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Lightroom speed performance no better on external SSD than HDD

New Here ,
Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

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I run my Lightroom catalogues through external drives. I recently upgraded from an external hard drive to an external SSD (Samsung T5) in the hopes that this would speed up the performance of Lightroom due to the higher read/write mbps. So far though it seems just as slow as when i was using my regular external hard drive. Can someone offer me an explanation as to why its not any better? I'm rubbish when it comes to techno talk so please answer as simplified as possible

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

LEGEND , Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ian+Lyons  wrote

dj_paige   wrote

Speed of what?

Develop module will not be helped by SSD. Library module will be helped by SSD.

Actually, if the OP is using proprietary raw files (CR2, NEF, etc) and the Camera Raw cache used by Develop module is located on an SSD (configured in Lr Performance tab), then Develop module performance (walking and loading images) is improved over what it would be if left on a traditional spinning disk.

Okay, true, but editing performance w

...

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LEGEND ,
Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

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How many catalogs are you talking about? Or, are you really talking about catalogs? Perhaps you are referring to the folders of images that have been imported and added to your Lightroom catalog. And perhaps these folders are on external hard drives. Having the catalog on a SSD can possibly enhance performance. However, having the images on a SSD will not necessarily enhance performance. The catalog is the only file Lightroom opens and manipulates. So please clarify what it is you are actually referring to.

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New Here ,
Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

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I put all my raws in organised folders on the external ssd and have one current catalogue at a time to edit those raws, so everything is on the external ssd

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LEGEND ,
Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

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Speed of what?

Develop module will not be helped by SSD. Library module will be helped by SSD.

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New Here ,
Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

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The main issue i have when referring to speed is the time to load a photo when zooming in and also i often get a bit of lag (sometimes very bad) when using brush tools and grad and radial filters, and also when i do general editing on slightly larger files like panoramics. None of that functionality has improved with the SSD over the HDD.

Could you explain why the develop module isn't helped by the SSD? And what i could do to boost performance?

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Community Expert ,
Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

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dj_paige  wrote

Speed of what?

Develop module will not be helped by SSD. Library module will be helped by SSD.

Actually, if the OP is using proprietary raw files (CR2, NEF, etc) and the Camera Raw cache used by Develop module is located on an SSD (configured in Lr Performance tab), then Develop module performance (walking and loading images) is improved over what it would be if left on a traditional spinning disk.

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LEGEND ,
Jun 02, 2018 Jun 02, 2018

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https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ian+Lyons  wrote

dj_paige   wrote

Speed of what?

Develop module will not be helped by SSD. Library module will be helped by SSD.

Actually, if the OP is using proprietary raw files (CR2, NEF, etc) and the Camera Raw cache used by Develop module is located on an SSD (configured in Lr Performance tab), then Develop module performance (walking and loading images) is improved over what it would be if left on a traditional spinning disk.

Okay, true, but editing performance will not benefit.

The OP says:

also i often get a bit of lag (sometimes very bad) when using brush tools and grad and radial filters, and also when i do general editing on slightly larger files like panoramics. None of that functionality has improved with the SSD over the HDD.

Brushing and other local adjustments will cause lag, especially on a 4K or larger screen. An SSD will not help this because the slowdown is that the CPU (and GPU if enabled) has to do lots of calculations, and calculations don't depend on the disk speed.

There are some things you can do to boost performance

  1. Turn off the GPU acceleration (Preferences->Performance tab->Uncheck "Use Graphics Processor") but this may make some things slower with 4K or larger monitors
  2. Do the local adjustments as the next to last adjustment in your editing, and then as the last adjustment, turn on lens corrections and transforms
  3. do the local adjustments in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements
  4. get a faster CPU

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LEGEND ,
Jun 04, 2018 Jun 04, 2018

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Actually, if the OP is using proprietary raw files (CR2, NEF, etc) and the Camera Raw cache used by Develop module is located on an SSD (configured in Lr Performance tab), then Develop module performance (walking and loading images) is improved over what it would be if left on a traditional spinning disk.

Even placing the Camera Raw cache on a locally attached spinning disk won't noticeably slow down loading of images in Develop. Even on a spinning disk, the disk i/o time is only fraction of the total time needed to load an image in Develop.  The process is more limited by the CPU and GPU, not the disk.

To see why, consider that modern spinning disks have transfer rates on the order of 100 MBps or faster. A raw file is typically about 30 MB or smaller, so reading a raw file from disk takes on the order of 1/3 of a second or less. Reducing that 1/3 of a second by moving to an SSD wouldn't provide much of a speedup in loading into Develop.  Further, the Camera Raw cache stores a hierarchy of sizes for each raw file, so typically Develop is loading much less than 30 MB.

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