Lightroom Performance Issues

[strphotog]

I store my Lightroom catalogue on an external hard drive to switch between my Windows desktop computer and my MacBook Pro laptop. I found that I had to install software on my MacBook to read the windows based files (Tuxera Disk Manager). It used to work very well switching between the two computers and operating systems. Lately the catalogue has been working very slowly on my MacBook and I think the issue is with the Camera Raw Cache Settings location. When I go into the Preferences menu under Performance, it says the Location should be as follows: Location:/users/my name/Library/Caches/Adobe Camera Raw. When I go to that location in my finder window it there are only about 10 files and they all have old dates on them. Should I change the location to some other folder on the external hard drive? Or somewhere on the MacBook hard drive?

My operating systems are as follows:

Windows 7 64 Bit

MacBook Pro with Mac OS High Sierra version 10.13.6

2.8Ghz Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB memory

Lightroom is updated through Creative Cloud to the latest app (Lightroom CC Classic) 8.0 Release Camera Raw 11.0

The external hard drive is a Lacie Rugged 2TB with Thunderbolt and USB 3.0

[dj_paige]

What performance issues are you trying to fix?

[strphotog]

It takes a very, very long time to build previews compared to my desktop computer. If I click on an image to enlarge it, it takes several minutes to load. That is why I think the issue is with the folder location for the cache?

[dj_paige]

strphotog  wrote

It takes a very, very long time to build previews compared to my desktop computer. If I click on an image to enlarge it, it takes several minutes to load. That is why I think the issue is with the folder location for the cache?

This doesn't sound like a cache problem to me.

If these are slow, it could be something like your anti-virus interfering with LR's use of an image, or a bad hardware somewhere (connection to the drive isn't the proper speed)

[GoldingD]

1. Camera RAW CACHE location, best on a solid state drive, worst on an external drive (read/wright speed). Unless you are running out of space, leave it on internal drive.

2. Camera RAW CACHE file status. In LR, in performance, click on Purge CACHE. As for any remaining files, other Adobe products may be using the same Camera RAW CACHE folder (PS??, ACR??). And yes, you can delete them (as long as something really foolish is not going on like catalogs or images in same location, that would be very very dumb)

3. Camera RAW CACHE. How much allocated as max? might want to bump up. If it is LR default of something like 1-3 GB, way way too small.

4. External hard drive. When you have the funds, buy a new one, buy one that has both ports for MAC and Windows, Well thats if your MAC has Thunderbolt or some other Apple specific one. Now,this time, if it does not already come partitioned as exFat, do so (an EHD marketed for both MAC and Windows probably will be, a EHD marketed for MAC will not) do this using your MAC, not your PC. Stop using some third party workaround.

Note, if you try that for your existing EHD, everything well be lost, don't do it on your existing EHD.

5. Where are your backups? and/or copies? Sure hope not all on that EHD.

[strphotog]

The drive I have is formatted for both my PC and MAC. Half partitioned as NT and half as FAT. It also has USB 3.0 as well as Thunderbolt.