• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

more room for Lr Catalog and Previews

Status
Not open for further replies.

mcasan

Active Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2015
Messages
630
Location
Atlanta
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
8
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I was starting to run out of space on my iMac’s internal 512GB SSD. So moved the Lightroom folder that has the catalog and previews to an external 1TB SSD connected via TB3. I got back 256GB of space on the internal SSD and now have plenty of space to build all the 1:1 previews for the ~100K images in the catalog. I changed the default catalog location in Preferences and verified all is well. The external drive is included in TM backups.

So if you have space constraints on your boot drive to handle your Lr catalog and previews, you might consider using an external fast drive on a fast transport. You can not notice any performance lost. I have not noticed any performance hit.

Your milage may vary.;)

Happy Holidays to all!!!
 
Your catalogue shouldn't be that big. It is just code. It won't take up any space on the drive. Your previews are pretty big by the looks of it. Do you keep then forever? Mine are set to delete after 30 days and currently it is just 4GB. Personal preference on how long to keep them but how often do you go back a few years to edit an entire folder of files?

Good idea to keep files on an external drive. Adobe recommends to keep 20% of the drive space free. Unofficial rule of thumb is 100GB.
 
Mine are set to delete after 30 days and currently it is just 4GB
This parameter is just for 1:1 previews. I don't know a mean to ask LR to delete other previews. 4GB is very few for a preview folder, mine is 53 GB (with the preference parameter set as yours). How many photos do you have referenced in your catalog?
 
I never want to delete 1:1 previews unless I run out of disk space. And then it is time for a bigger drive. HDD are dirt cheap. SSD start to cost over 512K.
 
If it works for you then go with it. Storage is inexpensive.
 
What is the purpose of storing 1:1 previous with catalog on a separate external HDD? Why not putting the catalog in the same external HDD as the photos? 1TB is more than enough for tour photos volume.

Sent using Tapatalk
 
What is the purpose of storing 1:1 previous with catalog on a separate external HDD? Why not putting the catalog in the same external HDD as the photos? 1TB is more than enough for tour photos volume.

Sent using Tapatalk
The accepted wisdom seems to have your catalog and photos on separate drives.
 
The accepted wisdom seems to have your catalog and photos on separate drives.
I have no idea where you got that wisdom, but AFAIK that is certainly not true. The accepted wisdom is to keep your catalog folder on your fastest drive, because Lightroom constantly reads and writes to it. Because your images are not written to they can be on a slower drive without a hit in performance. But if that fastest drive has plenty of room for your images too, then there is no reason to keep them separate from the catalog.
 
What is the purpose of storing 1:1 previous with catalog on a separate external HDD? Why not putting the catalog in the same external HDD as the photos? 1TB is more than enough for tour photos volume.
Umberto, the OP is storing the catalog and previews on an external SSD, which makes perfect sense to me as that's exactly what I've been doing for most of this year (and for exactly the same reason, i.e. to relieve space pressure on my system drive). And my images are on a separate external HDD.
 
Why wouldn't you store the images on a SSD together with the catalog? If you have plenty of space in it, there shouldn't be any reason why you have images in one external Drive and the LR catalog with ALL of the 1:1 previews on a separate SSD.

Sent using Tapatalk
 
Speaking personally, I don't have enough space for my images in the same SSD as my catalogs. Even if I did, I doubt I'd use more expensive SSD space for image files, as the only marginal benefit would be when copying the images during import. After that, there's no noticeable performance advantage from having the images on SSD versus HDD.
 
I have no idea where you got that wisdom, but AFAIK that is certainly not true. The accepted wisdom is to keep your catalog folder on your fastest drive, because Lightroom constantly reads and writes to it. Because your images are not written to they can be on a slower drive without a hit in performance. But if that fastest drive has plenty of room for your images too, then there is no reason to keep them separate from the catalog.

