Hello, I just picked up a Dell XPS 8700 at Costco for $700. It was a pretty good deal since I plan to just use it for Lightroom/Photoshop/etc.. and don't care too much about gaming. It's a 3.4 i7-4700, 12GB RAM, Windows 8, & a 1TB 7200rpm drive. It's a great processor but the bottleneck is the hard drive.
I Ran the CrystalDiskMark benchmark on the 1TB drive and below are my results.
Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm 1TB (ST1000DM003)
Sequential Read : 134.1 MB/s
Sequential Write : 129.4 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 27.75 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 61.82 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.275 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.979 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.970 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.876 MB/s
First upgrade I wanted to do was upgrade the Hard Drive to an SSD and use the 1TB as a secondary drive. I shoot photos in RAW so each file is about 25MB. A typical photoshoot is like 250-500 photo's or around 10Gigs on the camera's memory card. I figure I'll save and process the RAW files on the SSD drive, then delete the RAW files and save the processed jpegs into the secondary drive which I backup regularly.
I went with the Samsung 840 Pro, 256GB and below are the results.
Sequential Read : 509.8 MB/s
Sequential Write : 492.3 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 443.5 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 451.3 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 29.56 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 77.50 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 383.3 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 342.0 MB/s
I noticed I had an extra msata slot on the MB and was wondering how it would affect my workflow if I threw in an SSD for Caching my secondary drive. I searched on Google and I couldn't find anyone who has done it and most say it's pointless to do so. So I picked up a Crucial M4 32GB SSD to test out.
With SRT enabled to accelerate the 1TB secondary drive, below are the results.
Sequential Read : 387.6 MB/s
Sequential Write : 57.38 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 318.1 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 56.44 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 20.73 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 47.64 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 247.9 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 57.49 MB/s
The 1TB secondary drive seems more responsive and I can barely tell the difference from working with files from my OS SSD drive or files on my cached 7200rpm drive. I'm not sure but I think it's because when I save the 5-10GB of files into the secondary drive, those same files are stored in the Cache. So when I process them, it's pretty quick. I can live with the slower write speed since my memory stick from my camera is a Sandisk Extreme which reads/writes at around 45Mb/s max anyways when I save the files over.
So am I missing anything here? SSD Caching a non OS drive seems to work quite well and I'm wondering why hardly anyone is doing it....
I Ran the CrystalDiskMark benchmark on the 1TB drive and below are my results.
Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm 1TB (ST1000DM003)
Sequential Read : 134.1 MB/s
Sequential Write : 129.4 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 27.75 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 61.82 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.275 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.979 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.970 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.876 MB/s
First upgrade I wanted to do was upgrade the Hard Drive to an SSD and use the 1TB as a secondary drive. I shoot photos in RAW so each file is about 25MB. A typical photoshoot is like 250-500 photo's or around 10Gigs on the camera's memory card. I figure I'll save and process the RAW files on the SSD drive, then delete the RAW files and save the processed jpegs into the secondary drive which I backup regularly.
I went with the Samsung 840 Pro, 256GB and below are the results.
Sequential Read : 509.8 MB/s
Sequential Write : 492.3 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 443.5 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 451.3 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 29.56 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 77.50 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 383.3 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 342.0 MB/s
I noticed I had an extra msata slot on the MB and was wondering how it would affect my workflow if I threw in an SSD for Caching my secondary drive. I searched on Google and I couldn't find anyone who has done it and most say it's pointless to do so. So I picked up a Crucial M4 32GB SSD to test out.
With SRT enabled to accelerate the 1TB secondary drive, below are the results.
Sequential Read : 387.6 MB/s
Sequential Write : 57.38 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 318.1 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 56.44 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 20.73 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 47.64 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 247.9 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 57.49 MB/s
The 1TB secondary drive seems more responsive and I can barely tell the difference from working with files from my OS SSD drive or files on my cached 7200rpm drive. I'm not sure but I think it's because when I save the 5-10GB of files into the secondary drive, those same files are stored in the Cache. So when I process them, it's pretty quick. I can live with the slower write speed since my memory stick from my camera is a Sandisk Extreme which reads/writes at around 45Mb/s max anyways when I save the files over.
So am I missing anything here? SSD Caching a non OS drive seems to work quite well and I'm wondering why hardly anyone is doing it....
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