Performance of Lightroom Classic on MacBook with photos on SSD

[cooyah]

Hello all

i have the following setup:

- MacBook Pro 2020

- extern SanDisk SSD 1TB GB with all my Photos (85.000 photos = 500GB )

- Using Lightroom Classic (in favor of the CC version, because i do not want to sync it all to the cloud)

- Size of the Lightroom Libary (also on SSD): Catalougue 620MB, Smart Previews 1,8 GB, Previews 58GB (!)

browsing through the catlogue is very very slow. I should not be my setup i assume, as this is quite recent. I wonder if i should copy the libary and all attached files to the internal MacBook SSD, and only leave the images external?

do you have any suggestions for a performance boost?

Thanks a lot

[dj_paige]

The photo files don't need to be moved to an SSD. Putting photo files on an SSD will produce trivial increases in speed, and not at all when browsing in the Library Module. The catalog file needs to be on an SSD (if you have one and you have the space on that SSD), that will improve browsing speed. Also making sure you have built standard previews for all of your photos will increase browsing speed.

[cooyah]

Thanks

I need to put the photos on SSD, as my internal space is limited. so both photos and catalogue is on the same, external SSD (UsbC) disc.

[GoldingD]

You can put the catalog on a different drive than the photos.

Best practice is to place the catalog on your fastest hard drive, provided it has the space. Should have at least 30% free on that hard drive with catalog (some say 20%). And yes percent.

Preview files/folders must be on same drive.

Also best practice to place Camera RAW CACHE on fast hard drive.

Photos can be on any hard drive, even a NAS (do not place catalog on NAS) LrC does not read those files all that often.

[cooyah]

Thanks.

you mean Preview files/Folders must be on the same drive as the catalog (catalogue-name.lrcat)?

[dj_paige]

Actually, you can have catalog on one disk and previews on another disk (using something called a symbolic link, you can look up the details) but then there is a performance penalty. This slows down the exact thing you said was slow previously, the scrolling through your catalog is where you would need the previews and catalog on your fastest disk.

Really, the best thing to do if you have a concern about scrolling speed in your catalog is to get a SSD that is large enough to hold your catalog and previews and reasonable expansion for future previews (and also room for anything else you want to put on the SSD).

[cooyah]

yes, i do have enough space on my external SSD (1TB). this is were i orignially store Photos AND Catalogue (plus previews). my question is, does this negatively effect performance, if all stored on one place? (if so, i could move Catalogue & previews to the internal SSD fromo my MacBook).

thx!

[dj_paige]

Probably not. Browsing in the Library Module doesn't really access the photos*, only the catalog and previews. So it doesn't really matter where the photos are stored for Library Module browsing.

* -- if the previews are no longer stored, then it does access the photos.