Lightroom with NAS storage

[Adam L]

I am considering purchasing a NAS system to handle my growing file collection and need for storage redundancy.   I was considering buying a NetGear ReadyNAS NV with four 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM SATA 2 drives.   I believe Raid 1 will give me the proper redundancy.

I am now reading that using Lightroom with NAS is not a good idea, that the system performance is severely compromised.   I then read that it's not compromised provided that the preview images are stored on a local drive.

I'd appreciate any advice to help solve my storage need without sacrificing LR performance.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I had a nas based concept using a Linux based computer and NFS, but got into a lot of troubles when switching from LR 1.4 to LR2. So now I'm using internal disks.

I don't say it will not work, just that your "mileage may vary".

Best regards
Erik

I am considering purchasing a NAS system to handle my growing file collection and need for storage redundancy.   I was considering buying a NetGear ReadyNAS NV with four 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM SATA 2 drives.   I believe Raid 1 will give me the proper redundancy.

I am now reading that using Lightroom with NAS is not a good idea, that the system performance is severely compromised.   I then read that it's not compromised provided that the preview images are stored on a local drive.

I'd appreciate any advice to help solve my storage need without sacrificing LR performance.

[Jeremy Payne]

I had a NAS setup, too ... and have recently moved to external eSata for the catalog and library.

The NAS 'worked' ... but I'm much, much happier with a big eSata drive backed-up on the NAS.

[loonsailor]

I have a 4-drive readyNAS NV+ at home.  I've never tried using it for my LR catalog, but rather use it for backup.  Every night my images and catalog are backed up to the NAS automatically.  The ReadyNAS has a really nice feature which allows you to attach an external USB drive to it directly, and automatically backup the ReadyNAS to that drive, so I do that as well, three times a week.  The external drive is actually a dock http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...3-071-_-Product, so I plop a cheap SATA drive into it and replace it every few months, storing the old one somewhere far away.

In other words, the ReadyNAS is very useful for backup and lots of other network tasks (music & video, etc.) but, at least for me, not as my primary image access.

[PeterAit]

I am considering purchasing a NAS system to handle my growing file collection and need for storage redundancy.   I was considering buying a NetGear ReadyNAS NV with four 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM SATA 2 drives.   I believe Raid 1 will give me the proper redundancy.

I am now reading that using Lightroom with NAS is not a good idea, that the system performance is severely compromised.   I then read that it's not compromised provided that the preview images are stored on a local drive.

I'd appreciate any advice to help solve my storage need without sacrificing LR performance.

Even fast Ethernet is slower than internal disks or eSATA, so yes, using NAS for your LR files will slow things down. There's no reason to use NAS unless you need to access the files from more than one computer.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

In my view there is little evidence that Lightroom would be disk intensive. The issue I had with using NAS was more that it suddenly stopped working during file import. Never had this issue with LR 1.4 but often in LR 2.0 and 2.1.

NAS uses either NFS or CIFS. So there can be problems with implementation of either protocol in the NAS or in your OS.

Best regards
Erik

Even fast Ethernet is slower than internal disks or eSATA, so yes, using NAS for your LR files will slow things down. There's no reason to use NAS unless you need to access the files from more than one computer.

[DarkPenguin]

In my view there is little evidence that Lightroom would be disk intensive.

Other than the gigantic files it has to read?

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

My conclusion is mostly based on disk activity while using Lightroom. I seldom see that disk is accessed at more then 10 MByte/s although it is capable of perhaps 150 MByte/s. My DNGs are about 24 MByte each so they would take something like 0.14 s to read from disk. In my guess i takes something like 5 s to process an image.
[attachment=21096:Regenera...previews.jpg]

Best regards
Erik

Other than the gigantic files it has to read?

[Adam L]

Thanks everyone.   I've made a couple changes to my setup after feedback from this thread.   I've upgraded from this motherboard:  MSI X58 Pro-E - ATX - Intel® X58 Chipset  to this one:  ASUS P6X58D Premium - ATX - Intel® X58 Chipset.  The reason is because I'm adding in a 1 TB drive:  1TB SATA 6.0Gbps 7200RPM - 3.5" - Western Digital Caviar® Black to support Lightroom on the computer.   The new montherboard is required to take advantage of the 6.0Gbps drive speed.

