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1. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
dj_paige Jun 5, 2014 8:49 AM (in response to LJH)Yes, the catalog file belongs on your fastest disk (assuming there is enough space for the catalog file and previews)
Photos on an SSD? Probably little benefit.
Ian Lyons has done a very thorough study of this matter, his last paragraph sums up the benefits of using an SSD
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/blog/will-an-ssd-improve-adobe-lightroom-performance/
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2. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
thedigitaldog Jun 5, 2014 9:16 AM (in response to dj_paige)The question becomes is it worth splitting up catalog and images and working with the size limitations of today's SSDs? I prefer to keep all the data on one dedicated drive to make cloning that data or moving the data among differing machines easier and faster. So in my case, a 2TB drive is a must for all that data along with other 2TB clones. That be expensive with SSDs ($2500 ouch). The speed increase would have to be substantial.
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3. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
dj_paige Jun 5, 2014 9:18 AM (in response to thedigitaldog)This is not a concern for me.
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4. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
thedigitaldog Jun 5, 2014 9:21 AM (in response to dj_paige)dj_paige wrote:
This is not a concern for me.
But obviously it is for me, perhaps the OP
Now I wonder if I could put a symbolic link for just the catalog that is stored on the slower external HD to the much faster internal SSD I have.
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5. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
LJH Jun 5, 2014 11:10 AM (in response to dj_paige)Thanks dj.
This is probably a course I will pursue as the Catalogue and previews can, as you are clearly aware, be on a separate drive i.e. an HDD. Lightroom is pretty quick off the mark in terms of its read/write capability but it definitely does get slower [on HDD] when you've amassed 10K or more catalogued items.
Cheers.
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6. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
LJH Jun 5, 2014 11:20 AM (in response to thedigitaldog)Andrew, LR is designed so that you can have Images on external disks if needs be and just have the them Catalogued on an internal disk. You can have separate Catalogues but that seems to defeat the object to me. That would be the equivalent of running Sessions in Capture One Pro I guess.
So yes, having separate disks for Photo images and the Catalogue is the way to go and it will give you better performance: HDD's for images and SSD for Catalogue and previews.
SSDs for relatively static data [Images in this case] would be pointless, as you wouldn't be taking advantage of the rapid read/write an SSD is capable of.
Lyndon
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7. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
dj_paige Jun 5, 2014 11:24 AM (in response to LJH)Lightroom is pretty quick off the mark in terms of its read/write capability but it definitely does get slower [on HDD] when you've amassed 10K or more catalogued items.
Completely untrue, and if you believe this, it will cause you to do very unnecessary and harmful things to your catalog. People in this and other forum report catalogs of over a quarter of a million images running well. I myself have much fewer images, but still 25,000 images, without catalog slowness.
If you are experiencing slowness, it is almost definitely not due to the number of images; and you might want to describe in more detail what part(s) of Lightroom are slow, so that a better diagnosis and solution can be found.
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8. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
LJH Jun 5, 2014 11:51 AM (in response to dj_paige)I've just read through Ian's missive and I assume at the time the SSDs probably max'd at a 3 Gb/s xfer rate. SSD's these days are compatible with 6 Gb/s on most mid to high-end Motherboards. Couple that with 6 core and above CPU's and the result should be a pretty quick response time, for an SSD/Catalogue combo.
I'm running a WS with a Asus P9X79-E WS motherboard and a Intel i7 4930K CPU, with 32 Gb ram. As a combination it's pretty damn quick, especially with Photoshop filters. My feeling is that I'm going see a definite increase in speed using an SSD for the LR Cat.
Unless Enterprise HDDs are used, anything above 3 Gb/s would probably be wasted, so no speed change there.
Thanks for the info/link.
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9. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
LJH Jun 5, 2014 12:07 PM (in response to dj_paige)Hi dj. I guess it depends on what speeds you are acclimatised to. I've described my set-up elsewhere and it's very fast. The slowdown in LR isn't detrimental and hardly noticeable but is there.
I rebuilt my system the other week and put 500 images into the LR Cat, just to ensure all was OK. It loaded/presented very quickly. I then loaded my full library, around 20k images, and it was definitely slower on start-up/population.
Actual usage i.e. processing an image, no issues or concerns. Using Add-ins [Google Nik] again no issues.
I’m perhaps being too picky.
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10. Re: Is there any performance benefit in placing the LR Catalogue on an SSD
dj_paige Jun 5, 2014 12:12 PM (in response to LJH)Okay, if you're talking about loading Lightroom initially, I can see how Lightroom could be a bit slower with 20K images, but most actions in Lightroom should not have a speed dependence on the number of images. One exception would be searching the database for specific photos.
By the way, modern databases never load the full library, as you state "I loaded my full library". Thus, even loading Lightroom for the first time should only have minor sensitivity to the number of images cataloged in the database.




