brand new computer with first import of some photos stuck on "fetching initial previews"

[nutmix5]

I just installed lr classic (8.0) on my win 10 machine with 6GB ram, fast SATA SSD, dual core i5 etc.  So it had no pictures. A blank slate.

i imported my first set of 900 jpegs from a holiday.  The jpegs were on the SSD (not SD card), so imported without moving.  I took the import defaults (e.g. embed + sidecar) even though i have no idea what this means, I am assuming LR knows best.

I have now been waiting 3 hours for them to import.  It is pogressing but VERY slowly.  I see very low res thumbnails in the library module, but cant zoom in on any of them yet.  At the top, the progress bar is showing 50%.  Above this, it permanently says "fetching initial previews".

I have been using lightroom since the first version, and have never seen this issue. Its it a bug in version 8? I cant live with taking 6 hours to import a few Gig of photos. On my previous machine, importing a few thousand photos of the same size would take max. 5 minutes.  The photos are already on the HD, yet it wont let me zoom in on them.

What does fetching initial previews even mean? It should just be importing them (and creating previews if thats what it must do).

Am I doing somethign wrong? Should I disable all previews?

The jpegs are from a Sony A6000, and are around 5MB each.

I have plenty of space on the HD, and windows was re-installed not that long ago. If I look in the task manager, disk is 3%, memory 50% and cpu around 60% with lightroom taking 40%.  So the computer is not doing much.

[dj_paige]

This seems to me like a hardware problem, the SSD isn't working properly, or the connection to the motherboard or to the USB port isn't a good one, or something like that.

[nutmix5 · Accepted solution]

Im pretty sure the SSD is fine,  I just ran crystal mark and some other tests and its fast (500MB/s). the SMART error notfication is showing no errors.

I gave up importing, deleted it from LR, then impored again setting previews option to "minimal". This imported my 1000 photos in about 30 seconds v.s 6 hours with the previews.

So problem solved - dont use the default "embend + sidecar".

I have no idea what the difference between these to options is, but I can view and edit my photos without any speed issues now they are imported.

[Jao vdL]

embedded and sidecar applies to raw files. It imports the jpeg previews that are embedded in every raw file or uses a buddy (sidecar) jpeg file that sometimes accompanies raw files (for example if you shoot raw+jpeg). So basically it uses the camera generated jpeg as the initial review for raw files. If you shoot jpeg this really is immaterial and Lightroom should just take the jpeg itself. It is not clear why your first import hung but I don't think it had to do with the preview choice. Strange anyway.