I am also going to keep the NAS system for backups.

[Adam L]

I was just told that I'd be throwing good money after bad by upgrading this motherboard.   I had no idea picking out a new system would be so difficult.    If I may share with you my current system config for comments and feedback:  

Processor   Quad-Core Intel® Core™ i7 930 2.80GHz 4.8GT/s QPI 8MB L3 Cache (VT)
Motherboard   MSI X58 Pro-E - ATX - Intel® X58 Chipset
Memory   3 x Crucial 2GB PC3-10600 1333MHz DDR3
Chassis   Antec Sonata III 500 - ATX Mid Tower - 500 Watt Power Supply - Black - Silent Design
Power Supply   Included Power Supply (Chassis must include power to select this option)
Hard Drive   500GB SATA 7200RPM - 3.5" - Seagate Barracuda® 7200.12
2 x 1.5TB SATA 7200RPM - 3.5" - Seagate Barracuda® 7200.11
5.25" Bay   Samsung 22x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer LightScribe (SATA)
3.5" Bay   19-in-1 3.5" Card Reader (Black)
Video Card   ATI Radeon HD 4650 1GB GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 (1xDVI, 1xVGA, 1xHDMI)
Peripherals   Cyber Acoustics 2pc Speaker System
Operating System   Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Software   Symantec Norton Internet Security 2010
Warranty   Three Year Warranty with Advanced Parts Replacement

Printer:  Epson 3880
Monitor: NEC MultiSync P221W-BK 22" Widescreen LCD Computer Display
NAS:  NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ 4-Bay w4 Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS

I'll use this as a general purpose machine for home.  Lightroom and Photoshop will be the primary software needs.  MSOffice and iTunes will also be used a lot.  

I'd appreciate any comments that would help optimize this system for photography work.  

[Marlyn]

I was just told that I'd be throwing good money after bad by upgrading this motherboard.   I had no idea picking out a new system would be so difficult.    If I may share with you my current system config for comments and feedback:  

Processor   Quad-Core Intel® Core™ i7 930 2.80GHz 4.8GT/s QPI 8MB L3 Cache (VT)
Motherboard   MSI X58 Pro-E - ATX - Intel® X58 Chipset
Memory   3 x Crucial 2GB PC3-10600 1333MHz DDR3
Chassis   Antec Sonata III 500 - ATX Mid Tower - 500 Watt Power Supply - Black - Silent Design
Power Supply   Included Power Supply (Chassis must include power to select this option)
Hard Drive   500GB SATA 7200RPM - 3.5" - Seagate Barracuda® 7200.12
2 x 1.5TB SATA 7200RPM - 3.5" - Seagate Barracuda® 7200.11
5.25" Bay   Samsung 22x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer LightScribe (SATA)
3.5" Bay   19-in-1 3.5" Card Reader (Black)
Video Card   ATI Radeon HD 4650 1GB GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 (1xDVI, 1xVGA, 1xHDMI)
Peripherals   Cyber Acoustics 2pc Speaker System
Operating System   Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Software   Symantec Norton Internet Security 2010
Warranty   Three Year Warranty with Advanced Parts Replacement

Printer:  Epson 3880
Monitor: NEC MultiSync P221W-BK 22" Widescreen LCD Computer Display
NAS:  NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ 4-Bay w4 Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS

I'll use this as a general purpose machine for home.  Lightroom and Photoshop will be the primary software needs.  MSOffice and iTunes will also be used a lot.  

I'd appreciate any comments that would help optimize this system for photography work.

I would suggest upgrading that system to a new motherboard etc is not necessary, however there are some key things you can do to speed things up quite a lot (IMO).

1. Add more memory to bring it to 12gb

2. Add 1, preferably 2 more hard drives.  On Drive 1, more the windows swap file to it, on drive 2, put the Photoshop, Bridge etc Cache (exclusivly).  
    Personally I used 10,000 rpm western digital Raptors for these to drives, and it works a treat.  In an ideal world where money is no object, create Raid 0 stripes of multiple drives for the Photoshop Cache.

