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Liambm
Known Participant
March 10, 2020
Question

Where should I store lightroom catalog?

  • March 10, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 754 views

Hi, I'm looking to put my lightroom catalog on an external drive. I'm currently using a 100mb/s HDD which seems to be working okish.

 

I'm curious to know if I bought a Samsung T5 (500mb/s SSD) or their new T7 (1000mb/s) if I'd notice any speed improvements? 

 

If yes would it be worth the extra £50 to jump from the T5 to the T7? How much of a difference will this actually make to loading and editing photos?

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    2 replies

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 17, 2020

    The faster the drive, the faster Lightroom Classic will be. I can't give you any solid figures, but I think changing from 100 mb/sec to 500 mb/sec will give you a good speed increase, while going to 1000 mb/sec might not be that much faster anymore. It also depends on the speed of the USB ports in your computer.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
      Theresa J
      Community Expert
      Theresa JCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 10, 2020

      Are you using Lightroom or Lightroom Classic? Lightroom stores all of your photos in the cloud so you won't need the extra space unless you turn on the option to store a local synced copy. I can't really speak to the speed of the drive though.

      if you are using Lightroom Classic, you are probably better off getting a larger external hard drive for your photos and just keep the catalog on the internal drive. 

      harrybarnettw
      harrybarnettw
      Inspiring
      July 2, 2021

      Do you need to backup the catalog and previews that are on the internal drive or is keeping one copy on the internal drive sufficient? Also, what about the backups? Where should those be stored?

      JohanElzenga
      Community Expert
      JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 2, 2021
      @harrybarnettw wrote:

      Do you need to backup the catalog and previews that are on the internal drive or is keeping one copy on the internal drive sufficient? Also, what about the backups? Where should those be stored?


      Guess what happens to your catalog if that external drive crashes... You should always make backups of your catalog, and those backups should be on a different drive. Either use Lightroom's built-in catalog backup, or use a general backup utility, but do it.  Previews do not need to be backed up. Lightroom can rebuild them if needed.

       

      -- Johan W. Elzenga
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