gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

The usual configuration is an SSD for your operating system/programs and a high speed HD for data output, plus optional external drives for backups. Programs load faster from an SSD but they can't be defragmented if you move or delete lots of data files, which makes them less efficient over time. For a fee you could get your operating system and programs cloned to an SSD and your data outputs moved to the HD if you don't want to do that yourself.

alx Loc: NJ

I'd definitely go with Samsung - their cloning software is simple and direct. The only time I've ever seen it fail is when the original hard drive went bad with too many bad sectors for a reliable copy. As always, go with the biggest that fits your budget. I'd also go with a reliable HDD for backup and storage after you are done with your edits. You don't need speed for long term storage.

jgunkler

I'm still careful about using an SSD for data, especially not for data backup. Recovering data from failed SSD's is not likely to be successful.

photodoc16

Yo Dragon,
Are SSD's less prone to crash than the non solid state drives?
Thanks,
Photodoc16

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Good article to read. https://www.howtogeek.com/322856/how-long-do-solid-state-drives-really-last/
and backup, backup, backup with software that makes it easy to recover the entire drive.
Mark

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

No need to defrag SSDs as they are random access devices (same time to read a block regardless of where it resides in the memory map). You defrag hard drives because for files requiring more than one block, you want the blocks to be contiguous, which minimizes head seeks. Since SSDs do not have moving heads, it doesn’t matter where the blocks are contiguous or not - takes the same time to read them regardless of where they’re located. And no, they don’t get less efficient with time.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Not likely to be successful from failed HDs either... What is likely to be successful is MDisks or cloud storage for backup.

Cwilson341 Loc: Central Florida

Enlightening article, Mark.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Thanks. I thought so too.
Mark

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

My digital photo editing computer has a 500 GB SSD internal drive for all the software programs. Then it also has a 1 TB external SSD for pictures, another 1 TB SSD for my non-classical music collection which I'm in the process of cataloging, a 500 GB SSD for my Photography Art that has been uploaded to Fine Art America, and another 500 GB SSD as my "Daily" drive, i.e., stuff that hasn't been cataloged yet. My music computer has a 500 GB SSD internal drive for all the software programs, and a 1 TB external SSD for my classical musical collection.

In other words, I went all-SSD in 2017 when I bought new computers for the new home.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I use my SSD drive as my main drive for start-up and what programs I use a lot. My images are all on external HHD drives

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

A friend of mine is a design and production engineer/manager for one of the largest manufacturers of SSD (and other types of drives)... He knows I'm a photographer and recommends AGAINST using an SSD to archive important, irreplaceable data such as photo files (or if you do, be very certain you have a solid backup that's kept up to date). The problem is that SSDs still aren't as stable as old-fashioned HDDs. They also are about 10X more expensive, so it costly to use them for the purpose.

What's recommended is to use an SSD for the computer's "boot", operating system and application drive, where the speed of the drive will do the most good. But store data files of all types on a separate, HDD (and back up the important, irreplaceable data to another HDD, at least). Also make a distinction between "hot" and "cold" data storage. For example, 1000 photos you take today and want to work with would be "hot" data that may benefit from a speedy drive. But other image files you are simply storing and only occasionally need to access, but want to be sure to keep safely, are "cold" storage that doesn't require ultra fast access.

Depending upon what image editing software you use, a modest size SSD might also be useful as a "scratch drive". For example, Photoshop performs much better if it has a 100GB or so set aside for it's exclusive use, on a "drive" separate from where the program and data reside. It can be an actual drive or a partition on a larger drive. Since the scratch drive is used when working on images, it may help performance if it's an SSD.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

This good advice in my opinion. I have three SSDs in my system, but all long term storage and backups are spinning disks. I'm more than happy with the reliability of my SSDs, they do make a performance difference. However, simply retrieving and opening a file from a HDD isn't a noticeable time delay with apps and scratch on the SSD.

Also, pay attention TriX's posts. He knows what he is talking about.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Alan, with all respect, I think this is old news and not applicable to today’s drives. In fairness, it’s difficult to get actual data vs anecdotal evidence, because the large storage users such as Google, Backblaze, etc. use spinning disk (at present) because SSD is still expensive on a $ per TB basis. There have certainly been some start-up manufacturing problems with early SSDs, and your engineering friend may have been party to some, but those days are past, at least for the best manufacturers. In the end, a non-mechanical solution without moving parts is always going to be ultimately more reliable. Just ask yourself what actually fails on a PC? How many actual CPU or DRAM failures occur for every HD failure? And while I’d admit there are many more HDs in service than SSDs, how many SSD failures (with the exception of a recent post where the OP had ESD problems) have you seen reported on UHH vs the weekly HD failure? Personally, I don’t “have a dog in this fight”, but before retiring this year from 25 years in storage design and sales with the largest storage manufacturers in the world (EMC, NetApp, IBM, DDN, Oracle, etc), I have never met a design engineer, SE or data center manager (and I’ve known some of the best in the industry) other than those who worked for spinning disk manufacturers, that believed that SSD was less reliable than spinning disk. While I have never seen a single customer SSD failure, what I have seen is many, many HD failures and some number of double drive failures (which negated the redundancy feature of the RAID) and many (sometimes unsuccessfull) attempts at recovery from tape or other backup. That experience causes me to use SSD exclusively with local backup to multiple platforms on the network, MDisks of critical data in my safe and everything replicated to Amazon S3 cloud storage. But that’s just my opinion...

AirWalter Loc: Tipp City, Ohio

You need to have Corel Paintshop on the ssd, not the data(Photos). You can put the photos on a regular mechanical hard drive.