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Archive 2017 · Drive filling up ? LR question

  
 
lifthard2001
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Drive filling up ? LR question


I need to upgrade my drive to a larger one . My question is how would I go about doing so in a manor that LR would recognize the larger drive. I wanted to move the existing pics on drive X to the new larger drive. Can I just transfer the pics and then plug the new drive into the bay where the old one was so the letter location would remain the same. I run 3 drives 1st with OS 2nd as scratch and 3rd for just pics. I hope I make sense with my question. Thank you for the help. Also would I gain anything by going with SSD rather than a spinner. I have SSD for the other two drives


Aug 02, 2017 at 09:56 AM
CanadaMark
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Drive filling up ? LR question


You can change the drive letter to whatever you want after the install.

This guide may help:
http://www.photographybay.com/2014/01/01/how-to-transfer-a-lightroom-catalog-and-photo-library-to-a-new-computer/

Or if you install the new drive, then mirror it, then plug it in where the old one was - there should be no change to your operations.

As for the drive, I don't know how much space you need, but a 1.05TB SSD is only $279 or so these days which is extremely cheap. That is what I do for my photo working drive, and then I have enough RAM so that a scratch drive is not necessary.






Aug 02, 2017 at 10:49 AM
lifthard2001
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Drive filling up ? LR question


Thank you for the link. I have my catalogs on the OS drive so I will not have to transfer that only the pics. I have a spare bay in my case. Can I just install the new drive in that bay and move the pics from one bay to the next and then just point LR to that drive?
Thank you



Aug 02, 2017 at 10:53 AM
CanadaMark
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Drive filling up ? LR question


Based on that guide, it looks to be that simple. I have not done this exact thing myself though.


Aug 02, 2017 at 11:00 AM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Drive filling up ? LR question


lifthard2001 wrote:
Thank you for the link. I have my catalogs on the OS drive so I will not have to transfer that only the pics. I have a spare bay in my case. Can I just install the new drive in that bay and move the pics from one bay to the next and then just point LR to that drive?
Thank you



when you plug the new drive into the bay will it become a standalone drive letter ? (rather being part of a raid )

if so then yes and no .

Yes you can transfer the images and then point LR at the folder at the top of your tree and LR should then find all of its lost folders . But thats open to a few issues of stuff getting lost . I've done that before without issue but still think heeding the warning that EVERYTHING SHOULD BE DONE INSIDE LR is the best course .

so once the drive is installed you should be able to drag folders onto the new drive inside LR . If LR doesn't list the new drive then just stick a single image file (any old jpeg will do) and import it into LR . after that LR knows that drive exists and you can move your folders with ease .

Be warned if you have allot of images its going to take quite a while as LR isn't nearly as fast at this stuff as explorer in windows or finder on mac . its one of those set running and leave jobs



Aug 02, 2017 at 12:00 PM
lifthard2001
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Drive filling up ? LR question


Thanks Ian,yes it will be a standalone drive letter. I would rather for it to take as long as it wants than to loose any images although I do back up.Sounds pretty easy especially since I have all my images in one parent folder.


Aug 02, 2017 at 12:11 PM
OntheRez
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Drive filling up ? LR question


Not knowing your current drive size and the size of your photo database, hampers the ability to make precise suggestions. I gather you are using Windows? I don't think you have ThunderBolt capacity. I'm running my entire database on a pair of mirrored 500GB SSDs. Blazing fast.

Install the new drive in your open bay, then bulk copy from existing to new drive. As lifthard notes you can assign any not in use drive letter when the copy complete. Remove old drive and rename new to old. The instructions in the link look good. You will of course need to adapt to Windows commands and nomenclature.

Keeping your image files on an SSD will dramatically speed up Lr's read/write and any file related activity. The price of the SSD has plummeted. A rule of thumb is to always buy a drive bigger than you currently need. One of the ancient maxims of computer lore is "Data always expands to fill available space."

I see Amazon has a 2TB for $700. Ouch. However, 1TB drives are incredibly cheap at <$300.

It is a bit scary to move your files, sort of like a tightrope without a net. Make sure you hang on to the old drive until you have absolutely verified that all your images are on the new drive.



Aug 02, 2017 at 12:14 PM
skid00skid00
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Drive filling up ? LR question


FYI, I replaced a 2TB SSHD (a spinning platter fronted by 8 GB flash RAM) with a 1 TB SSD (Samsung).

