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Working off a couple of generations old MacBookPro (5,3), 4Gb RAM, Masters are relocated to a FW drive (notebook size 2.5" 640Gb spinning at 5400 RPM). I keep only the current working project masters in the library (currently 59.6 Gb) until completion, then relocate them off. This allows me to work on the move without having to bring my photo drive.
Down to the nitty gritty:
1. The search:
Frustrated with the speed of Aperture, I was looking for a replacement internal drive running at 7200 RPM - willing to live with the added heat and reduced battery life.
Remembering the old days of the G3 PowerBook Lombard (1999) with the right side optical drive which could be ejected and replaced with a second battery, and the aftermarket enclosures which allowed adding a second drive in that same slot - I though - what can we do today?
In search of drive reviews, I landed at OWC's site. OWC is a long term reseller of mac and pc hardware, including various "upgrade path" solutions extending the life of your current machine. There - I found the "data doubler" !!!
2. The implementation:
This kit allows you replace your optical drive with a frame which will hold an additional drive. My SuperDrive gets used at best once per month. This was the best way to go for me.
Since I was up to something - this something had to be done "all the way".
SSD was the way to go. After detailed searches and articles, I chose the Corsair Force series F240 SSD. High throughput, stable results, and updatable firmware (through windows machines only).
The data manipulation was the most time consuming aspect of the upgrade.
I moved all ~/Music, ~/Movies, ~/Pictures (except for Aperture Library) to an external drive.
For the time being, I've decided to keep ~/Documents in place, but plan on moving this over if I start to get low on space.
Keeping system files, applications, and libraries (including mail in place).
Did the drive swap - at first placing the SSD in the bracket, and keeping the HD in original location.
Cloned the original HD to SSD, and replaced the moved files to the internal HD after re-formatting. Links needed to be fixed in iTunes and other places for everything to be found correctly.
Warning! This led to crashes upon sleep / hibernation. Search on Corsairs support site as well as other online resources pointed to the fact the swapping the location of these drives solves the problem.
I'm getting good at taking apart the mac book pro - Apple, if you're listening, I can sub for a maintenance engineer! Its actually quite simple and takes no more than 10 mins for the whole thing (all required tools were included with the bracket package). Instruction booklet is great, as are the online videos.
I had set aside a separate external HD for aperture backups throughout. All the data moves sure ate up space, but I kept at it between each change of hardware or file location. Its worth the peace of mind, knowing that I can roll back at any time, as well as to my original state with just the one drive.
3. The Results:
Mind-blowing. No other word to describe this.
The machine boots 3x faster - in approx 16 seconds.
Office apps open instantly - in 1 bounce.
iTunes - 3 bounces
Mail - 1 bounce !!!!!! Search through a mail archive since 1996 (22gb worth) is instant - as fast you can type.
Paralles Desktop - 3 bounces to open, 11 seconds to launch (not wake) Windows XP in Coherence mode.
And of course - Aperture - 2 bounces to open, 3 seconds for "Opening Aperture 3 Library", and another second or two to display in Browse mode - ALL images in library.
LIGHTNING FAST APERTURE - sure, with a LIGHTNING FAST DRIVE.
4. Arguments:
Is money better spent on RAM?
NO! It is not. The move from 4Gb to 8Gb yields marginal benefits. We went through this last week at the office. An i7 MacBook Pro with 4Gb ram was upgraded to 8Gb. Performance increases were noticed in Photoshop - this was the most obvious, but too small to gauge.
The same upgrade as I've outlined herein, save for a drive from OCZ, and we saw dramatic improvements - from 2x to 5x performance increase. The more data needs to read and written to disk, the more amazing the change.
Fit your OS, Apps and core data onto an SSD - 100Gb is enough. Leave the rest on HDD, dump the optical drive.
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