Optmal disk for LR catalog?

[Gurglamei]

I am getting settled on my new PC, and as I start to use LR, I woundered if perfomance would be influenced by where I choose to have the LR catalog.

I have  several disks to choose from:

1  OS disk with Lightroom, PS and other programs
2  Disk with images to work on
3  Scratchdisk and archive of finished pictures
4  page disk and archive backup

By default the catalog is now on disk 1.

[larsrc]

I am getting settled on my new PC, and as I start to use LR, I woundered if perfomance would be influenced by where I choose to have the LR catalog.

I have  several disks to choose from:

1  OS disk with Lightroom, PS and other programs
2  Disk with images to work on
3  Scratchdisk and archive of finished pictures
4  page disk and archive backup

By default the catalog is now on disk 1.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=187219\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Short answer: Unless your disk is an SSD, keep the library and images separate, and keep your library on the fastest disk.

Long answer: I've recently moved to an entirely-Mac setup and took my LR stuff to an external drive, both catalog and images. Performance was horrible - just trying to scroll down in the library view would have the mouse go into beachball mode for five to ten seconds. Fearing that I might have to invest in more hardware, the first thing I tried was to take the catalog back into the main drive - and voila, performance was great!  Takes a while for the images themselves to load the first time, but browsing keywords is no longer a pain.

The reasons are, of course, contention. Both on the link to the harddisk (which for me unfortunately is USB) and on the disk in form of seek times. The catalog is most likely being accessed very randomly, so it needs a really fast disk (SSD would be best). The images are read more sequentially, so something slower can work there. Having the images and catalog on the same disk and bus virtually guarantees poorer performance.

It would appear, however, that the LR catalogs are quite resilient towards being moved, so you can try it out yourself.

-Lars

[jjj]

I've recently moved to an entirely-Mac setup and took my LR stuff to an external drive, both catalog and images. Performance was horrible - just trying to scroll down in the library view would have the mouse go into beachball mode for five to ten seconds. [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=187431\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

There are external drives and there are 'external' drives!
Use an eSata ext drive and the performance will be as good as an internal drive [assuming same drive is used]. Use a USB ext drive  and  it'll be slower than an internal drive, but still more than usuable. Also if a HD is full, then the entire computer can slow down. Older Macs were particularly suceptable to HDs getting over 50% capacity, I remember reading, PCs are more forgiving, over 90% is normally the problem area.
Having your images or your LR database on your OS drive is not a good idea though. One should always keep Data and OS separate.
 I've used LR with everything runing off an external USB HD [laptop] and it worked fine, though that was on a PC. I've not used LR with Ext drives on a Mac as all my data is currently on separate internal drives. I have the OS drive, a swap file drive and 2 1tb drives for data, plus from Tuesday 4 x 750G ext eSata drives in an Icybox. So even my ext drives will be Internals.

[CatOne]

.... Older Macs were particularly suceptable to HDs getting over 50% capacity, I remember reading, PCs are more forgiving, over 90% is normally the problem area.
Having your images or your LR database on your OS drive is not a good idea though. One should always keep Data and OS separate.
 I've used LR with everything runing off an external USB HD [laptop] and it worked fine, though that was on a PC. I've not used LR with Ext drives on a Mac as all my data is currently on separate internal drives. I have the OS drive, a swap file drive and 2 1tb drives for data, plus from Tuesday 4 x 750G ext eSata drives in an Icybox. So even my ext drives will be Internals.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=187487\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Macs are no more or less forgiving than PCs when it comes to disk capacity.  ANY disk that gets over ~80% full will slow substantially.  It's simple physics (seek time, angular velocity, etc.).  Macs can actually work better because they automatically defragment a substantial portion of files, but as disks get really full you can't overcome physics.

eSATA isn't much of an option with a laptop (well, unless you want to carry around an ExpressCard adapter card).  Macs are nice because they have Firewire interfaces for external drives, which are WAY WAY faster than USB2 for actual data transfer.  Firewire 400 and 800 both are pretty close to as fast as internal drives on a laptop.

[Gurglamei]

Thanks for your replies.  

I thought that moving the library catalogue was prone to a lot of problems, but as I understand it is really quite simple and fail proof.   At least while I am doing my inital installation and testing I will use the oportunity to try moving it from the OS/programs disk.  

Based on what you say, I try to put the Library catalogue on a separat disk (without images and programs) to see if this speeds up library functions.

[jjj]

eSATA isn't much of an option with a laptop (well, unless you want to carry around an ExpressCard adapter card)

We weren't talking about laptops and eSata. Though eSata and BluRay are requirements for me to upgrade my laptop.

Macs are nice because they have Firewire interfaces for external drives...[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=187560\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Firewire is not a Mac only thing, as I have a Firewire connection on my 13" PC notebook, which is more than can be said for the 13" Mac [Air].  And I think my desktop has as many firewire connections as my MacPro.

Macs are no more or less forgiving than PCs when it comes to disk capacity. ANY disk that gets over ~80% full will slow substantially. It's simple physics.

Currently that is true, but I was led to believe that some years ago, Mac's performance degraded earlier, for another reason which escapes me now.

[Gurglamei]

Thanks for your replies. 

I thought that moving the library catalogue was prone to a lot of problems, but as I understand it is really quite simple and fail proof.   At least while I am doing my inital installation and testing I will use the oportunity to try moving it from the OS/programs disk. 

Based on what you say, I try to put the Library catalogue on a separat disk (without images and programs) to see if this speeds up library functions.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188387\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I put a test copy of the library catalog on a separate disk, however I didn't experience any performance gain on rendering previews og thumbnails (some 2000 images).  Thus, I will just keep it on the OS & programs disk.