I was responding to a suggestion to put the catalog on the external HDD together with the photos and Previews. If the internal HDD (or SSD) is no slower than the the external HDD (or SSD) then my understanding is that if the Photos are on the external HDD (or SSD) then it would be better from a performance viewpoint to have the catalog on the internal HDD (or SSD).
 
I was responding to a suggestion to put the catalog on the external HDD together with the photos and Previews. If the internal HDD (or SSD) is no slower than the the external HDD (or SSD) then my understanding is that if the Photos are on the external HDD (or SSD) then it would be better from a performance viewpoint to have the catalog on the internal HDD (or SSD).
Well, in theory this would perhaps be true (because separate drives would mean you spread access actions), but I doubt you will notice a difference. The moment that Lightroom reads the raw data, it has no reason to read or write anything in the catalog. It's just waiting for those data to arrive. So apart from reasons of drive capacity, I would not bother. It is certainly not accepted wisdom that you should have your catalog and photos on separate drives.
 
I was responding to a suggestion to put the catalog on the external HDD together with the photos and Previews. If the internal HDD (or SSD) is no slower than the the external HDD (or SSD) then my understanding is that if the Photos are on the external HDD (or SSD) then it would be better from a performance viewpoint to have the catalog on the internal HDD (or SSD).

It is rare that an external drive is faster than an internal drive. Sure, it can happen, but it is rare. Even if the drive itself is as fast, it is rare that the connection mechanism is as fast. And even if not that, caching is often done differently for external devices to make them more immune to disconnect which might make them slower also. There are exceptions where external may be as-fast or faster but... I think for most people relatively rare.

Another point to consider is an external drive is generally less reliable than an internal drive. Even if the innate hardware is not less reliable (and it often is less reliable as they try to make it cheap), the introduction of an external cable (which can be accidentally disconnected, damaged, loose) introduces an element of risk, so in an "all other things being equal" world, I would keep critical stuff like catalog internal where you can.

To Johan's point -- it is not accepted wisdom that you should have your catalog and photos separately. But don't read too much into that -- it is also not accepted wisdom that they must be on the same drive. The choice should be made for many considerations - space, need for transport, probably speed last (in terms of photo location speed for accessing the raw image is relatively unimportant compared to other things like CPU speed).
 
To Johan's point -- it is not accepted wisdom that you should have your catalog and photos separately. But don't read too much into that -- it is also not accepted wisdom that they must be on the same drive.
Agreed. Like I said earlier, the only accepted wisdom is that you should put the catalog on the fastest drive you've got.
 
No room for both catalog and 1:1 previews on internal SSD. So via TB3 I have a 1TB SSD with read/write times in the range of 350/350MBs. So I put the catalog and previews on that SSD. My RAID 0 also connected via TB3 has read/write times in the 320/335MBs range. So I put my catalog and previews on the fastest external drive. So Adobe apps and supporting files on Mac HD SSD, folders of images on external RAID 0, and catalog and previews on external SSD.

I might move the catalog and previews to the RAID 0 if I replace the RAID's WD red drives with faster WD Black drives.
 
It is rare that an external drive is faster than an internal drive. Sure, it can happen, but it is rare. Even if the drive itself is as fast, it is rare that the connection mechanism is as fast. And even if not that, caching is often done differently for external devices to make them more immune to disconnect which might make them slower also. There are exceptions where external may be as-fast or faster but... I think for most people relatively rare.

Another point to consider is an external drive is generally less reliable than an internal drive. Even if the innate hardware is not less reliable (and it often is less reliable as they try to make it cheap), the introduction of an external cable (which can be accidentally disconnected, damaged, loose) introduces an element of risk, so in an "all other things being equal" world, I would keep critical stuff like catalog internal where you can.

To Johan's point -- it is not accepted wisdom that you should have your catalog and photos separately. But don't read too much into that -- it is also not accepted wisdom that they must be on the same drive. The choice should be made for many considerations - space, need for transport, probably speed last (in terms of photo location speed for accessing the raw image is relatively unimportant compared to other things like CPU speed).

Thank you both Linwood and Johan for your collective clarification.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top