# Replace internal HD or new external drive



## dgrier (May 17, 2015)

Hi there,

I hope that this is the correct discussion.

I have an 'old' early 2009 24" iMac with a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Several years ago I upgraded the RAM to 8GB which produced some improvement in speed using Lightroom. The hard drive is now more full (128GB free on a 640GB drive). I've recently upgraded to LR (CC) which appears slower than was LR5 and I am experiencing multiple crashes. I suspect it is showing its age and the HD is too full for efficient use.

Would replacing my HD with a large internal SSD be the way forward, or would it be easier / better to put my photos onto a new external HD (freeing up space) and let LR reference them from there - keeping the LR program, catalogue and previous etc. on the iMac. Whilst I would love to buy a new iMac with more memory and HD space I suspect this is not a justifiable expense without considering other options.

Everything is backed up on Time Machine and two external HD using CCCloner.

Any advice gratefully received.

Many thanks

David


----------



## clee01l (May 17, 2015)

If you have an EHD, you can reference a folder from it in the LR folder  panel and use the Folder panel to drag and drop older images from the primary HDD to the EHD.   this will relieve the freespace crunch on the primary HDD,  but I think you will need more than 8GB of RAM to be happy.  Also if you don't have a quad core, you might want to upgrade that too.


----------



## dgrier (May 18, 2015)

clee01l said:


> If you have an EHD, you can reference a folder from it in the LR folder  panel and use the Folder panel to drag and drop older images from the primary HDD to the EHD.   this will relieve the freespace crunch on the primary HDD,  but I think you will need more than 8GB of RAM to be happy.  Also if you don't have a quad core, you might want to upgrade that too.



Thanks for the reply. I'll try an external drive and see. I think the amount of RAM cannot be increased further & a faster / more cores processor is also not possible.

if this doesn't work it might be the reason I need to look at a new Mac!

David


----------



## mcasan (May 31, 2015)

You could replace the current HD with a SSD and jackup the memory to 16GB (if that machine supports it); but, I personally think if is indeed time to plan to move on to a new iMac.   Ideally one with Retina screen, quad core CPU, at least 16GB of memory, and a real GOU (not the Intel chipset).    You only need a 500GB SSD for boot, OS, apps and the basic data like the LR catalog.   Put the folders of images on an external disk along with your libraries of moves, documents, music...etc.

Apple's WWDC will be on the 8th.  So watch the news from it to see what Apple says about the next generation of CPUs,  the Skylake series from Intel.   With that CPU series and related chipset we should see Thunderbolt 4,  DDR-4 bus between CPU and memory, and other improvements.   If so, there could be some real deals on the remaining 2015 iMacs later this year.


----------

