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Archive 2016 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB

  
 
butchM
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


GOVA wrote:
I believe LR does LOTS and even more of IO with disk(s).



Quite true. Especially in the Library module. While overall processor speed and copious quantities of RAM are nice to throw at most apps, except for initial rendering and exporting, Lr can show marked improvement if you can speed up throughput.

No matter how many cores are in use or how powerful the processor is, if there is a bottleneck or slowdown of data flow ... for both read and write actions ... users can experience less than desirable performance. Though, we should keep in mind as 15bit points out, a system may be limited by the buss speed that data has to flow through. You can have the fastest SSD known to mankind, but if the pathway is slower, that's your data throughput speed.



Dec 29, 2016 at 03:08 PM
15Bit
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


GOVA wrote:
I believe LR does LOTS and even more of IO with disk(s).


When i did testing with LR5 on this i found that LR actually does surprisingly little disk i/o.

- In Library mode the preview generation reads the RAW file and writes to the ACR cache and previews directory. Further reads (as you go through the directory sorting) mostly then come from the previews and not the RAW file.
- In Develop mode it reads the RAW, writes a little to the ACR cache, but actually does very little i/o during the course of editing. Pretty much everything is done in RAM, which makes sense when you consider that LR real-time generates the image as a function of the slider settings, and those can be saved in a 6Kb text file. So once the image data is loaded to RAM the only disk i/o required is saving the settings as you move the slider.



Dec 29, 2016 at 03:39 PM
Paul Mo
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


See, and that's where we are at with LR - so many conflicting points of view.

I have two Samsung SSD's - one for OS and one as .lrcat/backup disk - and four Caviar Blacks in RAID 0 as storage (Yes, they're backed up).

Meanwhile the dedicated GPU sits there doing nothing.



Dec 29, 2016 at 07:37 PM
butchM
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


15Bit wrote:
- In Develop mode it reads the RAW, writes a little to the ACR cache, but actually does very little i/o during the course of editing. Pretty much everything is done in RAM, which makes sense when you consider that LR real-time generates the image as a function of the slider settings, and those can be saved in a 6Kb text file. So once the image data is loaded to RAM the only disk i/o required is saving the settings as you move the slider.


It really depends upon how you work in Lr. Yes, some data is written to RAM initially, but eventually, that data needs to be recorded to your storage medium of choice. Where problems can occur in large volume workflow is syncing both metadata and Develop adjustments to groups of images using syncing. RAM is only a temporary FIFO holding space especially in more lengthy work sessions. Then, f you have "Automatically write changes into XMP" turned on in Catalog Settings, disc traffic never really stops until you stop making changes.



Dec 29, 2016 at 08:27 PM
butchM
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


Paul Mo wrote:
See, and that's where we are at with LR - so many conflicting points of view.

I have two Samsung SSD's - one for OS and one as .lrcat/backup disk - and four Caviar Blacks in RAID 0 as storage (Yes, they're backed up).

Meanwhile the dedicated GPU sits there doing nothing.


Agreed, the underpinnings of Lightroom data handling by the system is not optimized as well as it could be. They have attempted to tap into GPU assisted rendering ... but success has been elusive.

Supposedly, the most recent update to Lr is to contain many 'under the hood' performance improvements, but if they are really there, they must be marginal at best ... at least in my experience ...



Dec 29, 2016 at 08:32 PM
Alan321
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


A few random thoughts...

If you have a large image library and select a group of images for processing, based on some metadata other than when the images were stored, the selection may be spread all over the storage drive and there may well be a lot of head thrashing on a HDD that makes it far slower than an SSD. You are less likely to see this effect on a small test library where most reads are cached by the drive and/or the OS.

An operating system typically does a lot of caching independently of what Lr might do. Windows memory usage reporting doesn't show how much RAM is being used for that caching as clearly as it might. You may be using more RAM than you think when using Lr or anything else. Even so, Lr is much less greedy than Ps.

Nowadays even Windows compresses some stuff in RAM as OS X has been doing for some time.

Until a few years ago OS X used to cache all drives - even RAM drives. It might have been the smartest OS but it could still be pretty dumb. I don't know if that has changed but it was wasteful in terms of the amount of RAM used and its potential performance gains.

IMO the greatest single thing that Adobe could do to speed things up in Lr would be to process multiple files simultaneously, especially on SSD systems. My system was taking about 4 seconds per image to build all previews (1:1 and various smaller sizes for a 4k screen) and yet the CPU and SSD were well and truly underutilised. I think it was using the equivalent of only one processor core and any use of other cores was probably down to intel spreading its cpu load rather than clever programming by Adobe. How hard can it be to have several processes working independently on several files at the same time and queuing up the necessary database updates as they finish ? The worst that can happen is that the HDD gets overworked, but you'd soon hear that and set a lesser number of simultaneous processes.

Lots of programs make poor use of multiple CPU cores, but at least Canon DPP could be set to import three or four different groups of images to more fully utilise the performance capability of the computer. You cannot do that with Lr.

Somewhere along the way Lr has to update the previews before, during or after making any edits in the Develop or Library modules. There has to be some associated disk activity and the faster you move from image to image the more likely it is to slow you down. If, however, you spend minutes tweaking an image then losing a few seconds here and there is of little consequence.

If you ever use a RAM disk for anything then you should have a suitable battery backup system to prevent most power glitches that could cost you all of the data on the RAM disk. Laptops have that inherently but most people don't think of getting a UPS for their desktop/tower computers.

Another useful speed-up that Adobe could put into Lr is to simply display the values of the slider/button controls in the Library module. Then I would not have to use the Develop module so much and then Lr could use its previews to greater effect instead of loading data from the ACR cache or the original image files.



Dec 30, 2016 at 12:15 PM
Alan321
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


Paul Mo wrote:
Meanwhile the dedicated GPU sits there doing nothing.


but it does it so much faster



Dec 30, 2016 at 12:17 PM
sjms
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


some people are still using 386 tricks?


Dec 30, 2016 at 03:12 PM
skid00skid00
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Ram Disk for Lightroom: Buffalo 8GB


I tested a 16GB ram disk on my 32Gb overclocked home-built. The OS is on a Samsung 840 Pro, and the swap/cache files on a Samsung 850 Pro. I saw zero noticable decrease in LR develop/import/build preview speeds. I tested importing the RAW files to the ram disk, along with the LR catalog files and cache files.

I did see small but significant speed increases by putting the catalog files on SSD versus SSHD (Seagate with 8 GB flash fronting a 2 TB HD).

The catalog files get hit ALL the time in Lightroom.

I now import to the SSHD, and LR pulls the raws out of the 8 GB flash, without hitting the HD portion. I haven't shot enough images in one outing to fill the flash, yet.



Dec 30, 2016 at 09:48 PM
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