Will an SSD provide a noticeable benefit for Lightroom over a traditional harddrive?

Question

I am a huge Lightroom (3.6) user, and have a 2006 2.15 Ghz Core 2 Duo 24" iMac, running Lion. This Mac it limited to 3GB RAM max, but does have dedicated graphics. I have about 50GB left on my harddrive. I have over 21,000 images in my LR catalog. The catalog itself is local on my iMac hard drive, but images are on attached storage.My issue is that I have been having some noticeable performance issues with Lightroom. Dragging sliders can be jumpy at times, and sometimes switching modules has significant delays. I suspect that overhead in Lion is somewhat to blame, but it may also be all the files and apps on my Mac.So, question is: does anyone have tested evidence of an SSD vs harddrive on Lightroom performance? How dependent is Mac OSX on free hard drive space when it pages to virtual memory? How much free space is preferred? Or is my issue more related to LR itself, in that I have over 21,000 images in my LR catalog? Would I see noticeable improvement in the interface with a smaller catalog?Trying to decide if the pain of opening my iMac and installing an SSD is worth it, or if I should instead save the $$ and put it toward an updated iMac in the future.

Answer 1

You will see a noticeable performance shift by installing a SSD. I did this and it was like butter.

I have two concerns beyond having your HD work faster, your HD space and your RAM.

Both of those numbers for me mean a slower workflow. I operated with a laptop for years and anytime I saw the HD get much below 50GB I saw performance issues. They get more dramatic as you approach 20 GB. It depends on the HD space being borrowed as RAM. Which leads me to the bigger concern.

3 GB of RAM is absurdly low. I hope you mean 3GB of free RAM. If your machine is limited to 3GB of actual RAM I would not put any more money into it. Save for a refurb machine that can be upgraded. Then save up for maxed out RAM. You likely will start with a fusion of SSD drive, but third step would be upgrading the HD to a SSD.