Lightroom Computer Advise

[HDNitehawk]

I just bought a new PC to play games on.
Added a cheap 4K Samsung monitor.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc..._1_gtx971.html

It has a 128GB SATA SSD + 2TB Drive
If I store my pictures on the 2TB Drive and run Lightroom on the 128GB SATA SSD will I see any benefit from the SSD drive or will there be a bottle neck that slows it down.

Thoughts?

[Kayaker72]

You just described my set up.

I run all my software off an SSD card but I store my photos on a 1.5 TB HDD. It works well. I do think there are the occasional bottlenecks. Basically, sometimes the HDD "goes to sleep" and can take a bit to wake up. But for general processing, there isn't much of a delay as that does not involve the HDD very often. Instead, at least my understanding, the images while working on them in LR are stored in the RAM. So, did you get much RAM? I have 8 GB DDR3 1600 and that seems to work well. And...of course, the new LR utilizes your GPU as well as your CPU for processing power.

Do be careful when importing. Sometimes LR wants to import the new photos to the SSD. Not a big deal to move them over to the HDD, just more work.

[HDNitehawk]

It has 16GB upgradable to 32GB. 16GB should be enough.
I never use LR to import. I have always used the utility that came with Canon then name and organize the folders myself. So that shouldn't be an issue.

I have to say the 4K monitor does make a difference in everything I have done so far, I guess I should go ahead and get CC and give PP a try on it. I did ask Adobe about multiple machines, they told me with CC you can have it on two computers. One can be Mac and one Windows.

[Manofmayo66]

I tend to go a bit overboard here.....

My C: Drive is a 256gb SSD for programs and documents only. I have about 100gb free.
I use 2 256Gb SSD's for my pictures (1 drive each for 2014 & 2015).
I use a 128Gb for the catalog (about 35 Gb now). I also use this drive for a page file.
I backup everything daily to 2 HDD's on my computer plus weekly backups to my CADD computer. My computer has 32 Gb of memory, but I seldom go beyond 16 except in rare cases do I reach 24.

I import the files myself, depending on which camera I use. It might add a minute to the process.

The only real slowdown I have is when LR4 is batch exporting to a drive.

[DavidEccleston]

I'm using a 2012 27" iMac. Got the 3.4GHz i7/1TB/8GB/GTX 755. I added 16 GB, bringing me up to 24GB, and added a 3 TB WD myBook as my Time Machine backup drive, then I added a non-RAID 4-drive USB 3 external storage box, which holds my old Windows drives in there, plus 2 new 3 TB drives. Current images go on the iMac internal drive, then I move them to one of the 3 TB drives, and the second acts as a duplicate/backup of the first.

Before I upgraded the RAM, I did run out with 8GB (when both LR and PS were open, as PS reserves vast amounts of RAM... LR probably does too), so I'd definitely recommended increasing RAM to at least 16GB (which you've got, this point is more to help others).

I specifically went with a non-RAID drive bay because they're only good if drives fail. If the bay itself fails, then you need to find a replacement bay that uses the exact same implemenation of RAID, or your drives won't be readable. I hear that finding a compatible bay, a few years later, is easier said than done. A software RAID (there's one built into the Mac, but I didn't use it), or manual mirroring (A simple script calling rsync is all you really need) is better in case of non-drive hardware failures, since you can just run the same software on your new hardware.

[HDNitehawk]

Manofmayo66 would it really help using multiple SSD's since the bottle neck will be the communication between the SSD's.

David, rather than RAID I use my 5 year old Mac Pro which gives three storage and an operating drive. Then a storage drive on airport, another external on the iMac. What is sweet is that if all three Mac's I have are up and running I can access any of the computers from the other. If I go the way of Windows for PP I will need to figure out a way to share a common drive that the Mac's and PC both can read.

[Lumens]

I'm not sure what to think of my set up. I have a 12 gig, 1 TB hard drive, 2.4 MHz system that worked well with LR 5.7. I updated to the cloud and find it is DOG slow! The other week I was out of town so downloaded CC to my little 11" Mac Book Air and it just smokes the Windows system. I now find myself processing with an 11" Macbook rather than my 15" laptop with 27" monitor!!

I was watching the other day on the Windows system and found CPU usage at 8%, Memory at 20% usage, and hard drive usage pegged permanently at 100% while using light-room, so I am convinced the difference is the SSD drive in the Mac book.

[Manofmayo66]

I had been using a conventional HDD before adding the SSD's for the data files and found it to be slower than I liked. Honestly I don't see much bottleneck between the SSD drives as all are Samsung SSD's connected to SATA3. I have always believed in a hard drive per purpose so that is what is driving my current setup.

[jrw]

With LR there can be a lot of reading and writing to the image cache while working. It is possible to turn off the auto save every time any setting is adjusted which will improve performance immensely.

[Jonathan Huyer]

I found this article which has some good pointers:
http://digital-photography-school.co...onal-hardware/

- I've implemented #2, which is to increase the size of the cache folder. I haven't tested it fully yet to see if it has helped, but a lot of people say that it does.
- I haven't tried point #7 yet, Render Previews Before Editing, but I'm interested in seeing what happens when I do.
- For point #4, they don't mention one thing I found elsewhere: I changed the "Automatically Discard 1:1 Previews" setting to Never. It's supposed to help a fair bit. I'll keep an eye on my disk space but I've got a fair bit of room.
- I'm definitely in violation of point #8, keeping catalog sizes small, but I do cull images as much as I can and optimize the catalog frequently.