Absolutely ZERO speedup in any Lightroom function. Sigh.



Aug 02, 2017 at 03:28 PM
CanadaMark
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Drive filling up ? LR question


skid00skid00 wrote:
FYI, I replaced a 2TB SSHD (a spinning platter fronted by 8 GB flash RAM) with a 1 TB SSD (Samsung).

Absolutely ZERO speedup in any Lightroom function. Sigh.


Interesting. I moved from HDD to SSD for my storage drive and in Adobe Camera RAW (not Lightroom, I know) but there was a quite a noticeable speedup when loading dozens of files into ACR as well as their image previews. Further to that, culling images with FS Image Viewer is 2-4X faster depending what action I am doing, so I will see some big time savings there.



Aug 02, 2017 at 05:06 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Drive filling up ? LR question


CanadaMark wrote:
Interesting. I moved from HDD to SSD for my storage drive and in Adobe Camera RAW (not Lightroom, I know) but there was a quite a noticeable speedup when loading dozens of files into ACR as well as their image previews. Further to that, culling images with FS Image Viewer is 2-4X faster depending what action I am doing, so I will see some big time savings there.





I too don't see any speed difference in LR depending on where the image files are . I've tried my internal fusion drive (but also an internal SSD when i had a win machine) on my iMac , various USB3 drives (spinning and SSD) and even slower USB2 drives that I still have around the place .

My LRcat and its preview files live on my fusion drive (which when I use LR regularly probably keeps all of that in SSD)
My image files are currently on a 3tb external USB 3
I don't use XMP files so read and writes are reduced .

don't forget that even in Develop mode LR is calling on a relatively small amount of data even from a large image file so its not going to lag a huge amount from even very slow drives (by now days standards) .
and if you do a lot of the image navigation etc in Library LR will be dealing from its preview files which it should have already built .

I don't use ACR in photoshop much but maybe the speed difference is because its taking all those dozens of files you say your loading into ACR in one go and putting them in its ACR cache



Aug 03, 2017 at 02:32 AM
skid00skid00
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Drive filling up ? LR question


CanadaMark wrote:
Interesting. I moved from HDD to SSD for m.


Yes. HDD's are slower than SSHD's. That's kinda the point...



Aug 03, 2017 at 11:43 PM
CanadaMark
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Drive filling up ? LR question


skid00skid00 wrote:
Yes. HDD's are slower than SSHD's. That's kinda the point...


What I meant was it was interesting you saw zero improvement - it made a difference for me but I use ACR not LR, however I thought they were mostly the same engine. Perhaps there is more to it than that.



Aug 08, 2017 at 09:49 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Drive filling up ? LR question


Ian's advice about using Lr to move stuff around is normally correct. However, if you intend to move everything then use this approach, read it all before following it:

1. In Lr, make sure that its folder hierarchy has a top-level folder - maybe even the root directory of the drive - under which all images are stored. If necessary, tell it to show parent folder until it encompasses the entire image hierarchy. The only downside to this is that it makes the folder list wider, and you can undo it later on if you want to.

2. Get out of Lr and do not use it during the transfer

3. Copy your catalog to somewhere that you can give it a different name, just in case you mess something up.

4. Copy all of the image files to the new drive without changing their relative folder hierarchy. i.e. don't rearrange anything. You must copy the top-most common folder as found in step 1, but you do not need to go higher than that (although it doesn't matter if you do).

5. Disable the old drive in Disk Management, or just remove it, so that the drive letter that Lr expects to find will not be available. The new drive should not have the same drive letter as the original at this stage, but we can fix that later on.

6. Run Lr and open the usual catalog. It will flag up missing files and folders.

7. Right click on the top folder in the Lr hierarchy list, find the missing folder by telling Lr to use the same folder name in the new drive. Lr will find it and all of the images and folders beneath it. This is easy and quick. All done.

If you want to revert to the old drive letter then get out of Lr, change the drive letter, and do steps 6 and 7 again. However, if you do that then the old backup drive and new drive will share the same drive letter and Windows may not like that if you ever have running at once.

What makes this process easy and fast is having the one common folder name above all of your image-bearing folders. After you have made the change to the new drive you can hide this common folder if that suits your needs, but it is easier to leave it as is just in case you need to swap drives again.

