cleaning up a Lr mess that I've made

[rjwata]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic version 12.1

Operating System

1. macOS 13 Ventura
2. iOS

Is there an accepted strategy for organizing into a single catalog, photos that are scattered across several catalogs, hard drives, computers, and mobile devices? I want to avoid accidentally deleting raw photos that I may have uploaded to the cloud via LR mobile. My goal is to use LrC to catalog and manage photos when at home, and use Lr mobile (on an iPad) to manage and edit photos when traveling.

Here's the approach I'm following:
1. Sync all mobile devices with Lr cloud, turn off sync on mobile devices after sync is complete
2. Choose one catalog in LrC and download all photos from cloud by syncing
3. In LrC, turn off sync for all collections
4. In LrC, delete all photos in the catalog named All Synced Photographs (this should remove all images from the cloud, but maybe not movies)
5. In LrC, delete unwanted jpegs, but keep raw photos (I shoot raw, so I'm not concerned about deleting jpegs that may have been exported in Lr mobile from raw images.)
6. Gather all raw images onto one hard drive
7. Relink each LrC catalog with the images on the hard drive (ensure that sync is turned off in those catalogs)
8. Merge the LrC catalogs as outlined on this website

Does this seem reasonable? I'm unsure of myself as I haven't used LrC for several years and I feel that the way LrC and Lr work together has changed in the past few years.

I'm on step 5 now, but it's tedious. I need to find clever ways of identifying photos that can be deleted as a group. For example, is there a quick way of identifying smart previews that were downloaded from the cloud, but not from the current catalog?

 

[Jim Wilde]

See a possible solution that I've suggested in your other thread.

Regarding the rest of your procedure, depending on the complexity of the "mess" that you're trying to consolidate I think I'd probably do step 8 in place of step 6, then do all the consolidation inside the new merged master catalog.

 

[Zenon]

That is what I would do. Once merged use a root folder and then move, rename, create new folders as you need. Before doing that I’d go into each catalogue and make sure there are no broken links.

 

[rjwata]

Hi Jim and Zenon,
Thank you for confirming my approach to cleaning up my mess! I didn't want to go thorough this procedure, only to find that the procedure was flawed.
Sincerely,
Robert

 

[Zenon]

You only need one catalogue. It is just a database so there is no known limit to its size. After you are done and moving forward use LrC to move folders around using LrC and you will never had to worry about anything again.

 

[GregJ]

You are the 7th OP in the past 3 or 4 months to ask this question because this is a thing that is very common right now in the world of personal computing and in photography. Storage is so cheap now that we often buy 1 and 2 TB SSDs or little 4 or 5 TB 2.5 inch USB-C HDDs for not much money, and we haphazardly connect them to multiple devices, or use a couple of external drives (SSD or HDD) with our laptops on the road, and the next thing you know, you have images spread around on 5 different external drives with different folder structures and you might have started several catalogs in LR. It happens all the time, and less you are careful and disciplined in your photography workflow it will happen again.
That is why when returning from shooting on the road or away from my base (where my master studio desktop sits with an 8TB fast SSD as my main data drive) I make very sure that within 1 day I have merged my road work and the image files are sitting in my master drive in the folder structure that I created. In other words, everything is on one drive and there is no way some set of images exists solo on some other drive.
Now, you are going to clean up this mess you have by moving all of your image data to one folder structure and one drive. That is a smart move and easy to do. You design your own folder structure on that new master data drive. Then you move all your files into it from all of those other drives and folder trees. You can even use this opportunity to rename the files however you want. This is called a clean start and it is a very healthy thing to do.
You can do all of that within LR and it is a bit of a slog or you could do this major surgery on a clean operating table outside of LR
You can do all of that data consolidation, moving, renaming and reorganization very quickly and cleanly outside of LR using your normal OS file program (like File Explorer in Windows). The Golden Rule is to do that kind of stuff in LR. I always do it in LR, but my work like that is minor and is incremental small corrections - not major surgery because I keep it clean in my daily workflow.
You are doing a major reconsolidation and reorganization. So, you can do this major surgery outside of LR by making sure that every raw file you have has a sidecar file or if your raw files are DNG, that they have been written to. That maintains your edits. The sidecars are copied and moved with the raw files. When you are done, import the whole thing into a new LR Catalog and you are finished with a clean new catalog.
What did you lose by abandoning your old catalogs? You lost Collections, the edit history for each file and virtual copies. If you have a lot of collection organizations and you don't want to lose them, then do not do what I said here. Do what you listed.
But if it is major surgery and you are willing to give up your past collections work, then doing it the way I said is very clean, fast, far easier and results in a completely new clean cat.
Moving whole disks worth of stuff around in LR and doing major organization surgery can be done in the library module and keeps everything connected to your cat, but you have several cats and several disks, and it is going to get messy and it is cumbersome.
Please tell me your total data requirement for all your image files since they are now (correctly) going to be located all on one disk. I think whatever disk you are copying all this stuff to that will become your main data drive should be a new drive, especially if it is an HDD.
Look at the advice I just gave someone this morning who had a disk crash and is about to establish a new main drive as she restores a backup disk to a new main data disk.
Is that new drive you are about to establish an old HDD? How old? How big? Answer that and I will give you some advice that won't cost much money and will dramatically improve your computing life and your photography workflow as well as your performance in LR and PS.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Sounds like you’re on the right track Robert, I’d have suggested the same as Jim and Zenon.

