years and Fusion, whilst not quite the same as a RAID Stripe, has the same weakness in that a drive failure means a total loss. Pros (generally) provide against this scary eventuality by having multiple, reliable and up-to-date backups.

The point here, is that if you’re not already keeping your backups constantly up-to-date, then you’re taking a much bigger risk than you would be by adding striping or using a Fusion. In other words, you already have the backups, so … where’s the risk?

Most people have a single drive in their MacBook Pro. If it fails, you loose everything … except of course, you don’t, because you have backups. Apple have taken this view when developing the Fusion drive format and installing them into iMacs. They see no increased risk.

Some would say that you are doubling the risk of failure, but others might argue, that you are reducing the risk of failure, because each drive is only being used half as much, which reduces wear and tear by half. (This is more true of striping than Fusion).

Jim Burgess's picture
by Jim Burgess
October 29, 2013 - 10:51pm

gfsymon… To create your fusion drive, did you use the technique described in the OWC blog referenced above, or a different approach? I’m interested in doing this as I upgrade to Mavericks. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.

David  Moore's picture
by David Moore
October 24, 2013 - 11:32pm

If you are not worried about the library taking up too much space on the SSD then Yes it would be faster. I have the same 2009 MBP with 8gigs, the SSD and the older HD still there for the library . Cheers dbm

davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ

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