External Sata SSD or USB3 for Photoediting: Lightroom catalog & pictures?

[professorman]

I have a desktop PC with a Crucial M500 240GB internal SSD that I use primarily for photo editing.

I would like to put my "working" Lightroom catalog and images on a SSD. I have a 120GB SSD that I plan on putting my images and Adobe lightroom catalog on, and my PC has external SATA and eSATA ports. I plan on using this hard drive externally, because it would give me the ability to just grab the hard drive with my catalog and files and move to my laptop, or to my work desktop and continue editing.

Would there be major speed advantages using the SSD drive, or could I simply use a USB3 64GB flash drive that I have? Is that USB3 drive fast enough whereby its a overkill to do this on the SSD?

My PC does not currently have USB3 ports, however, I have a USB3 add-on expansion card that I have been meaning to install for some time now.

Should I go with SSD or USB3 flash drive for my needs?

 

[evilspoons]

An SSD in a USB 3 enclosure will be much faster than a USB 3 flash drive. Most flash drives are the cheapest, slowest NAND flash available. They're also considerably less reliable and I don't think they support any sort of TRIM-like functionality, making them get slower as they age (correct me if I'm wrong here, people).

An SSD on an eSATA port will be even faster than the same SSD on a USB 3 enclosure, but will be less "portable" slightly due to the lack of availability of eSATA ports vs USB ports.

Personally, I have Lightroom set up to put my RAW files on a hard drive and my catalog and thumbnails on my SSD. It's much faster than just a HDD alone, and keeps me from having to buy 2 TB of SSDs.

Lightroom 6 is rumoured to have synchronization features between multiple PCs, negating the need to carry your library around with you. This should have been a feature in Lightroom 2, as far as I'm concerned, but at least it's (probably) coming.