I haven’t read the other thread yet, but a long shot for step 5, how about using the syncomatic plugin to sync something like a keyword from the raw files to any matching JPEGs, might make them quicker to identify.

You are doing a major reconsolidation and reorganization. So, you can do this major surgery outside of LR by making sure that every raw file you have has a sidecar file or if your raw files are DNG, that they have been written to. That maintains your edits. The sidecars are copied and moved with the raw files. When you are done, import the whole thing into a new LR Catalog and you are finished with a clean new catalog.
What did you lose by abandoning your old catalogs? You lost Collections, the edit history for each file and virtual copies. If you have a lot of collection organizations and you don't want to lose them, then do not do what I said here. Do what you listed.
But if it is major surgery and you are willing to give up your past collections work, then doing it the way I said is very clean, fast, far easier and results in a completely new clean cat.

That can be a good way to go if someone hasn’t done much work in Lightroom, or they’ve got a million missing photos. Flags is another big thing that gets lost when going that route, which can be important for many people. There’s ways round that, like making them with a keyword, but it’s worth mentioning in case someone else comes across this thread.

 

[rjwata]

Is that new drive you are about to establish an old HDD? How old? How big? Answer that and I will give you some advice that won't cost much money and will dramatically improve your computing life and your photography workflow as well as your performance in LR and PS.

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the advice and I'm eager to hear some more!

I have about 2.3TB of photos on a 4TB WD Black HDD that was manufactured on 2022-08-22. Once I cull the rejected photos, I will backup the remaining photos on a 6TB WD Black HDD that was manufactured on 2022-11-19. I plan to use the 4TB drive as my primary drive and use the 6TB drive as a backup. Both will stay in separate safes, unless I'm using them. I plan to get a third HDD, which I'll keep in my cabin up in the mountains. I'll keep a copy of my 3-star and above photos in the cloud. Of course, I'll have several backups of my Lr catalog, both on SSDs and in the cloud.

When I'm traveling, I plan to have three drives. One SSD has the Lr catalog, and two portable HDDs will have copies of photos. I'll also keep a copy on an iPad or MacBookPro. If I have an internet connection, I'll push copies of photos to Lr cloud.

Sincerely,
Robert

 

[rjwata]

Sounds like you’re on the right track Robert, I’d have suggested the same as Jim and Zenon.

I haven’t read the other thread yet, but a long shot for step 5, how about using the syncomatic plugin to sync something like a keyword from the raw files to any matching JPEGs, might make them quicker to identify.

That can be a good way to go if someone hasn’t done much work in Lightroom, or they’ve got a million missing photos. Flags is another big thing that gets lost when going that route, which can be important for many people. There’s ways round that, like making them with a keyword, but it’s worth mentioning in case someone else comes across this thread.

Hi Victoria,

Thank you for your advice! I'm not too concerned about the JPEGs. I made a couple of copies onto external drives, then deleted them fro my SSD.

I'm on step 7, which is to relink each catalog to the photos in the new folder structure. Then, I'll follow your instructions for merging catalogs. That way, I'll keep my settings, flags, keywords, and stars. I'd be totally lost without the help I've gotten from your book. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Robert

 

[PhilBurton]

Here is a thread from 2019 that I contributed to that might give you some ideas. This thread addresses an issue slightly different from yours, but I'm sure that you can adopt it to your needs. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/i-have-a-catalogue-mess.37468/#post-1246480

 

[GregJ]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the advice and I'm eager to hear some more!