Although this is probably not relevant for your particular needs this time, Lr can be made to see multiple drives at once from a single catalog, but then you would need to use Ian's method of shifting folders around with Lr - and that method is much slower.



Aug 14, 2017 at 01:22 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Drive filling up ? LR question


skid00skid00 wrote:
FYI, I replaced a 2TB SSHD (a spinning platter fronted by 8 GB flash RAM) with a 1 TB SSD (Samsung).

Absolutely ZERO speedup in any Lightroom function. Sigh.


It depends a lot on where and how big the ACR cache, Lr previews, and catalog are stored, as well as the size of the previews. If 1:1 previews (and smaller ones) exist on an SSD, and the ACR cache is there too with all raw files in it*, and the catalog, then Lr works faster.

It also depends on how the photos that you browse or work on are spread over the drive. If they're stored in sequence and you access them in the same sequence then you get maximum benefit from drive caching, but if they are spread relatively randomly then you get minimal benefit from caching and more benefit from an SSD.

* the ACR cache holds partially converted raw files; not the full raw files.



Aug 14, 2017 at 01:28 AM
Ryukyu
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Drive filling up ? LR question


What brand are the 1 TB SSDs that people are getting for <$300. How is the reliability and performance?



Aug 14, 2017 at 10:19 AM
CanadaMark
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Drive filling up ? LR question


Ryukyu wrote:
What brand are the 1 TB SSDs that people are getting for <$300. How is the reliability and performance?


Crucial MX300 - excellent hardware for high capacity SSDs that don't break the bank. Great quality 3D NAND and a great controller, with specific features aimed at improving longevity. No reliability issues to speak of, and certainly much better than a traditional HDD in the reliability department. Performance is on par with other mainstream SATA SSD's (~530MB/s read, 510MB/s write), but aren't quite as good as the more expensive Samsung 850 EVO/PRO models. They also give you an extra 50GB (the 1TB model is 1050GB).

$277 USD at the moment - hard to beat that if you want space & speed.



Aug 14, 2017 at 11:12 AM
skid00skid00
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Drive filling up ? LR question


I had a crucial ssd in my workstation. It was horrible, slow! This was built-in by HP. I don't know what version, but it was so slow that I could tell just by using the workstation, in comparison to my homebuilt. In other respects, the HP was killer, with a high-end CPU at high clock rates.

Just an FYI, do your research before you buy one, expecting great performance.



Aug 14, 2017 at 12:25 PM
CanadaMark
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Drive filling up ? LR question


skid00skid00 wrote:
I had a crucial ssd in my workstation. It was horrible, slow! This was built-in by HP. I don't know what version, but it was so slow that I could tell just by using the workstation, in comparison to my homebuilt. In other respects, the HP was killer, with a high-end CPU at high clock rates.

Just an FYI, do your research before you buy one, expecting great performance.


Sounds like you have no actual information there - no offense.

What was the rest of the setup? What interface was it hooked up to? What was the exact model number? Were there any other bottlenecks? Could that motherboard support the SSD? What benchmarks did you run? How did it perform with a different SSD? Sounds very much to me like something else was going on.

All of crucial's M series off the shelf SSD's are great performers for the dollar, right back to the old M4 which was the go-to SSD of ti's time (like the Samsung 850's are now). If you aren't getting advertised speeds, something else is wrong and it's probably not the SSD's fault.

There are no real unknowns when you buy an SSD. They are extremely easy to benchmark and review. My MX300 performs exactly as expected and exactly as all the reviews and benchmarks indicate, as did my M4 before it.



Aug 14, 2017 at 02:50 PM
skid00skid00
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Drive filling up ? LR question


It was a pc I used at my prior job, two years ago. I don't have any other specs. The research I did at the time also indicated it was a slow drive. I was surprised, because I have favored Crucial RAM in builds I have done.

My contribution is exactly as useful as any other.



Aug 14, 2017 at 07:01 PM
Michael White
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Drive filling up ? LR question


Or use Lightroom to move your library . I have my current library on a Lexmark module for their latest hub and my photos are on a different external drive. But you can use multiple input and destination drives it's the library files that need to be in one place


Aug 15, 2017 at 07:28 AM
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