Lightroom import performance

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Dan
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I'm importing to an external hard drive USB 3 (.1?) and it seems to take an age, probably doesn't help that sometimes i'm looking at some of the images - but I need to find a faster way..

what kind of speeds do people get?

I'm importing from a UHS-ii card with a UHS-i card reader, but that doesn't look like a bottle neck right now.

These speeds seem slow for USB and slow for hard disks

lighroomimport.png

fluctuation.png
 
It’s looks like the write speed of the external USB HDD ;)
You need flash / SSD for super fast write speeds.
 
It’s looks like the write speed of the external USB HDD ;)
You need flash / SSD for super fast write speeds.

WD 16TB My Book Duo Desktop RAID External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBLWE0160JCH-EESN

it's 2 x 8TB Hard drives in Raid to 16TB

Would have thought it'd be faster, just found this

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sae9wL_008


So now I will update it, restart and test again
 
WD 16TB My Book Duo Desktop RAID External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBLWE0160JCH-EESN

it's 2 x 8TB Hard drives in Raid to 16TB

Would have thought it'd be faster, just found this

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sae9wL_008


So now I will update it, restart and test again

A RAID setup should yield better performance than what your getting :)
I’m going to move to a iPad Pro and cloud based workflow eventually, to speed things up.
Will also include onsite iCloud backups etc.
:D
 
I have an ssd that I import raws to, I get one big enough to do a years raws, they aren't that much. A small120gb ssd is used for cache and catalogue. It just flies.
External USB is for offsite backup only.
 
As above, I copy all new photos to a new folder on an SSD if it’s a new event. I then create a new catalogue stored in the same directory and finally import the photos into the LR catalogue from the SSD. Only seems to take a minute or two at most for up to a few thousand raw images.

I then work on the images on the SSD, and then at a later date, copy the entire directory including the LR catalogue to the raid disks. When you then open the Lr catalogue from the raid array it won’t find the images (thumbnails, previews and all edits are there), but you just click to find the file, point it to the matching image on the raid array and LR then finds all the rest of the files in the catalogue in a few seconds and you are good to go.

As you have done all your culling, building previews and editing whilst the files were on the SSD, once all copied to the raid disks performance should be acceptable.
 
My PC only has space for two SSDs and I use those for O/S, Apps and Gaming - when I rebuild the PC into a bigger tower I'll add more internal storage.
 
To echo the others, lightroom loves fast disk for cat and working raw files. Then just move them off (within lightroom to maintain catalogue links) to slow storage when finished with them.
 
To echo the others, lightroom loves fast disk for cat and working raw files. Then just move them off (within lightroom to maintain catalogue links) to slow storage when finished with them.

My catalog has 300k photos in and resides on the same external USB drive.

Do you create a new catalog for every import? or can you move photos ( with edits ) between catalogs easily?
 
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Dan, for high volume professional work, I used to have a “working” catalog that had relatively current pictures in, and archive anything over a year old into a catalog for the year it was taken in. I’d use the “export to another catalog” (or something like that) option and then, after checking the export had worked, and backing up the working catalogue, I’d remove the exported pictures from the working catalogue (but obviously not delete the originals from disk). I’d do this tidy up a couple of times a year.

That kept the working catalogue at a relatively reasonable size, and meant that I could always open up the older catalogues at any time to find what I needed. This improved the performance of the working catalogue nicely.
 
Dan, for high volume professional work, I used to have a “working” catalog that had relatively current pictures in, and archive anything over a year old into a catalog for the year it was taken in. I’d use the “export to another catalog” (or something like that) option and then, after checking the export had worked, and backing up the working catalogue, I’d remove the exported pictures from the working catalogue (but obviously not delete the originals from disk). I’d do this tidy up a couple of times a year.

That kept the working catalogue at a relatively reasonable size, and meant that I could always open up the older catalogues at any time to find what I needed. This improved the performance of the working catalogue nicely.

Cheers Andy, I'll have a look at organising it properly.
 
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