3. Stick the lightroom library, and its previews on a different drive to the raws.  I don't have any definitive reason for why this is better, but it appears to me to run faster on my system after I moved the preview cach to a different drive.  (Caveat: I moved it from a 1.5TB raid 1,to a WD Raptop, so it could be just the drive).

Moving swap file away from OS, and Cache files away from both of them, allows the system to utilise more disk paths when doing VM swaps, caching, OS operations etc.   Without going into the nuts and bolts, it lessens the amount the drive head needs to fly around the disk, doing 3 diifferent things at once.   Moving Swap away from OS can generally see a good 20% improvment in system performance in my experience.

Adding more memory is, well, just always good. You can never have too much Ram on a 64 bit system IMO.  More memory means less paging. (The system pages even if you think its not, when it still 'seems' to have free memory).   Photoshop especially gobbles up ram,  never mind things like PTGUI.

I run 12gb, processing 1dS-3 files, and regularly max out the 12gb ram with multi layered files, and especially stiching pano's.


Hope this helps.

Regards

Mark

[Marlyn]

One other point,

Go into the drive settings for your Anti virus and turn OFF 'on demand' scanning for the entire Image library tree,  and especially the photoshop Cache drive, and Lightroom preview directory tree.

The AV is currently getting in the way of every read and write to these cache files,  which is reducing performance of something designed to be high performance.  

Having done that, don't store or download any other files to these various folder trees.

Regards

Mark

[Adam L]

Thanks for replying Mark.   I've made a couple changes to my configuration based on your feedback.   Increased RAM to 12 GB, went with 4x1.5TB internal drives and scrapped the NAS system.   I've also decided to up the Monitor to the new NEC PA241W-BK.   I am so close to hitting the purchase button.

[Per Zangenberg]

I dont think you will see any improvement in using a SATA 6Gb/s controller because current drives are not maxing out the 3Gb/s. I think only SDD drives in RAID might do that.

However harddrive speed has a huge impact on system performance and if you are NOT already using RAID0, then that would be an easy way to gain a huge improvement in system performance. Drives are so cheap today that NOT using RAID0 makes little sense.

Regarding NAS, IMO it is not good for anything but backup and storage of large files. It does not work well with accessing many smaller files quickly.

[sty]

However harddrive speed has a huge impact on system performance and if you are NOT already using RAID0, then that would be an easy way to gain a huge improvement in system performance. Drives are so cheap today that NOT using RAID0 makes little sense.

You mean raid10? Raid0 one disk goes your array goes poof

[Per Zangenberg]

You mean raid10? Raid0 one disk goes your array goes poof

No I mean RAID0. Yes your data goes i a drive goes, but this is also the case using just one drive. That is why God invented backup  
RAID5 or 10 is no substitute for backup anyway, so what is the point.

[PierreVandevenne]

No I mean RAID0. Yes your data goes i a drive goes, but this is also the case using just one drive. That is why God invented backup  
RAID5 or 10 is no substitute for backup anyway, so what is the point.

Assuming you have proper backups, a disk failure is simply an inconvenience, but an inconvenience that can easily cost a full day.
By using RAID0, you simply multiply the risk of that inconvenience by 2 :-). Afaic, all our systems are RAID1 for the system and applications: when a drive dies, it doesn't interrupt the work day.

Also, my experience matches Erik's: the lightroom bottleneck isn't usually found at the disk level. If speed is really critical I'd go RAID/SSD for the system (better boot times and generally better system reactivity) and eventual temporary storage (scratch, exports, etc...).

But there isn't an absolute truth that everyone should adhere to, just work habits.

[sjprg]

But there isn't an absolute truth that everyone should adhere to, just work habits.
[/quote]

Western Digital has a new 1.5 terabyte USB 3 drive available, that with either a plugin PCI-E adapter or a motherboard with USB 3 is really fast.
Move your Images and LRcat to the USB3 drive or deleate the present one and create a new one on the USB 3
My current setup is a pair of X25-V SSDs in raid 0 © with the data on the USB 3 drive (W) and the scratch drive on (D) with 12 GB memory. Video is an ATI 4890. NAS for backup only.
By keeping only EXE files on the raid 0 I can restore a system in about an hour, OR as I do about once a month anyway is to dump the system partition and recreate and reformat it. Roughly 2 hours at night and you have a clean system with all the supurflus junk gone.