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Server, drive, 1 catalog = mess :(

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jettlich

New Member
Premium Classic Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2019
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2
Lightroom Version Number
LR Classic 11.0
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.15 Catalina
Hello Friends:

I'm the photographer, the Lightroom user. My husband is the engineering, computer science, research support. :)

I expressed my frustration with LR being really slow as I worked in my LR catalog (about 100,000 images - all our family photos from the last 20 years). Dear husband thought it would be better if we bought a fast 3.84 TB drive, and have that be my working drive, while the other pictures sit on the server, and I can access them when need be.

The problem is, sometimes I go here and there, across the drive and the server. I wonder if this confuses LR?

In August, he added the 3.84TB drive. For some reason, many of the folders I made in LR while working on this new drive replicated to some degreee to the old Server area on LR. I'm now trying to reconcile it, but I'm having to look in both, for example, "2021_0728 Lake Crescent" folders because in the Drive, this folder has 33 pictures and in the Server version of this file, it has either more or less. I'm driving myself NUTS trying to compare every picture etc. I don't know why it did this. When I hopefully someday get this all sorted out, I just can't imagine working across Server+Driver one my 1 LR catalog. Seems SO messy. Especially if every time I go into LR or walk away from the computer for a bit, I have to re-redirect the program to the drive... Also, it looks like when I go into Finder, things aren't necessarily accurately reflected from what I did in LR! Yikes! I did "sync" to see if that would help, which I know wasn't a great decision, but now I have all the images back that I had decided to delete. Not happy to get to go through and delete again! Argh!

My husband said, "you can just drag folders when you're done editing them, from Drive to Server while in Finder, and then Sync everything while back in LR!" I kind of cringed. Except that's not the way most of us deal with LR! That's messy and complex and a set up for a mess. Would love to know how you others deal with enough space, fast enough working ability, and finder/lightroom problems.

Thanks again! Off to try to keep fixing it!

Appreciatively,

Jenna
 
Just did some more reading. I'm operating on Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7 with Lightroom Classic 11.0! Wondering if there are weird glitches and problems happening because I need to update my OS to Big Sur or Monterey? Thanks.
 
Just did some more reading. I'm operating on Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7 with Lightroom Classic 11.0! Wondering if there are weird glitches and problems happening because I need to update my OS to Big Sur or Monterey? Thanks.

Apple has certainly made performance improvements Since Catalina. If your hardware will support the upgrade to Monterey, Please take advantage of it.

Some comments on your work flow. Images can be stored on multiple volumes and still be managed by Lightroom Classic. There is no reason to move images around on the file system. Lightroom Classic does not care where the image file are located. All of the action take place takes place in the Catalog file, the Previews folders adjacent to the Catalog file and in Working storage (free space on MacIntosh HD). There only a few instances after LrC imports the image file that the original file is accessed again by Lightroom.

Some key points to consider:
The filesystem (folders) is a poor tool for organizing images. Organization is best handled using Collections and keywords.Files do not need to be moved when Lightroom Organization is manages to in the collections folder. When you do move image files, use the Lightroom Folder panel and Lightroom will keep track of the now path to the original file. Consider that Lightroom Classic is your image manage to tool and you should never use another tool (filesystem Finder) to try to manage the same images.

I mentioned Working storage. All applications use and need working storage (which by default is the free space on MacIntosh HD. If you run out of freespace, your performance drops precipitously. I recommend keeping a minimum of 100 GB free on MacIntosh HD for used by Lightroom and other apps.

Too little RAM is another reason for Lightroom to take a performance hit. 16GB of RAM is the minimum that I would expect to be available to run Lightroom without seeing a performance hit.

Third party anti Malware tools also slow performance. Consider not running them and keep your Mac up to date with the latest OS and patches.


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