Imaging Laptop

[Sunshine]

I am ready to purchase my laptop, it will be an Intel core i7 with all the trimmings, my questions is regarding drive space and typical imaging file size output. Many new computers have solid state hard drives, they are much faster but space is sacrificed as even the upper end laptops have 256gb SS drives.

Somehow I feel that a 256gb drive will be low for an imaging laptop, I know I can add an external drive but I want to avoid carrying anything else. Maybe I should opt out of solid state and instead get one with a 1Tb standard drive?.

Or, am I wrong, and 256gb SS drive will do the trick? I have no idea what a decent range is for typical nights imaging or solar imaging sessions.

[kendg]

I went for the SSD and use SD cards to put the data files on to for archiving.

SSD to SD Card to hard drive for processing.

I don't trust spinning disks of rust at -30.

[Sunshine]

6 minutes ago, kendg said:

I don't trust spinning disks of rust at -30.

Good to know thanks, you’re out imaging in -30?? Oh you are hard core my friend lol.

[Ibbo!]

Have you considered the hybrid drives ?

 

 

I use couple of panasonic toughbooks, the  I5 is quite a quick little beasty but has a limited SSD drive of 250 and can easily collect 50 to 100 Gig of solar data on a nice sunny day, which I then throw over to the NAS and process on the desktop PC.

Problem is it is not USB3 so i struggle with the Chameleon camera (4fps is no good to man nor beast) but is not too bad a thing as that cam can really soak up disc space.

I did get the warning tonight ogf low disc space as I had forgot to remove todays and yesterdays solar data from the Panasonic while I was collecting Jove data tonight.

 

It can be done with a small SSD but you have to be careful to tidy up.

 

 

CCD DSO is not a great problem as it does not eat up the space and does not require a fast lappy the older "real" tougbook runs scope filterwheel ccd etcall night long in freezing conditions.

 

 

Not sure if that helps at all.

[MarsG76]

CPU power is not crucial when you're going to be using your Laptop as a Imaging/Scope control computer but storage is another matter. For my observatory I got a 8 year old Core2Duo 2Ghz Sony VAIO laptop from eBay for $29 but put in a 1TB SSD and it more than does the job.

After using the SSD drive for a while it is already 50% full, so 250Gb might be a bit too small in the long run.

SSD vs Mechnaical drives... speed is only one factor which is not as crucial as reliability... remember that if your laptop is exposed to a low temperature moist environment, than mechanical parts can be much more effected than solid state peripherals.

 

[Alien 13]

You can get laptops with both SSD and HD fitted, I have 250 GB and 1 TB respectively and find its plenty. I would say that lots of RAM (16GB) and plenty of USB ports is also worth looking out for.

Alan

[TSRobot]

It's usually quite easy to fit a second ssd/hdd into many laptops now to increase your storage. This doesn't void your warranty.

[Buzzard75]

I'm currently using a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for everything, but I think I'm going to need an upgrade. Imaging it does fine. The problem comes from stacking and processing. It gets EXTREMELY warm and is some what slow. However, to the OP's inquiry, it has a 256GB SSD in it. When I get home or the next day, I transfer everything to a 1TB external SSD. The only thing I keep on the PC itself are the images I'm currently working with. So 256GB should be more than sufficient for several nights worth of imaging, but I would recommend having an external backup, especially if you use your laptop for anything else like I do.