Portable SSD Drives and running Lightroom- Would this speed up my laptop?

rob-nikon · 17 Dec 2015

I'm currently thinking of changing my old laptop (Samsung 13 inch, 4GB RAM, AMD E-450 processor, 500GB hard drive) to a MacBook air or pro but after advice in a thread I've put up I've been told I would get a better spec used model once the new models are released in April 2016. This has got me thinking about a portable SSD drive as the MacBook Air hard drive aren't very big. Could I pick up a portable SSD in the mean time and run Lightroom/RAW storage using it on my current laptop. Would it make a difference to speed? I can see a portable SSD drive being of use later on and I have some amazon vouchers but have no idea what to use them for. I was thinking the sandisk 240gb portable ssd drive linked below. Is anyone doing this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ext...1450386739&sr=8-1&keywords=portable+ssd+drive

Keith W · 17 Dec 2015

You would still be constrained by the current speed of your laptop.

Now if you were to swap out your current hard drive with an SSD that's a different matter, if you could also upgrade your RAM at the same time even better

rob-nikon · 17 Dec 2015

Keith W said:
You would still be constrained by the current speed of your laptop.

Now if you were to swap out your current hard drive with an SSD that's a different matter, if you could also upgrade your RAM at the same time even better

My current laptop isn't really worth doing that with and seems like the portable SSD won't help much with my current laptop. The size of the portable SSD drives does look good as a portable backup though so that's an idea for the vouchers as I'm really struggling with ideas to use them on something useful. Its that or more fast sd cards at present.

afasoas · 17 Dec 2015

Is a desktop an option to replace your laptop? Vouchers could pay for some of the components.

rob-nikon · 17 Dec 2015

afasoas said:
Is a desktop an option to replace your laptop? Vouchers could pay for some of the components.

I have an iMac that I currently edit on. I was hoping to use my laptop whilst away from home to view, edit and store images.

Keith W · 17 Dec 2015

rob-nikon said:
I was hoping to use my laptop whilst away from home to view, edit and store images.

There is a nice Lenovo laptop in the classifieds for sale

dejongj · 18 Dec 2015

Just checking; your old laptop does has usb3 on it right? If not, I would just forget about it.

neil_g · 18 Dec 2015

unless your laptop has usb3 or eSata i'd forget it as you'd not see the benefit of the SSD

Chappers · 19 Dec 2015

The Mac Book Air is all SSD, and is not upgradable so if you need additional storage you'd need external drives.If you go down the Mac route don't initially opt for an SSD option for an external storage route. USB 3 is much much faster than USB 2 and may do all you want

dejongj · 19 Dec 2015

On a Mac, just go thunderbolt with SSDs...Nice

rob-nikon · 19 Dec 2015

dejongj said:
Just checking; your old laptop does has usb3 on it right? If not, I would just forget about it.

neil_g said:
unless your laptop has usb3 or eSata i'd forget it as you'd not see the benefit of the SSD

I'm going to have to check as I'm not sure. I would guess it's usb2 only.

rob-nikon · 19 Dec 2015

Chappers said:
The Mac Book Air is all SSD, and is not upgradable so if you need additional storage you'd need external drives.If you go down the Mac route don't initially opt for an SSD option for an external storage route. USB 3 is much much faster than USB 2 and may do all you want

Thanks for the advice. I think I'm going to wait on this idea until I know what I'm going to do. Part of the ssd idea is it should be a bit more robust than a portable hard drive.

dejongj · 19 Dec 2015

rob-nikon said:
I'm going to have to check as I'm not sure. I would guess it's usb2 only.

That would be doing my head in to wait for it....Fine for some archiving and storing, but not to work from...