Best-performing external drive for referenced Aperture Library?

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Level 6

12,592 points

Best-performing external drive for referenced Aperture Library?

Hi.

I know I've asked this in the past, but I didn't buy a drive yet, and the Community Search is balky. I'm back to using a very large Library that is on an external USB-3 drive (Western Digital MyPassport, which has performed flawlessly). I would like faster Aperture performance. I posted the following on the MacBook Pro Apple Community forum, but got only one, not useful, answer. This time I _am_ ready to make a purchase.

I regular use a 760 GB Aperture Library. Currently it is on a USB-3 external drive. I would like to get (much) better performance, which I think will happen when I put the Library on a much faster drive. Is this a valid assumption? What is the fastest external drive available?

My rMBP is "early 2013". It has 2 Thunderbolt and 2 USB-3 ports.

I am running 10.9.5. All software is up-to-date.

The machine is (afaik) maxed out with 16 GB of RAM and a 500 GB SSD.

I leave at least 100 GB free on the system drive.

The 760 GB Library is entirely referenced. It's close to 8,000,000 files.

Options I've looked at (in my ignorance of hardware):

- Putting a fast single 1 TB internal SSD (e.g.: Samsung 850) in a external enclosure, either TBolt or USB-3

- Putting two fast 500 GB internal SSDs in a dual external enclosure, either TBolt or USB-3

- Purchasing from OWC a pre-built dual-500GB SSD external drive

- Purchasing a single expensive 1 TB external SSD (e.g.: LaCie LBD TBolt 2 — is that overkill? do I have TBolt 2 ports {if it matters}?)

- Purchasing a single less expensive 1 TB external SSD (e.g.: LaCie LBD TBolt).

Thanks!

OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), NEC, Munki

Posted on Oct 12, 2014 2:35 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 12, 2014 2:40 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

You can put it on the fastest drive in the world, but nothing runs faster than the port to which it's connected and the bridge card using the enclosure. If best speed is needed then you want Thunderbolt 2.0 on the enclosure and Thunderbolt 2.0 supported on the computer. If you want to spend the money on an expensive 1 TB SSD, then put that in the enclosure.

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Answer 2

Oct 12, 2014 3:15 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

Not really sure how disk bound Aperture is. How much memory you have in the system, is it maxed out? I think once you've gone to USB 3 with both the drive and the connection you'll get more bang for the buck with memory. (edit: just saw you wrote the memory is maxed out, plus it looks like you cant update aftermarket anyway 😟)

Think of ot Aperture is a lot like a text editor, the majority of the time is not spent doing disk accesses it's spent doing adjustments and there is littlle if any disk access once the master has been read in.

What type of performance problems are you having with your current setup (and what is your current setup)?

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Answer 3

Kirby Krieger Author

Level 6

12,592 points

Oct 14, 2014 6:53 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

Hi Frank — thanks for chiming in.

Do you know any way to sniff out the bottlenecks in Aperture while it runs?

I'm not sure disk performance limits Aperture's performance. It would be good to be able to test.

I have 16 GB RAM in my "late-'13" rMBP. That's all it can take. (Oh — just saw you edit .)

Rarely (just random checks with Activity Monitor) — even with huge Libraries and nothing else loaded — does Aperture take up more than 9 GB of RAM. I don't know if that is all it can use, or if there is some allocator that limits it to, for example, a percentage of the system RAM.

The performance problems I have with this very large Library are not limited to adjustments. _Everything_ takes a little longer. More than half the work I do in the Library is administrative (cataloging, tagging, searching). I frequently do batch metadata operation on many (10-100) Images at once. I'm back to 1989: set something up, execute it, and go make a phone calls. The delays aren't _that_ long — they are just regular.

Oddly, one of the adjustments that _always_ kicks up Steve's pinwheel is Straighten.

The _biggest_ performance bottle-neck I know comes from using dual external monitors (therefore a three-display set-up). Can I assume this is the GPU? It may be that I'm simply writing to too many pixels (24" and 27" NEC external monitors). (As an aside, there are already warnings on-line to not expect any current machines to be able to run 4K monitors speedily.) But note that even with no external monitors, I'm still getting some kind of hampered performance when using this Library.

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Answer 4

Kirby Krieger Author

Level 6

12,592 points

Dec 1, 2014 4:18 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

A few weeks ago I purchased a 1TB external SSD to hold one of the very large Libraries I maintain (the Library is c. 800 GB; all Originals are referenced to other drives). It works great. I _highly_ recommend doing this if performance is valuable and you find yourself waiting for Aperture to finish foreground tasks.

The external SSD is 4x faster than the external USB-3 HDD that it supplanted. I was, frankly, astounded — and remain giddy to be able to _use_ Libraries this large.

Open database:

SSD — 19 s

HDD — 80 s

Simple global query:

SSD — 2½ s

HDD — 12 s

Complex global query:

SSD — 30 s

HDD — 194 s

Each of those was measured several times, after rebooting, etc. etc. The results did not vary. I saw no reason to do any further tests.

The external SSD is about ¼ the volume and 1/40th the weight of the external HDD (er — both are guesses).

The SSD I purchased is made my Transcend. Note that this is a rapidly changing market. I paid 530 USD (Amazon). The price has already fallen 23 USD.

It would be good to know how an internal HDD compares vs. an external SSD. I don't have the equipment to make the comparison.

I use powered USB-3 hubs at the two places I work. My 7-port HUB introduces no slow-down I could measure. My 4-port hub, otoh, shows no difference between the HDD and the SSD. Both are rated USB 3.0 "up to 5 Gbps". Caveat emptor. The 7-port USB-3 hub is made by Anker.

I can report that the performance bottleneck I encounter now comes from using one or more external monitors. I assume a more robust GPU would help. Again, I have no means to test this. I will likely spec my next computer with bigger/faster/more-expensive GPU than comes as the standard configuration.

TL;DR: Aperture is disk-intensive, as well as CPU and GPU intensive. A large Library performs much faster on an SSD than when on an HDD.

HTH someone.

—Kirby.

MBP 15", 16 GB RAM, 500 GB internal SSD, Yosemite.

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