So, I've had Lightroom Classic a while now and have built up over 100,00 files. The library itself is on my system drive which is an M.2. Traditionally, I've had most of my RAW files on a separate 2.5" SSD. The problem? I outgrew the SSD.
So I built a 4 Drive NAS with parity. 4x18TB drives equals about 36TB of storage, minus that tiny bit for "formatting, etc".
So I finally consolidated all my files to the same drive. It's mapped via Windows. The files show up mapped via Lightroom.
So, Lightroom used to open reasonably/rather fast. Now? It takes forever, literally minutes or even longer. I haven't timed it, but I've noticed that when I "open" Lightroom, the NAS disk usage goes to 30Mbps or more. Sidenote: The NAS is capable of about 200-250Mbps sustained reads/writes, so 30Mbps is rather "slow" compared to what it could be pulling.
I imagined that Lightroom would live off the library and only access the NAS when it needed to read RAW files. I'm guessing, but it appears it is somehow running some sort of check against all files in the library. I'm waiting this very second at the time of writing for Lightroom to actually finish opening so that I can check the NAS disk usage and see if it is closer to 0.
I didn't foresee this, and would have likely dissuaded me from building the NAS in the first place. Anyone else experiencing this, and any remedies?
LinuxHack3r wrote:
So, I've had Lightroom Classic a while now and have built up over 100,00 files. The library itself is on my system drive which is an M.2. Traditionally, I've had most of my RAW files on a separate 2.5" SSD. The problem? I outgrew the SSD.
So I built a 4 Drive NAS with parity. 4x18TB drives equals about 36TB of storage, minus that tiny bit for "formatting, etc".
So I finally consolidated all my files to the same drive. It's mapped via Windows. The files show up mapped via Lightroom.
So, Lightroom used to open reasonably/rather fast. Now? It takes forever, literally minutes or even longer. I haven't timed it, but I've noticed that when I "open" Lightroom, the NAS disk usage goes to 30Mbps or more. Sidenote: The NAS is capable of about 200-250Mbps sustained reads/writes, so 30Mbps is rather "slow" compared to what it could be pulling.
I imagined that Lightroom would live off the library and only access the NAS when it needed to read RAW files. I'm guessing, but it appears it is somehow running some sort of check against all files in the library. I'm waiting this very second at the time of writing for Lightroom to actually finish opening so that I can check the NAS disk usage and see if it is closer to 0.
I didn't foresee this, and would have likely dissuaded me from building the NAS in the first place. Anyone else experiencing this, and any remedies?...Show more →
I don’t use LR for multiple reasons, but catalog snafus are a big one. IIRC, there is a way to rebuild your library when you move images around. I think that’s a step you need to go through. But again, that’s from my historical memory which is less reliable nowadays…
If that's the way you see it. The 2.5" drive was capable of about 500MBps. The NAS is capable of about 250Mbps. I think the problem is seek time.
But in theory this should be fine. I am currently waiting about 15-20 minutes for it to open, period. It should simply be opening the catalog. Once it is open, the actual speed of selecting photos, generating photos, editing, and exporting is perfectly manageable and barely noticeably different.
As a test I had a theory that if the NAS was accessible it would "skip" querying the files and open. I disconnected the mapped drive from Windows and then tried to open Lightroom. It opened in about a minute or so.
With the drive mapped I waited 45 minutes and it still wasn't open.
That means that Lightroom is either checking files/folder or more during start for all files.
Your problem has nothing to do with the speed of the NAS. As you stated the NAS speed, or where ever you store the RAW files, should not impact the speed of LrC opening and should have minimal impact for most other LrC operations. I have over 700K files in my catalog and LrC opens quickly, and I have RAW files on slow drives, some are USB drives, and LrC opens quickly even if the drives are not connected (which is about as slow as they get).
The way to describe what you did not not clear to me, but I assume the Lightroom folder that contains the catalog and all the other LrC stuff is still on a fast drive where it was before you moved the RAW files. I further assume that you are sure you are opening the lrcat file on the fast drive, not some other lrcat file in a backup folder or some other place. To be sure, I suggest you go to the Lightroom folder on your fast drive and double click the lrcat file to start it.
I assume you moved the files to your NAS using the OS, and then located them in their new location in LrC. Is that correct? If you used LrC to move 100K files, that can take a long time. Is it possible that task was started and not completed and LrC has resumed that task? How did you move the files?
I moved the files using TeraCopy. I'm 100% certain that the files are there. I copied and verified and deleted the old ones off the SSD.
There is only one catalog to open, that's on the M.2 drive.
As my test, I disconnected the NAS and Lightroom opened as expected. It is, for some reason, querying all of the files on open. I'm still troubleshooting.
With the mapped NAS disconnected, it took 10 seconds to open Lightroom Classic just now from the desktop. At that point, of course all files showed "missing" but I could browse previously generated previews.
Again. Closed Lightroom, waited a bit, and then reopened.
Loaded as expected.
This time I selected "All Photos" catalog, which is >125,000, and excited Lightroom. When reopening, opened as expected. No "huge" NAS use, just opened to the catalog and allows normal usage.
This was so weird but it appears it is now operating as expected.