I have about 2.3TB of photos on a 4TB WD Black HDD that was manufactured on 2022-08-22. Once I cull the rejected photos, I will backup the remaining photos on a 6TB WD Black HDD that was manufactured on 2022-11-19. I plan to use the 4TB drive as my primary drive and use the 6TB drive as a backup. Both will stay in separate safes, unless I'm using them. I plan to get a third HDD, which I'll keep in my cabin up in the mountains. I'll keep a copy of my 3-star and above photos in the cloud. Of course, I'll have several backups of my Lr catalog, both on SSDs and in the cloud.

When I'm traveling, I plan to have three drives. One SSD has the Lr catalog, and two portable HDDs will have copies of photos. I'll also keep a copy on an iPad or MacBookPro. If I have an internet connection, I'll push copies of photos to Lr cloud.

Sincerely,
Robert

Robert, you are good with those 2022 4 and 6 TB WD Black drives. Those are basically new. I asked because I would have advised you not to establish a 2 or 3 or more year-old HDD as your primary drive (even though it would be backed up).
Example: In my PC, I have two internal old WD Black 6 TB drives that I use to sync (using GoodSync) with the photography folder on my main data drive (which is an 8 TB SSD). One of those drives is 7 years old! The other is 4 years old. I have transferred them from previous PCs I have built in the past. I would never establish one of those as my primary drive for obvious reasons, but they are fine just to have as one of my multiple backup drives.
I am about to build a new PC and will operate off of an internal 8TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD, and I will back up to another 8 TB (much cheaper) SATA SSD. I will also toss those two old HDDs that I have backed up to for years into the trash and buy two new WD Black 8 or 10 TB HDDs to sync to. That gives me three backups, but those are internal to the PCg. So I will have two more 8 TB external HDDs that I sync to occasionally and keep one off site and one somewhere else in the house.
So, why do I tell you all of that? Because I know what size your image data requirement is now. 2.3 TB. That is a lot of shooting, so good for you.
But that means you can operate off of 4 TB drives. Keep all your image files on 1 disk and backed up to 3 separate HDDs, which is what you are doing.
Make your primary drive a 4 TB SSD. You have 2.3 TB of image files. It will probably you years to get to 4 TB. 4TB SSDs are dramatically dropping in price. You can get a 4 TB Samsung SATA (way slower than PCIe) SSD for an amazing price now. Or if you really want to be screaming fast with your primary drive, get a 4TB PCIe as your main drive.
Let me give you a current example on a small fast external SSD that will fit in your shirt pocket. This week the SanDisk 4TB Extreme Portable SSD V2 is 319 bucks! That is astounding and was 800 bucks not too long ago. It is a USB C 3.2 Gen 2, meaning it is 10Gbps, or about 10 times faster than your HDD for the kind of work you do. If you want to mount an internal 4TB PCIe M.2 SSD it is a little more but still an amazingly low price compared to even the very recent past.
What I'm saying is this.... Main data drive 4 TB SSD. Back up to three 4, 6 or 8 TB spinning HDDs, two of which you already have, and the third is kept off-site. For that third HDD that you said you would buy for off-site, get a small portable 4 or 5 TB USB C to A drive that is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
I get the sense you can do this. You can spend the 350 bucks to get a new and fast 4TB SSD that would have cost you 800 bucks two months ago.
You are establishing a new main drive. Tell me one reason you would not make it a 4 TB SSD?

 

[rjwata]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for pointing out that thread from 2019. As you mentioned, my situation was different in that I had multiple catalogs that were synced with the cloud, and multiple mobile devices that had pushed photos and edits to the cloud. I recently learned that you should sync only one LrC catalog with the cloud. I’m nearly done cleaning up and I have two catalogs that I have to merge.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[rjwata]

You can spend the 350 bucks to get a new and fast 4TB SSD that would have cost you 800 bucks two months ago.
You are establishing a new main drive. Tell me one reason you would not make it a 4 TB SSD?

