If I had used that system since getting the K7, 55,000 shots later, I'd be a lot poorer and would have quite a collection of SD cards!

I have found my 3 USB external drives (500Gb / 1TB / 3Tb) to be very good value for backup and archive purposes. I have a collection of double layer DVDs as well, with a copy of my Photos and DNG originals, but I'm well overdue to run another set of these off ....time consuming that way though.

Joe it seems that wherever computers, bootups and file transferring is concerned, life is short!

,I remember a thread at PF where a guy had multiple instances of broken SD cards. Turned out his heavy handed approach with the K5 slot was putting sideways pressure on the card coming in and out of the slot.

I've always removed my cards for file transfers and not had any problem with 6 different cards over a 5 year period. Really the whole point of an SD card system is to allow for multiple card use, so removal of one while using another is integral to that approach.

The cable way is an alternative if you don't have a card reader, although generally it's slower I believe.

I doubt that an SSD would help much there either Richard!

I'm not disagreeing that an SSD is a superior product over a traditional disk drive .... I'm just trying to keep it in perspective, and focus on exactly the benefits it would bring to simonmac specifically ....and of course the cost vs risk / hassle equation.

I don't feel that the reliability argument is a strong point .... the way to mitigate properly against disk failure is not to buy an SSD .... its to have a strong backup regime, and have a couple of independent backups at that. I'd advise 2 USB hard drive backups plus double layer DVD or Blu-Ray copies of all your photo files. Plus of course at least one of these stored at a different place than your computer.

I don't get the impression that Simon is a 'power user' in terms of commercial amounts of images to process, therefore I don't think the file loading times for Lightroom and export aspects would be that significant. He's already said he's not worried about bootup times. A new Win10 system with an average spec nowadays only takes up to a minute to get going anyway. The CPU and RAM will have a major influence on that also.

I agree with Richard earlier in that if choosing an SSD its best to keep that small, and the cost down, and use it for the operating system and programme installations. An economical 1Tb disk drive surely is the best value choice for storing photos on a Laptop, for future editing and viewing.

Unless there's a real interest in DIY computer tinkering as a bit of fun, then surely the safest route is to look at a new machine with good value all-round specs. We don't need more than an i5 or A8 CPU for photos, and 16Mb RAM is loads for those tasks. If a new machine could be got that included and SSD at a reasonable price, then great. I am assuming that Simons laptop is around 4-5 years old already ... ?

Its got to be my first Pentax AF-540FGZ flash! Before I started to learn to use it, I realise that most of my people photography was limited and hindered. The flash changed all that, and the enthusiasm for it led to more flashes and off-camera flash photography as well .... a real revelation and transformation for my people photography!

Thanks Andrew, this will save many of us around here a lot of money and finally brings hope to the thousands of LBA sufferers Ricoh will no doubt be pleased with the big increase in new lens sales figures as well!

And worth it ....? That was the first question. From what I could see the CPU in the OPs system dates from around 2012.

But it's a question of 'worth what and for what ...'.

If the system lacks RAM capacity, then it would be best to get more RAM.

Is it worth the expense, risk and effort for what specifically the user needs? A hard drive would not normally be the key limiting component in a PC.

I'd think it would be better to start from scratch and get a new PC with components that match each other and complement each other in terms of performance.

I doubt its worth it. Even with a modern quad core CPU, I see SSD drive technology as high end and relatively expensive. It certainly is not "needed" at all for the purposes of photo editing and image archiving.... Not for photo digital asset management at all really.

I'd argue that DVDs and Blu-Rays make more sense as something to bring into a system

When I take photos hand held at 300mm and 1/250thsec, I'm extremely glad for SR ....I doubt I'd get much that's usable without it.