Lightroom slow performance

[mattwatt]

I posted something similar two months ago. LrC is responding very slowly. Yesterday, importing 13 JPG photos took longer than usual. When I made an edit, it took many seconds to minutes for the action to appear in History. Today, while I'm out of the office, a coworker reported to me that renaming photos and other actions was a problem.

We save our photos to a server. Lightroom runs on a local computer and points to the server files.

The server connection appears good. Lightroom is up-to-date (14.1.1). We have tried closing and reopening Lightroom and rebooting the computer.

What else should I look at for solutions? Specifically, do any of you keep photos on a server and have similar performance issues with Lightroom? Thank you!

[johnrellis]

Many people store photos on a server without problem.  To determine whether your server is the proximate cause, make a folder on your Desktop containing several dozen photos.  Make a new test catalog and import the photos in that folder using the Import Add option (so the photos don't get moved or copied).  Do you experience performance problems?

[mattwatt]

Hi John, I followed your steps using a new batch of 386 photos. The import took less than 2 seconds. Same for renaming all 386 photos.

By comparison, I imported the photos to our server. The catalog file, by the way, is housed on the local drive and always has been. This import took 3.5 minutes. Adding them to a collection took nearly 2 minutes. Renaming all the photos lasted 7+ minutes.

One difference I noticed between importing to the server and your method - we create backup copies to the local drive.

Further, with no other LR functions running (i.e., importing, renaming, etc.), I switched to Develop, selected a photo, and more than 2 minutes passed before previous edits appeared in History. Making an edit of any kind (WB, Highlights, etc.) took 2+ minutes to appear in History. Exporting one photo took more than 2 minutes.

Our library currently holds 311,617 photos. In other threads about slow performance, I saw people ask for the System Info, so I'm including that here.

[johnrellis]

So that strongly suggests the issue is with the file server. NAS is often much slower than a local attached disk, but not usually that slow.

Do you have anit-virus/malware running on the Mac? If so, try temporarily disabling it to see if it's a cause. There have been scattered reports here that can cause LR to run very slowly, and it might be even slower scanning files on a file server.

I'm not expert with NAS, but others here are experienced. What brand and model?

[mattwatt]

We don't have any anti-virus or malware installed on the Mac. Our issues have returned to intermittent - sometimes day-to-day where we get through a full day with solid performance, other times the slow performance returns on one picture and not the next. All signs seem to be pointing to the NAS/network connection.

[AxelMatt]

...

We save our photos to a server. Lightroom runs on a local computer and points to the server files.

....

By @mattwatt

I would first try to narrow down the problem.

Try to store several images in a folder on the insternal hard disk. Then import the images in Lightroom from this folder. Check if you see the same slowness.

If LR acts much faster there's problem with your network/server.

[mattwatt]

Yes, that was suggested earlier, and I explained above the results. It does seem to be a problem with the network/server. Thank you.

[KR Seals]

What is your connection/interface with the server? Ethernet? WiFi? Speed of your connection? Server drive failing?

Is is possible that others are using the server (different files, of course) at the same time?