Hey Guys,

I'm new to this forum and did a search for what I was looking for with no luck.

I'm currently doing all my post prod on my laptop, HP Pavillion 15. It was just ok ( tho slow) b4 I started using LRTimelapse with Lightroom. (Btw I love LRTimelapse).

The machine currently has:
2.1 ghz AMD Quad processor
16 GB Ram
1TB 5400rpm SATA Hard drive
AMD Radeon R7 2gB M260 graphics card &
Seagate 1TB external Hard Drive

It is really really slow with LRT. For eg today takes approx 4-5 hours exporting 1100 pics from Lightroom to LRT pre render.

I've maxed out the ram to 16 gig and cannot upgrade cpu or gpu as intergrated into motherboard.

I want to build a dedicated editing computer but can't until next year $$$.

I was thinking of upgrading my internal hard drive to an SSD to run OS and replace my optical drive with old hard drive internally as a scratch/ storage disk.. Also add an external SSD for storage and catalogue and output/ renders etc.

Does any knowledgable person out there know if this will make a substantial difference in performance?

I would welcome your thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks and great forum.

Ken
Australia

I'd replace the HD with an SSD. It will substantially speed up everything. Especially timelapse.
So get yourself a 512GB SSD and put the OS on it. Put the time lapses to process on the SSD too. Once they are finished, you can move them to the HDD.

I replaced a hard drive in my 15 inch MacBook Pro (2012) with a SSD and the performance was phenomenal. Went from a boot up of 1.5 minutes down to 13 seconds. Lightroom, Photoshop etc now start instantly.

I'm actually tempted to buy a second hand 13inch Macbook pro for about $500 which cost about $1700 brand new where I live (They have the same specs as the 2012 model) and change the drive and use it for DSLRdashboard. As my Nexus 7 has issues due to an Android update.

SSD is the way to go!

I'd rather root the nexus 7 and install Cyanogenmod on it.