Advice.... SSD drives and Photoshop

I am getting a new computer with Win10 OS (new to me) a SSD drive (new to me) and a traditional hard drive.

I won't be storing photos on the SSD as i don't want to fill it up, but is there an advantage in installing Photoshop for example on the SSD to speed up operations ?

Photoshop loads fairly quickly from any drive. The time delays are usually down to CPU work. So just go for the fastest CPU you can afford or pick one that's cheaper but almost as fast.

https://uk.hardware.info/reviews/8267/3/amd-ryzen-5-2600-review-the-most-interes...

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I have an SSD only setup. I like having software on one SSD and photos on a second one. When working with batches both a fastish CPU and a half decent SSD are well worth the money.

I need a new CPU as mine is old but my SSDs are still going strong. The older SSDs I have are 3x 480GB ARC100 drives (good at the time and still good now). I wouldn't buy an OCZ/Toshiba SSD anymore though. Their new products are terribly slow (barely better than hard disks).

The industry leaders for price/performance balance are Samsung EVO860 or Crucial MX500 drives which are comparable. I went for a 2TB MX500 a while back as my photos drive as it was 50% off at the time.

here's my suggestion for workflow..
since my productions these days are 80% video and 20% stills
I edit primarily off a 15" MBP so all my software reside on the internal ssd and programs load fast.

I have a 2 TB raid ssd usb-c each 1 tb WD ssd in usb3 gen2 enclosures (very fast raid) setup. (working and scratch disc drive)
I have 8tb raid (usb3) with two 4 tb drives. (projects drive)
and a 8 tb external backup drive. (backup)

Most projects, I will simply move the project from the projects drive to the ssd raid and edit on the ssd then copy back tot he projects drive and daily to the back up drive. then wipe the ssd drive clean.



my photos and videos librarys are also archived on a nas raid for longer term storage. again..

NEVER edit on the same drive you keep your OS and programs on.
ALWAYS back up your projects.
SSD drives are the best if you want to work fast or with larger files. the limit is how fast is the enclosure... you could get bottlenecked depending on the port or enclosure, but internal drives should be plenty fast on a pc.. BUT I plan to upgrade from usb 3 gen 2 drives to NVME ssd in Thunderbolt 3 Raid enclosures soon to prevent bottle necking my system's performance on feature film productions.

for most people, I'd suggest at least 250 gig ssd for the os and programs, a one or two tb ssd for work/scratch disk and at least a four tb hd for storage and a 8 tb hd for backups in your PC. most pcs should handle four drives internally with ease

Remember to make sure automatic de-fragmentation is turned off - SSDs don't like it, it shortens their lives, iirc.

Not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying I should not install photoshop to the ssd drive (where the OS is) ?

I intend to import and save any photo files to the traditional hard drive.

I've for a long time now, kept my images and all other files on separate hard drives to my programs, so all programs are on C: so if the OS crashes and I have to re-install which has happened all I need to worry about is reloading the programs as I don't store any data on C:

I'm presuming this is what's being suggested above.

What I do at the moment is to store all my images on a removable separate drive for the very reasons you mention. So they will be accessible even if the computer completely crashes. In addition I back up to a second removable drive.

I intend with the new computer to have my images saved to the computer hard drive but not the ssd one on which the OS is installed on. I will continue to back these up on a separate removable drive.

My question is really whether I will see a benefit from having photoshop installed on the ssd drive as oppose to the traditional hard drive. Answers so far on the other forum suggest the answer is yes

SSD was a good move I found. Though I still think keeping the Ram topped up is imperative...

I have gone for a the system I have gone for has 16gb ram , 240gb ssd , and 4gb graphics ram and 2tb hard drive. I am hoping for a big improvement. My main problem has been 5 or 6 blue screen moments a day recently so I had no choice to get a new rig

Definitely install Photoshop on your SSD, and make it use your SSD as the scratch disk. I think to maximise the benefit your photos ought to be on the SSD too, as a big part of the benefit will be in opening and saving your photos, particularly if you end up working with large file sizes (my files for work get up to 2GB!) Maybe have a system of working on your SSD for a bit then transfer over to the traditional HDD once you're done editing them. You should always archive and backup your and files onto a separate drive(s).

Sounds like a great system Peter.. I wont even attempt to try and comment on how to set up photoshop properly. Good luck with it. The K1 file size certainly starts to widen any flaws in older systems..

SSD for OS and Software/application installs.
Then other drives as required for storage.

I currently have one SSD for OS/apps, a large old school drive for data/photos/raw video files and then a second SSD for video adobe premiere project files and cache/memory swap files. I don't do anything fancy around still images, just store them on the 2 TB drive and edit as required. I may have Lightroom point at the 2nd SSD if there's a swapfile/cache file option but haven't looked at that setting in a very long time.

Lightroom definitely has some settings you need to tweak early on though, which have big performance benefits. One of these is importing at 1:1 previews I think it is, which takes a lot longer to initially import, but then scales nicely as you then edit the images.

Thanks for the other comments.


I will install photoshop, Lightroom and silkypix to the SSD. I will save the photos to the hard drive (not SSD), otherwise it will get filled very quickly. I have 170gb of photo files in my collection already, and the K1 files do take a lot of space. I am quite ruthless in deleting all pictures that don't come up to scratch.


I have no problems setting up photoshop as I am a recent adopter of it via the CC system. I used Elements before so quite easy to navigate.

my problem at the moment (computer arrived today) is to find the correct cable for connecting to the screen. The old VGA cable will work but wont give me screen resolution above 1920x1080. The video card specs say I need a "display port" cable to get the full 2560x 1400 res of my screen.


Why do they make it so complicated ?

In referencing my post about my system..
I have the os and photoshop program on the internal ssd drive in my laptop... but my library of images lives on an external drive. my version of photoshop (cs6 in my case I don't like renting software, prefer to own it) is set up to use a different ssd raid array as scratch disk. this means photoshop isn't using my laptops internal ssd for editing even though the program is on that drive NONE of the working files are there... does that make sense? storage, scratch and program all on different drives... this is a very fast, reliable and stable set up.