Hi Greg,

Thanks again for the great advice. I have a 2TB SSD that has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface, which I use to store my LrC catalog. I'll look into getting another SSD to use for my main photo storage. I have a 2019 iMac that has four USB 3.1 ports and two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, which can transfer data at 40 Gb/s. Since I don't have any USB 3.2 ports and USB 4 is 4 times faster than USB 3.2 Gen 2, I'll look into getting a SSD that's compatible with USB 4. I bet the cost a pretty penny!

Sincerely,
Robert

 

[Jim Wilde]

I'll look into getting another SSD to use for my main photo storage.

Just make sure you understand WHY you'll be doing that. If it's because you think that having your photos stored on an SSD will give you a performance boost in LrC, just be aware that it will make very little difference in that area. Plenty of good reasons to use SSD generally, but getting a performance boost in LrC from having your images stored on it wouldn't be one of them.

I'm not trying to talk you out of doing that (I have my own LrC library stored on SSD), rather I'm just trying to set your expectations in the event that you do go ahead with that plan.

 

[rjwata]

Just make sure you understand WHY you'll be doing that. If it's because you think that having your photos stored on an SSD will give you a performance boost in LrC, just be aware that it will make very little difference in that area. Plenty of good reasons to use SSD generally, but getting a performance boost in LrC from having your images stored on it wouldn't be one of them.

I'm not trying to talk you out of doing that (I have my own LrC library stored on SSD), rather I'm just trying to set your expectations in the event that you do go ahead with that plan.

Hi Jim,

Point well taken. For storage of photos, I'm less concerned about speed, but more concerned about reliability and portability. The WD_Black HDDs are plenty fast (up to 6Gb/s), but being mechanical devices, they're prone to failure. I've had two HDDs fail, but I've never had an SSD fail. I understand that SDDs degrade over time, but they seem to handle that fine internally and without intervention from me.

Since I keep my photos storage devices in a safe, I think HDDs would be more likely to fail with all that moving and jostling around. Sure, they park the heads to prevent damage, but if I dropped one, that would not be good. I bet SDDs are more likely to survive a drop.

Sincerely,
Robert

 

[Jim Wilde]

No worries, you've obviously thought this through. Some people think that SSDs are necessary for photo storage in order to get the best possible LrC performance, whereas in that specific case they would make virtually zero difference, so just wanted you to know that.

 

[GregJ]

Just make sure you understand WHY you'll be doing that. If it's because you think that having your photos stored on an SSD will give you a performance boost in LrC, just be aware that it will make very little difference in that area. Plenty of good reasons to use SSD generally, but getting a performance boost in LrC from having your images stored on it wouldn't be one of them.

I'm not trying to talk you out of doing that (I have my own LrC library stored on SSD), rather I'm just trying to set your expectations in the event that you do go ahead with that plan.

Jim, I respectfully disagree with part of what you are getting at here, or maybe just the way you said it. I know you know all about SSDs vs HDDs and that the gains to be had across the board by switching to SSDs for our data storage needs vs HDDs are dramatic. The only argument for an HDD over an SSD these days is price and size, and with the size well under 3 TB, the size issue is fairly moot in his case, and Robert appears not to be overly concerned with the financial aspect of making the wise decision to purchase a 4TB SSD for his data requirements (if it can be afforded and prices for that move have dramatically dropped).

The 4 TB SSD will be 10 to 20 times faster than the HDD he is using now (depending on what he buys) and far more durable and reliable (and much smaller and tougher). Like you said, he will see many benefits across the board in his computing life from this SSD for his data storage requirements. Any file loading, copying, backing up, handling and reads, writes, machinations, or anything else you can thing of will be dramatically faster and better.

I think what you are talking about is that once he is in the LR Development Module, depending on his ram amount, GPU and other factors, the SSD read of the file may not be improved much vs operating off an external SSD because of the way LR apparently handles that flow. But you never know when LR will do a dramatic fix on that well-known program weakness (as we have talked about many times). LR could be working on that right now. Adobe knows all about fast USB 3.2 Gen 2, Gen 2x2, USB 4 and TB3/4 connections and fast M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, as well as any SSD when compared to HDDs, even the old slow SATA SSDs when compared to the spinners. But I know what you are saying. There are many past threads on LR Dev Module behavior not speeding up noticeably when reading from an HDD vs a much faster and better SSD. But everything else surrounding that is way better.
So, I'm glad he is making the move.

