LR Catalog Location

[dmerger]

Is there any advantage or disadvantage to having my LR Catalog on a drive other than my “C” drive?  My photos are on a separate drive, and I could use that drive for my Catalog, too.  All my drives are about the same speed. Vista 64 bit.   

[kaelaria]

No problem at all.

[Jack F]

Ideally your LR catalog and photo library should be on a external HD. This makes your LR library portable and you can easily move from computer to computer. Say from your Laptop to your Desktop.

Here is how the Ex HD would look:

Lightroom (Folder) where the catalog is located
LR Photos (Folder) where your pictures are

With the above structure, you only have to copy two folders to backup your ENTIRE LR photo library.

[Photòr]

Boys! This discussion can solve to me a lot of questions related to LR archhive back-up...

Do you mean:

LR can run on my Mac #1 and my Mac #2

The external drive have the two directory you explained:
- Lightroom (Folder) where the catalog is located
- LR Photos (Folder) where your pictures are

Anytime I start LR on any Mac, if driver is connected he will find the correct catalog (into "Lightroom" folder) and will pick-up the correct raw files (into the "LR Photos" folder).

Question: If this is true it also means that a twin copy of my external drive works exactly like the original (that means to have a complete Back Up that contains my raws and the basic manipulation (withe balance, sensor dots remouval, etc) that I have done?
Question II: the external drive can have different names or LR will loose the path?

Many thanks

Matteo
 

[RFPhotography]

Ideally your LR catalog and photo library should be on a external HD.

Huh?  Ideally?  Whose 'ideal'? 

[fegari]

Used to have Lightroom on my boot SSD, the catalog and pics on a separate 2TB Black caviar. LR4 was driving my nuts, super slow, didn´t even want to use it anymore. So I bit the bullet, got win8 and a faster, bigger SSD to use as boot drive:

Put LR and catalog both on the new bott SSD (ocz vertex 4 256GB)
Left the pics on the WD Caviar Black 2TB
Clean windows 8 install
Kept the old Intel SSD that used to be my boot drive as a dedicated cache disk

Couldn´t be happier, waaaay more responsive (note I already had LR on the old boot ssd but not the catalog which at the time was on the 2TB HDD along the pics)

So, for the best performance possible put LR and the catalog on an SSD and try to get another smaller ssd as cache. Keep the pics on a fast HDD
For the worst performance, try what others suggest and use external drives...best wat to clog your system unless they are thunderbolts...

[Photòr]

Good point, Fegari, the fast/slow external disk reaction...

Some more questions to see if I understood:
1) For SSD you mean an internal (bootable) SSD?
2) So you have the catalog on an internal drive, the pictures (archive) on an external, huge, 2 TB disk...

Now:
A) did you solve the point of the back-up of the "dynamic duo" (Catalog+Archive)?
B) what about the possibility to open your archive from another PC?

Thanks

Matteo

[Mully]

I keep the LR catalog and photo folder in one folder called photo library....on an external HD.  When I want to use another computer everything is where I want it.  This makes backup easy as well as the photo library contains everything.

[Photòr]

Thanks Mully...

And is fast enough? Also with a big Catalog?
Which system do you have (PC or Mac?)

Thanks

Matteo

[PeterAit]

I get quite good speed keeping both catalog and photos on an external SATA RAID 0 array. Boot and LR program are on a separate, internal RAID 0 array. With enough RAM (I have 12 GB) I don't think the cache drive makes a difference because it will rarely if ever be needed.

[fegari]

Hi Photor,

Sorry I've been out. Answers below, hope not to confuse you!

Good point, Fegari, the fast/slow external disk reaction...

Some more questions to see if I understood:
1) For SSD you mean an internal (bootable) SSD? => YES, internal SSD (all the drives I mentioned are internal by the way, SATA6)
2) So you have the catalog on an internal drive, the pictures (archive) on an external, huge, 2 TB disk... => (No, as explained above both SSDs -boot and cache- plus the 2TB HDD are internal SATAs)

Now:
A) did you solve the point of the back-up of the "dynamic duo" (Catalog+Archive)? => Have no issues there. I use FreeFileSync (free!) and configured it to mirror the LR4 Catalog (in the SSD boot) and also the whole 2TB HDD (where the .dng / tiff /jpgs reside) into another internal HDD I have just for backups. Then I also backup the internal backup into an external 2TB WD Passport drive.


B) what about the possibility to open your archive from another PC? => Don't need to. When travelling I use a separate Lightroom install in a Macbook Air ,  then when back at home I just export the new pics as catalog from the MacbookAir and then import it into the master LR on the desktop. By the way, just in case, when travelling I also backup the new pics on the portable WD Passport that I bring with me.

