LR Catalog on SSD - cycle figures

[Hoggy]

Yeah.. Another thread of this..

I first bought a 240GB SSD last year specifically just FOR the LR app & catalog, and would not go back. Images have been stored regardless on a spinner.

However, now I've done a fresh install of windows 10 onto the first half of the SSD, after resizing the original 1 partition. So now the OS is on the first half along with apps (incl. LR), and the LR catalog & various other original App folder remnants (pending deletion) are still on that 2nd half.

I've read that one should not worry so much with newer SSD's, but still.. I have no income right now, and worry. I've moved the system temp folders to the spinner, with Firefox & Palemoon temp folders as well. I'm also thinking of moving the Fx&PM profile folders to the spinner as well - since there really wasn't much improvement at all in regards to the browser startups, nor operation while browsing.. So I might as well shave some write cycles there.

However one thing that still puzzles/concerns me is that my main LR catalog (of ~3000 images) is ~1GB. Also let me state that I will restart LR to backup the catalog many times while doing editing - TO the spinner in this Laptop.

However, I heavily doubt that the whole 1GB would need to be changed after some editing each time. But I'm not certain of how this would translate in terms of SSD write cycle figures. Would it still count as 1GB each time LR exits (when I assume changes from the LR-journal file are written back into it)? So If I restart LR 10 times in one day, would it still count as 10GB/day as far as the SSD is concerned?

Many thanks if anyone knows for sure.

 

[Replytoken]

I've read that one should not worry so much with newer SSD's, but still.. I have no income right now, and worry.

While I understand your question from the point of curiosity, it appears somewhat academic to me. All drives fail, and in many cases with little to no warning. If you are worried, back up the files, regardless of the drive's age. Yes, you can minimize wear and tear on the drive, but that is a separate issue that is not related to worrying, as you should be backing up the drive regardless of age. If wear and tear is your issue, then you have already identified some work habits that can be changed, but do note that most of the better and newer drives are probably rated for longer than you would probably consider a reasonable amount of time for the life of a drive.

If it was me, I would make sure the drive is frequently backed up and work as I normally do. There is almost no way to predict when an SSD is going to fail. You could change radically change your habits tomorrow to put as little wear and tear on the drive, and it could still die next week.

Good luck,

--Ken

 

[Hoggy]

The big thing I'm worried about though is the cost to replace the SSD - I have a very finite amount of funds (I'm in a 7 year disability case that isn't going well so far, so I'm terrified regardless). And now that I've gotten a taste of how it is to have an SSD for everything, I don't want to ever go back to a spinner boot! Wishing I would've done this when I got it! :hail: I do already backup my actual data, with some things additionally syncing to some free cloud services - Gdrive and Copy. Everything except things that could be reinstalled or whatnot. ... Although considering how much of a PITA all this reinstalling and reconfiguring has been so far, I think I'm gonna make an image with Windows Backup at this point, while it's size is still fairly small. Wish I knew a way to do slipstreaming to keep some of the image updated and double-backed on BD-RE50's, but that's a bit above my pay grade.

By using Resource Monitor, I did eventually manage to get event logs (a main write-offender I saw) to the spinner by using a junction point. So I now already got most most of the things off that aren't really sped up via SSD. In fact, I read that the write-heavy stuff could be even be slowed down because writing to SSD may not be as fast as writing to spinners. Whether that's still true or not for my relatively new-generation SDD, I don't know. (It's a Crucial CT240M500SSD1 - think I'll look it up.)

Still, it would be nice to find out some possible figures for the LR cataloging scenario.

 

[acquacow]

So, I sell flash storage for a living... and have for the last 6 years.

I've also got my catalog on SSD as well as all of my raw photos and output jpegs.

The nice thing is that you can track the writes to the disk and keep track of your full drive writes over time.
Grab whatever utilities software is available for your SSD, Samsung uses Magician, SanDisk has one called SSD Dashboard, etc...

From there you can monitor what you need directly and can plot it month to month and see what the warrantied life expectancy is.
Keep in mind, that the erase cycles you are monitoring is just a warrantied number, the flash will likely last a lot longer than the warranty #.

This is a pretty interesting article from that perspective:
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

The article also offers some good info on tracking your wear life/etc...

-- Dave

 

[Hoggy]

That article does help me feel a bit better. I think I need to just put.. the.. resource monitor.. DOWN! Watching that thing can drive ya nuts with an SSD. :wtf: I can't believe Windows is that noisy.

I'm still glad I got some top transient-data offenders off the SSD though, since there was no really noticeable speed difference with what I got off, including the 'temp' environment variables. Maybe some slight difference after moving my Fiefox(PaleMoon) profile directory. I might even gain some 'striping' type benefits, having data go to 2 drives on this laptop. The old C-drive was of course the 1st partition on the spinner, so at least it's the fastest part, albeit at 5400rpm.

And the more I think about it, there's probably not a whole GB of info being rewritten every time when closing LR. It's probably just updating a few various 'disk' clusters each time. Come to think of it though, I may want to uncheck the optimize feature in LR backup - and just do it manually every once in a great while. That feature probably has more benefit to spinners than SSD's and might even be worse for SSD's.

 

[Replytoken]

The big thing I'm worried about though is the cost to replace the SSD - I have a very finite amount of funds (I'm in a 7 year disability case that isn't going well so far, so I'm terrified regardless).

First, I am sorry to hear that things are not going well for you. I am sure that must be very frustrating to say the least. But, this concern seems like a bit of a different question, and from reading the additional posts in the thread, it sounds like you know what you can do to maximize the life of the drive. I hope your case is solved quickly in your favor, and that your drive lasts for years beyond. Having said that, I still recommend continuing to back up!

Good luck,

--Ken