How do I optimize my mac's performance for gigs?

[deevey]

Not necessary to jump to a (generally very expensive) SSD, consider a hybrid drive, it will give you a great speed, and better storage capacity for your tunes, you will notice a big difference. Upgrade RAM too if you can

It will improve application / os boot times, but little else.

A better solution would be to install a smallish SSD in the CD drive bay, use that as the OS drive (128gb would do).

Cost: $100 or thereabouts.

The method that worked flawlessly for me was to:

1. Create a partition my original 1TB OSX disk
2. Copy the "Big folders" to a folder/set of folders on the partition. Mainly Downloads/Documents/Music/Video/Audio Libraries/Pictures
3. Delete the old big folders (results in only about 15gb of space used on the disk)
4. Symlink to the new folders using the Symlinker Application
5. Clone the new cut down OS drive to the SSD
6. Boot and verify everything is working, if not, just redo the symlinks for those folders.
7. Format old OS disk and you are ready to rock n' roll.

Be sure and use the SSD as the cache drive for Ableton or other apps that use a disk cache

Needless to say a Ram upgrade will help, but only so much upgrading a system like that will do when you are running two pretty CPU heavy apps simultaneously.

I run a pc but my setup could work on a mac as well...

I have never, ever found there is any speed boost on OSX when a separate application specific partition is used.

[eddynator97]

Not necessary to jump to a (generally very expensive) SSD, consider a hybrid drive, it will give you a great speed, and better storage capacity for your tunes, you will notice a big difference. Upgrade RAM too if you can

I already have a SSHD(: really good investment