 

[GregJ]

Hi Greg,

Thanks again for the great advice. I have a 2TB SSD that has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface, which I use to store my LrC catalog. I'll look into getting another SSD to use for my main photo storage. I have a 2019 iMac that has four USB 3.1 ports and two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, which can transfer data at 40 Gb/s. Since I don't have any USB 3.2 ports and USB 4 is 4 times faster than USB 3.2 Gen 2, I'll look into getting a SSD that's compatible with USB 4. I bet the cost a pretty penny!

Sincerely,
Robert

Robert, shop hard. But even a much cheaper SATA SSD is going to be 4 times faster than your spinner.

A current external SSD that is labeled USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) is going to be in the 350 range at 4 TB. That is going to be 10 to 13 times as fast as your spinner, depending on the SSD's controller and how you use it. You could get an external 4TB SSD that is rated at 40 Gbps (USB 4 and TB4 compatible) but you won't like the price. There are a couple of 4 TB external M.2, PCIe Gen 4 drives at 4 TB, but they are expensive. And remember, PCIe Gen 5 is about to happen with models on the market within the next 2 months. Gen 5 is 4 times faster than Gen 4! But the price for a 4 TB M.2 PCIe Gen 5 is at 4 TB is going to be crazy and you won't have the external connectivity to benefit from it for a while.
So I would avoid those top-end SSDs right now for my external date requirements at 4 TB (unless you are upgrading a boot drive at 1 or 2 TB).

By the way, that PCIe 2 SSD 2TB you mentioned.... Is that a separate external SSD you bought or the boot drive on the iMac? Your cat should be on that boot.

 

[GregJ]

Robert, shop hard. But even a much cheaper SATA SSD is going to be 4 times faster than your spinner.

A current external SSD that is labeled USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) is going to be in the 350 range at 4 TB. That is going to be 10 to 13 times as fast as your spinner, depending on the SSD's controller and how you use it. You could get an external 4TB SSD that is rated at 40 Gbps (USB 4 and TB4 compatible) but you won't like the price. There are a couple of 4 TB external M.2, PCIe Gen 4 drives at 4 TB, but they are expensive. And remember, PCIe Gen 5 is about to happen with models on the market within the next 2 months. Gen 5 is 4 times faster than Gen 4! But the price for a 4 TB M.2 PCIe Gen 5 is at 4 TB is going to be crazy and you won't have the external connectivity to benefit from it for a while.
So I would avoid those top-end SSDs right now for my external date requirements at 4 TB (unless you are upgrading a boot drive at 1 or 2 TB).

By the way, that PCIe 2 SSD 2TB you mentioned.... Is that a separate external SSD you bought or the boot drive on the iMac? Your cat should be on that boot.

Robert, I wanted to refer you to an interesting really fast external drive at the 4 TB level, since that is where were at in the exchange. If you are in the US, you can go to B&H and check it out. It is on sale for 348 bucks. Kingston XS 2000 4TB USB C 3.2 Gen 2x2 External SSD. That is an external 4TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD - a level for small portable external SSD drives that was really expensive to get to just a few weeks or months ago.

Note to all on the new confusing ratings for USB C connections: USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is 20 Gbps and Gen 2 is 10 Gbps. USB 4 and TB 3/4 is 40 Gbps if you can get there with your connected device. You have to be careful on the port connectivity and device ratings. Anyway, that is an example of an amazing external M.2 PCIe 4 SSD that has dramatically dropped in price. It fits in a shirt pocket.

Warning: You must make sure that your computer has a port that is good for USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 or it will probably throttle backwards to 5 Gbps.
I'm not a Mac guy, but you have to make sure your TB ports will be compatible with USB 3.2 on this SSD.

Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4 and/or USB 4 are cross-compatible (sort-of). Thunderbolt devices often can't work when plugged into the slower 5, 10 or even 20 Gbps USB-C ports that most computers have. But true USB 4 devices are backward compatible with older standards such as USB 3.2 / 3.1. Also, TB 4 is built on top of USB 4, so true TB 4 should be backwards compatible with all of that. But if you have an earlier TB port, just make sure you are compatible with the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 at 20 Gbps if you want to get that 20 Gbps. Again, there are a couple of TB4 / USB 4 SSDs where you will get the full 40 Gbps but that is the latest stuff and they are very expensive.

 

[PhilBurton]

No worries, you've obviously thought this through. Some people think that SSDs are necessary for photo storage in order to get the best possible LrC performance, whereas in that specific case they would make virtually zero difference, so just wanted you to know that.

