is it ok to work from external hard drive??

[leeadaniel]

Hi,
I run LR2 from a Imac Osx 1'.5. Although all my image files are stored and worked from a western digital Mybook external drive which are then backed up to disk. Is this acceptable??The reason I ask is that LR2 appears to be running very slow of late. Is this due to working from the external drive??Would it be better to transfer all the images to the desktop and work from here?I would rather work from the external drive if possible as the internal drive is used for my partners graphic design applications, but at the moment the slow speed is becoming an issue.
Many thanks.

 

[dj_paige]

There are a number of possible reasons for slow performance. If your External HD provided enough speed in the past, the problem is a new one, then I wouldn't think the problem is the drive.

One thing you ought to try, in Lightroom, is Edit->Catalog Settings->Relaunch and Optimize.

Another problem may be that the USB connection is flaky. Can you try plugging the drive into a different USB port? If there is a way to examine transfer speed from the External HD to the computer, please check the transfer speed.

 

[Robert T Higaki]

I primarily work off the external drive. My USB works fine with me- no speed issues. I did try using a firewire and the speed picked up. But, because of the limited firewire ports on my computer, I had to resort to USB. I did try to use eSATA which is suppose to be even faster but I could not make the connection work

Bob- the slide shooter at heart

 

[MarkNicholas]

I generally work from an external drive and have no problems.

 

[bigG]

My understanding is that USB 2.', while on paper is as fast as Firewire 4'', uses more processor power to tranfer information than firewire. So if your computer is already working hard on something, USB tranfers could slow things down more. Not sure how this compares to eSATA.

Maybe if your Lightroom catalog is getting large or you have a lot of previews rendering, this on top of the extra processing power needed by USB could slow things down a bit.

Firewire is always better/faster at sustained data transfer than USB 2.'. I have had no issues working from my Firewire drives, but USB drives do tend to slow down when doing heavy work.

 

[hassiman]

Take a close look at the CalDigit VR Mini. Bus-powered external RAID '-1-JBOD with FW 8''/4''/USB2.'/eSATA ports and in no bigger than the palm of my hand. Has an LCD status display and is wicked FAST. I do all my LR work on one. I'm working with 5''MB scan TIFF files so I'm pushing the envelope. These babies were made to work with huge video throughput so photo stuff is no sweat.

www.caldigit.com

http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_caldigit_vr_mini.html

I do not work for CalDigit.