After having my backup drive fail last year I started to put together a new back up strategy for my computer, and most importantly my photos. With the new back up strategy in place (that’s a story for another post), I started to think about the hard drive in my computer.
The computer I use is a Mid 2011 Mac Mini. Being a mid 2011 model makes it almost 7 years old. I upgraded the RAM to 16GB as soon as I bought it, but apart from that it was still standard, with its 500GB hard disk drive.
With hard disks, it’s a matter of when not if they will fail. My computer had become slower over time which according to the internet (so it must be true) was due to successive changes to Mac OS/X.
Anyone who uses Lightroom will know how sloooooow it can be, so that along with the slow performance and age of my computer lead me to the decision to replace the hard disk with a Solid State Drive (SSD).
I went with a 1GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD, they have received good reviews, and I thought the larger capacity would come in handy. There is lots of information on the internet about how to upgrade your computer with an SSD so I won’t go in to the specifics, but I thought some people may be interested in the performance gains after the installation.
I used a very scientific method of timing using the stop watch on my phone, so the timings might not be exactly accurate, but they give you an idea.
| Hard Disk | SSD | |
| Start up | 3:28.60 | 0:58.14 |
| Lightroom | 2:17.50 | 0:25.17 |
| Photoshop | 2:13.98 | 0:5.88 |
I’m very happy with the results of the upgrade, and my computer is working better than new.
By upgrading rather than buying a new computer I was able to save some money and get the performance improvements I was after.
Your results may differ, but if you are looking to upgrade, an SSD is definitely worth looking in to.