I'm not a Mac user, so I will necessarily speak in generalities. For the same (or less) money as that bigger SSD, can you add more RAM? That may or may not yield a bigger performance upgrade. Same comment applies for your GPU.

 

[Replytoken]

Point well taken. For storage of photos, I'm less concerned about speed, but more concerned about reliability and portability. The WD_Black HDDs are plenty fast (up to 6Gb/s), but being mechanical devices, they're prone to failure. I've had two HDDs fail, but I've never had an SSD fail. I understand that SDDs degrade over time, but they seem to handle that fine internally and without intervention from me.

I would not lull your self into believing that because SSD's handle degradation internally without intervention that they are not prone to failure. When SSD's fail prematurely, they most often do so without any warning like a platter drive sometimes gives. That does not mean that you should not consider them, but all drives can fail at any point, and relying on a drive to be more reliable is not an ideal assumption for a backup strategy. A close friend and photo buddy who works as an IT director at a large law firm has told me of very premature SSD failures in the office, and they are mostly without any warning and usually unrecoverable.

--Ken

 

[clee01l]

I would not lull your self into believing that because SSD's handle degradation internally without intervention that they are not prone to failure. When SSD's fail prematurely, they most often do so without any warning like a platter drive sometimes gives. That does not mean that you should not consider them, but all drives can fail at any point, and relying on a drive to be more reliable is not an ideal assumption for a backup strategy. A close friend and photo buddy who works as an IT director at a large law firm has told me of very premature SSD failures in the office, and they are mostly without any warning and usually unrecoverable.

--Ken

IMO SSDs will fail after many more iteration and long after the typical HDD life.
As for unrecoverable, this is the reason that a system backup needs to be part of your system workflow. As you point out every drive will fail at some point. Backups are the only means to prevent data loss.

 

[GregJ]

Guys, I'm not a scientist, just a hobby techie, but I read everything that comes out on SSDs and follow the tech very closely, and I think some of you are being influenced by older notions when it comes to SSDs and their failure rates. In the last 2 years, SSDs have come a long way on that old problem. They are far more reliable than HDDs so that old concern has become a bit outdated.

Ironically, I say that, but right now in the news is the Samsung 990 Pro ( a top and super fast SSD) is having an aging and health problem that has been solved with firmware updates (or has it?)

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-firmware-update-released-ssd-health

 

[Victoria Bampton]

The thread's gone a bit off topic on the tech front, but I've kept it together as Robert is obviously interested in this tangent.

Just make sure you understand WHY you'll be doing that. If it's because you think that having your photos stored on an SSD will give you a performance boost in LrC, just be aware that it will make very little difference in that area. Plenty of good reasons to use SSD generally, but getting a performance boost in LrC from having your images stored on it wouldn't be one of them.

I'm not trying to talk you out of doing that (I have my own LrC library stored on SSD), rather I'm just trying to set your expectations in the event that you do go ahead with that plan.

I think what you are talking about is that once he is in the LR Development Module, depending on his ram amount, GPU and other factors, the SSD read of the file may not be improved much vs operating off an external SSD because of the way LR apparently handles that flow. But you never know when LR will do a dramatic fix on that well-known program weakness (as we have talked about many times). LR could be working on that right now. Adobe knows all about fast USB 3.2 Gen 2, Gen 2x2, USB 4 and TB3/4 connections and fast M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, as well as any SSD when compared to HDDs, even the old slow SATA SSDs when compared to the spinners. But I know what you are saying. There are many past threads on LR Dev Module behavior not speeding up noticeably when reading from an HDD vs a much faster and better SSD. But everything else surrounding that is way better.

It's good that we've got both sides, it balances the discussion nicely.

 

[rjwata]

By the way, that PCIe 2 SSD 2TB you mentioned.... Is that a separate external SSD you bought or the boot drive on the iMac? Your cat should be on that boot.

Hi Greg,
It's an external SSD. It seems plenty fast for me. I got it so I could use my LrC catalog on two different computers: a 2019 iMac and a 2012 MacBook Pro. As you can tell, I don't worry too much about having the fastest possible computer gear. As long as I can get the job done with the computers I have, then this Aggie is happy. Besides, I'd rather spend my money on fast glass than fast computers.
Sincerely, Robert