p.1 #1 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
Have been using this setup for ages:
- HDD for photo library
- SSD for catalog/most recent working files
- backup to NAS, which also backs up offsite.
The big photo library (the HDD) doesn’t get touched frequently, but it’s not like their archival never-touched, never-edited either.
Before both components were just inside my desktop PC. Recently moved to MacBook, and now I am working off external NVME and external HDD. This is “fine” but I’m wondering if it’s ideal.
I wonder if there’s value in flipping things around a bit:
- keep the external NVME for speed of catalog/working files (MAYBE move on to local MacBook hard drive… but doesn’t work well when a recent import could be hundreds of gigs and my total HD is 500gb - stupid new non-upgradable Mac’s!)
- photo library is off the NAS. NAS becomes a “working file server” vs mostly a backup device
- current external hd is jut plugged into NAS instead and nightly backups or something.
Thoughts on this change, or ways to optimize further? Is keeping the network share mounted and working off of it within Lightroom in MacOS going to be fine? Outside of permissions and network access, biggest problem might be when I’m outside my home network but that’s not a concern (have NEVER brought the external HDD with me on the go)
p.1 #2 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
Unless your MacBook is currently limited in SSD free space I would keep the LR catalog files there. I also run a NAS (QNAP) and keep my photos on it. Current photos I work on are stored on the mac's internal SSD unless it was a very big shoot (Sony A1 raws are 50mb) then they are kept on an attached eternal SSD. Either way once I'm done editing they all get moved off to the NAS. NAS is backed up to a local attached DAS via thunderbolt and to the cloud via iDrive. My system is a macbook pro (M1 MAX) with a Studio display that is run in clamshell mode connected to a calDigit TS4 hub. The NAS and external SSD are attached to the hub as well. Both of them support Thunderbolt as well as the hub. No issues with speed or running LR.
p.1 #3 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
My Lightroom catalog is on my M1 Max MBP, but I do all my editing over 10GbE with my files on a QNAP NAS (RAID 6 with a hot spare). I also backup my NAS to iDrive, a single drive (24TB) QNAP device local, and then another single drive (24TB) QNAP at my parents.
p.1 #4 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
I had many catalogs over many years, many computers, which were copied to NAS and drives destroyed. Not to mention years of Apple Aperture files. I previously kept my images on NAS and catalog local. It worked ok, but 1GB ethernet is a bit limiting. My MacBook Pro M3 Max only has 1TB main memory, so I decided to put the catalog on a 4TB/Thunderbolt 4 drive assembled for speed and keep images on 8TB/Thunderbolt 5 drive (M3 Max only uses Thunderbolt 4 connectivity). I’ve collected images from years of shooting and did my best to eliminate duplicates. My catalog now consists of around 300K files. I never shoot JPG/HEIC, so all are family member’s images and are unlikely to be edited, so these reside on a 32TB local Raid 0 drive with enterprise hard drives along with all video files. Everything is fast and seems reliable. My system backs up to Time Machine and to my Synology NAS and offsite via BackBlaze. My Synology NAS backs up to another Synology NAS. Also, have years of images on Flickr.
p.1 #5 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
tsdevine wrote:
My Lightroom catalog is on my M1 Max MBP, but I do all my editing over 10GbE with my files on a QNAP NAS (RAID 6 with a hot spare). I also backup my NAS to iDrive, a single drive (24TB) QNAP device local, and then another single drive (24TB) QNAP at my parents.
Not as fast as local, but I do okay with it.
Forgot to mention, I have a Firewalla router and I can use Wireguard on my MBP to access the files remotely on my NAS. So if I'm at a spot that has decent Wifi, I can actually upload my photos directly to the NAS.
As someone noted, 1GbE will be pretty painful in terms of speed. To me, 10GbE gets you in the ballpark of usability.
p.1 #6 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
schlotz wrote:
Unless your MacBook is currently limited in SSD free space I would keep the LR catalog files there. I also run a NAS (QNAP) and keep my photos on it. Current photos I work on are stored on the mac's internal SSD unless it was a very big shoot (Sony A1 raws are 50mb) then they are kept on an attached eternal SSD. Either way once I'm done editing they all get moved off to the NAS. NAS is backed up to a local attached DAS via thunderbolt and to the cloud via iDrive. My system is a macbook pro (M1 MAX) with a Studio display that is run in clamshell mode connected to a calDigit TS4 hub. The NAS and external SSD are attached to the hub as well. Both of them support Thunderbolt as well as the hub. No issues with speed or running LR....Show more →
Wait why is your NAS also attached to the hub? Within Lightroom are you actually accessing the files over Ethernet or over Thunderbolt/local connection?
p.1 #7 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
tsdevine wrote:
My Lightroom catalog is on my M1 Max MBP, but I do all my editing over 10GbE with my files on a QNAP NAS (RAID 6 with a hot spare). I also backup my NAS to iDrive, a single drive (24TB) QNAP device local, and then another single drive (24TB) QNAP at my parents.
Not as fast as local, but I do okay with it.
Okay so the photo library living on the NAS is no problem?
Surely the speed is at least fine compared to a “local” external USB drive? The single drive probably has around 200mb/s speed but between your 10gbe and raid setup, I’d expect your NAS to be serving files faster?
p.1 #8 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
tsdevine wrote:
1gbe will be slower than almost all spinning hard drives, but even just 2.5gbe with any raid setup should outperform a locally attached external drive no?
p.1 #9 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
kaitlyn2004 wrote:
Okay so the photo library living on the NAS is no problem?
Surely the speed is at least fine compared to a “local” external USB drive? The single drive probably has around 200mb/s speed but between your 10gbe and raid setup, I’d expect your NAS to be serving files faster?
My Lightroom catalog is on my local MBP drive, but all my images are on my NAS. So yes, if you're talking about all my images...RAW files and processed files, they are all on my NAS.
p.1 #10 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
kaitlyn2004 wrote:
1gbe will be slower than almost all spinning hard drives, but even just 2.5gbe with any raid setup should outperform a locally attached external drive no?
I've never used a locally attached external drive, except a Thunderbolt NVME based drive, and from memory that was definitely faster.
But I guess it comes down to what is fast enough. Moving from 1GbE to 10GbE was a huge revelation in terms of using my NAS the way I do.
I'm predominantly dealing with Sony a7R V and Fuji GFX100S II files BTW.
p.1 #11 · Lightroom photo library: local HDD or NAS?
One important thing to remember about Lightroom Classic (unless things have changed) is that unless while you're in LrCC and making your edits there, you are not actually editing your RAW file directly, you're editing either a 1:1 preview or a Smart Preview.
With this in mind, another way to consider storing your files is by having all of them on some sort of external storage device and only keeping your catalog and previews locally or on a TB drive attached to your computer. You can set Lr to create 1:1 previews every time you import for simplicity's sake. Lr can request the entire file if you decide to use Photoshop (which will edit the file directly) or a plugin, but since you're only really doing this one file at a time, I doubt you'd notice a huge transfer bottleneck.
Just something else to consider amongst the other good feedback you've been given so far.
