Lightroom is very slow on import onto an external ssd

[DaveWeg]

Hello, 

I just upgraded my Mac Book to a M1 Mac Book Pro 2020 with 16GB Ram. I have an external SSD with 2 TB Storage, read and write speed up to 1050MB/s. 

This should be fast. Importing 20 GB of Pictures now takes over an hour though, and the Mac Book actually gets hot.

Directly copying the same data from my cameras Card to the SSD takes about 2 Minutes.

I am running Lightroom Classic v.12.5

Mac OS 13.5.1

The catalogue is stored on the internal SSD and the Data Folders are on the external SSD. (Maybe that's the reason?) 

On my old Mac Book Pro 2012 importing 20 GB onto an internal SSD took about 3 Minutes. 

Is there a way of doing this faster? 

Thank you

[DaveWeg]

Addition: 

Manually copying the same data to the destination and then just adding the the pictures to the catalogue without moving them took the expected 3 minutes of time. 

[Sameer K]

Hey, @DaveWeg. Thanks for sharing the details. There are a few things that can slow down the operation.

What type of previews are you creating when importing in Lightroom? Even when you're creating standard size previews, the selected size of standard previews in settings can slow the process down.

Check Catalog Settings > File Handling > Standard Preview Size and set it to the lowest.

Are you applying any metadata, or develop presets at Import? Try skipping this and test the result.

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks!

Sameer K

[DaveWeg]

Hello Sameer,

thanks for your answer.

I changed the settings you suggested, but this did not speed up the process.

There are no presets or metadata changes I apply.  

I copied 150 pictures (5GB RAW files)  from my SD card to the SSD in 30 seconds. 

Lightroom import managed to import 8 pictures in 60 seconds.. 

I found the bad guy: I had Adobe DNG Converter installed, since I need it to run LR Timelapse. 

After uninstalling this, Lightroom import managed 22 pictures on higher settings in 60 seconds, which is significantly faster. 

After reinstalling it still imports fast, so the issue seems to be solved. 

[Sameer K]

Awesome! Glad to know it is fixed for you now. Please feel free to explore the community.

We're here to help.
Sameer K