On Jun 15, 2014, at 4:25 PM, Richard Womer <[email protected]> wrote:
> For those of us stingier and more cautious, would there be a > performance boost putting LR, the catalog, the cache, or some > combination on an SSD? Stingier … sure … but more cautious? I'm not sure I get that. I imagine there would be a performance improvement for some combinations of the app, the cache, and the catalog. How much of an improvement I couldn't say without testing a configuration. - I think the cache is the least valuable thing to worry about. I've had mine set to 1G, 10G, 20G, etc and noticed very little real improvement on performance. - Similarly, LR access to the original files is important but since, for the most part, it is read-only the best strategy there is to separate it from the volume where the LR catalog is and be reasonably speedy. It would be interesting to have a second SSD on a similar speed bus to test against compared to the FW800 link to reasonably quick external drives, but I don't have the opportunity with the hardware I have to try that out. - Putting LR and the catalog folder on the fastest storage medium is likely the most valuable thing to do. LR talks back and forth with the database and the previews constantly as you work, so making that as speedy as possible is essential. LR also uses tons of temporary space, so making sure that the OS startup volume is fast, that there's plenty of free space, and that there's plenty of free space on the LR catalog folder volume is also probably pretty valuable. - Making sure that the OS services that LR depends upon are also as fast as possible is also pretty important. LR multithreads … a multi-processing environment in terms of CPU and plenty of fast RAM to feed it is important. I short cut all of the above by putting the entire OS, all the apps, the Camera Raw cache, and the LR catalog all on the fastest bus and fastest medium, with a fast quad-core processor and plenty of RAM. My goal was to make a fluid and reasonably priced system to do the photography, and not spend forever trying to find the best configuration for optimum performance. I made access to the original files the slowest link, the FW800 bus to a external drive. The only way to further improve speed with this base hardware configuration would be to see if a Thunderbolt external disk array would net a useable improvement, and at what price. The total system I've put together, including the four external hard drives (for TM backup, working photo repository, two archives) would be about $3500 retail. Not cheap but not off the edge considering the performance. I'm moderately stingy when it comes to buying stuff I don't need or want, this was less expensive in dollars than the original Macintosh + external drive + printer system I bought back in 1984, with more valuable money. The difference in performance and capability (and for the buck) is mind-boggling if your memory stretches back that far… :-) Godfrey --- "The fact that nobody understands you doesn't make you an artist." -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
