I was nearly always using internal storage for my Lr stuff, other than backups or emergencies when the internal drive had problems. My MBP has been opened up several times for drive surgery
I have tried external storage via eSATA or USB 3 adapters connected to the expresscard port but that was not much good because the port is crippled and even a single hdd has its read speed clipped. I'm now settled on internal ssd or external ssd via thunderbolt. hdds are only for backups.
I imagine that many people are mainly looking at or editing recent images but I'm trying to reorganise my collection with a new ratings and labels system and I still have a lot of images that have not been optimised with the 2012 process version, and so I tend to access images in varied ways based on gear or keyword selections. Perhaps that semi-random access and tweak approach is why I see merit in ssds that others do not. There has to some sort of explanation and this is the best I can come up with for now.
Well if all the tested drives were connected to a native SATA port, then i'm not sure i understand it. I don't really believe that having files scattered across the disk is the cause because seek times are of the order of milliseconds. If the file being read is not fragmented then you have one "seek" followed by a long sequential "read" when you load the file. It doesn't really matter where the file is on the disk for this. If the file being read is itself fragmented then of course you would have many "seeks" and these can add up to be significant. But as we've already discussed, RAW files should be pretty contiguous.
There is one potentially significant difference between your experience and my testing - you were presumably booting from the same hard disk that contained the files and the LR catalogue (i didn't test booting the OS from spinning media, only SSD). Perhaps the OS overhead was enough to slow things down in this situation.
And of course you are running a Mac and I a PC, but i don't think we can fairly blame Apple for this
Thanks so much 15Bit for the research - although all this talk is way over my head, it is most appreciated. One question - does the amount of images you have on a hard drive effect the speed at which LR operates? Right now I (perhaps wrongly) am storing all images (700GB-ish) on my Mac HD (1TB) which is taking up a fair bit of room. I have a feeling it is somehow bogging down LR but I am not 100% sure. Does it make sense to move all my images to an external HD? If so, what should I be looking for in an external HD? Thanks in advance!
If the drive is getting full then that will affect speed that everything runs, not just LR. As for whether an external is better - try copying some files to an external drive and see. There really is no better way to find out.
In terms of what you are looking for - a fast interface is paramount. So e-sata, thunderbolt or USB3. And a faster spinning 7200rpm drive would be good, though might run a bit too warm to put in an external case.
Thank you so much for the information. My computer does not have USB-3 and I don't think a thunderbolt connection. I think it may have a firewire port - not sure if that is a benefit. The computer is around three years old or so....
Gary Clennan wrote:
Thanks so much 15Bit for the research - although all this talk is way over my head, it is most appreciated. One question - does the amount of images you have on a hard drive effect the speed at which LR operates? Right now I (perhaps wrongly) am storing all images (700GB-ish) on my Mac HD (1TB) which is taking up a fair bit of room. I have a feeling it is somehow bogging down LR but I am not 100% sure. Does it make sense to move all my images to an external HD? If so, what should I be looking for in an external HD? Thanks in advance!...Show more →
Your external hdd speed will be limited by the FW800 or USB 2.0 interface and so any drive would do. FW800 is usually about twice as fast as USB 2.0 in practice, so that is the way to go. Try to find one with dual FW800/USB 3.0 interface in case you upgrade your computer later on to one that has USB 3.0 ports.
The internal drive is much faster than FW800 or USB 2.0.
If you want to go external then be sure to compensate by having your catalog and caches on the internal drive, and use full size previews if they'll fit.
Also, be sure to copy your existing photo folder structure onto the external drive so that when you want to you can just point your existing catalog to the new file location quickly and easily. Do this and confirm that the new copy is intact before deleting the originals.