Thanks

Matteo

[Sheldon N]

I do exactly the same thing as fegari for my LR setup and backup strategy.

[Photòr]

Thanks a lot for you explanations...

I will have some free days at the end of this week and I will study the solution on my machines.

Matteo

[Alistair]

I do exactly the same thing as fegari for my LR setup and backup strategy.

Interesting. Does the OS go on the same SSD as LR and catalogue? Do you also run PS? If so, where do you put that?

[fegari]

Interesting. Does the OS go on the same SSD as LR and catalogue? Do you also run PS? If so, where do you put that?

Yes, the Boot SSD hosts the OS, LR, LR Catalog, Previews & PS (it is 256GB). The other SSD (80GB) is dedicated as a scratch disk and for non important applications (Word, Office etc).

[Alistair]

Yes, the Boot SSD hosts the OS, LR, LR Catalog, Previews & PS (it is 256GB). The other SSD (80GB) is dedicated as a scratch disk and for non important applications (Word, Office etc).

Ok, thanks Fegari - that should make PS run pretty well and should take care of rendering previews in LR in library mode. The remaining constraint I guess you will have is rendering LR previews  in Develop mode which will still be constrained by read speed off your files disk which is presumably a mechanical drive.

With your configuration, do you find there is benefit to adding more memory or have you lessened the requirement for high memory with your SSD's. Thanks and Regards.

[Sheldon N]

Ok, thanks Fegari - that should make PS run pretty well and should take care of rendering previews in LR in library mode. The remaining constraint I guess you will have is rendering LR previews  in Develop mode which will still be constrained by read speed off your files disk which is presumably a mechanical drive.

With your configuration, do you find there is benefit to adding more memory or have you lessened the requirement for high memory with your SSD's. Thanks and Regards.

I have LR, Photoshop and the OS on my primary SSD (128GB). The lightroom catalog files, ACR cache, and the photoshop scratch disk go on a second SSD (also 128GB).  Image files are located on a fast 2TB hard drive.

I don't find that LR needs much RAM at all. My old system only had 8 GB and LR never would use it all. My current machine now has 16GB and that's more than enough. The only caveat is that when you use LR and Photoshop together, Photoshop can use up all the RAM and leave none available. This will adversely affect LR's speed if the RAM usage hits 100%, even if you have a fast scratch disk. So my recommendation would be to get enough RAM to cover your Photoshop usage so that Photoshop doesn't step on LR's toes, so to speak.

I don't think that your comment about the Develop module being constrained by a traditional hard drive is necessarily correct. While I'm sure it has some impact, the main thing that is happening in the Develop module that the CPU is rendering the image data from the RAW file. The time it takes for the CPU to render the data is significantly longer than the time to pull the data off the hard drive. The CPU rendering time might be between 2-3 seconds for a 20+ megapixel file, where the time for the data to be pulled off of even a slow hard drive is under half a second. The real bottleneck for rendering previews/importing/exporting/develop module is going to be the CPU speed.

That said, I do try to optimize my system so that disk speed is not an issue. On my 2TB storage drive, I partitioned off the first 100GB where the drive speed and transfer rates are the fastest (due to the rotational platter/fixed disk head design of a traditional hard drive). I use that partition for importing and working on my current photo projects. Once those are done/keyworded/exported, I'll move the files off to the remaining portion of the drive for longer term storage where speed isn't as important.

[Alistair]

Thanks very much Sheldon, very enlightening.

[Alistair]

Sheldon, thinking a little more on this; how important do you feel the speed of the OS/LR/PS drive is? I can understand the need for speed in the drive used for scratch, catalogue, previews etc. but am wondering, once the apps are open and loaded and once the machine is booted and the OS loaded, just how much I/O there is on this disk? I am currently looking at my drive situation and wondering where the best bang for buck is going to be regarding speed.

[Sheldon N]

I'm a big fan of getting an SSD for the operating drive first. It makes such a difference in the "feel" and responsiveness of the machine. I know it doesn't speed up any true process intensive tasks, but it sure is nice to have programs open quickly and to have fast start ups/restarts. I don't think that it's as much that there is a lot of I/O on the disk, but rather that all the little operations each happen more quickly because the seek times of an SSD are so much faster than a traditional hard drive.

I just put a new SSD in my old Mac Mini and there was a remarkable improvement in the general useableness of the machine. I got a 256GB Samsung 830 on sale for $160 and it was well worth it. Took a several year old computer and it breathed new life into it.