Speed issues with LR 5.3

[mak65]

I went from LR 3.6 to LR 5.3 not too long ago when my old system crashed. My old OS was Windows 7, the new OS is Win 8.1. I keep LR on my system's internal HD but all images are downloaded to an external HD and a second external HD backs up only images from the first.

Long story short, I never had issues with 3.6 nor with 5.3 until very recently. With 3.6, and until the last few weeks with 5.3, opening LR was almost instantaneous. Now when I open LR it takes forever to completely open all the panels and any open folder images. If I click on an image to work on it the image takes a bit to load and any changes I make crawl. Also, I noticed that lately thumbnail images sometimes appear pixelated or blurred. Actually, making any choices crawl. I haven't upgraded to 5.4 simply because the changes I read about don't impact me (that I'm aware of).

If it makes a difference my total images number about 15K and are in one catalog. I don't see how that would have an affect, though, as it never mattered in the past. I'm sure many others have larger collections.

Any ideas on what may have changed? Would the upgrade possibly help the speed?

Thanks in advance.

Michael

 

[Tony Jay]

Hi Michael.

Based on the information shared it is impossible to exactly diagnose the issue here.
If you are correct and Lr5.4 ran nicely for a while and now does not then I would suggest that the problem lies with a hardware component

Sometimes having a hard drive that relatively full can impact performance.
Maybe the internal drive is nearly full or perhaps even the external drives holding your image collection.

Check your RAM.

There are also other possibilities here.

I agree that the issue is not related to catalog size - many people run with catalogs with >500k images with no issues.

Tony Jay

 

[mak65]

Tony:

Thanks! I'm not a computer whiz but I can give you what I see.

My internal HD is 2TB and 1.72TB are free. First external HD, which has files from previous computer and now backs up ALL files of my internal HD is 3TB and is 1.69TB free. This is the HD that LR references when accessing images. My second external HD (also 3TB) only backs up photo files from the first external HD. It has 2.5TB free.

I do have what appears to be some type of drive referred to as a "Recovery Image" that has 1.85GB of 15.2GB free. Is this the RAM?

Michael

 

[Tony Jay]

It seems that overfull hard drives are not the issue.
Actual failing of the hard drive could still be an issue though.

RAM is your memory - you have listed yours as 8GB.
RAM stands for Random Access Memory.

Occasionally other types of software can interfere with Lightroom - anti-virus software springs to mind.

I would suggest finding someone who knows hardware - your computer vendor comes to mind - who can check the major components to exclude them as contributing to the problem.

Tony Jay

 

[mak65]

Thanks Tony. I will check into it.

Michael