Lightroom Setup

LostPhil · 12 Jul 2018 at 17:43

Hi all,

I've hit a bit of a low with regards to my photography and want to pick it back up again. One of the issues I currently have is with my home computer setup. How is everyone else running their photo storage?

My main computer is a laptop with a 128gb SSD as its only storage. I have a Synology NAS with 2TB of storage and Office 365 with a TB of OneDrive space.

If I keep the source files on my NAS, lightroom is slow as every time it loads a preview, it's doing it over the network. Smart previews kinda help, but they take up space on the SSD and it seems like I have to disconnect the NAS if I want to use them.

So, at the moment I bypass Lightroom completely and just shoot in JPG, delete the unwanted ones and save the untouched versions in OneDrive. It's just a pain when I want to edit/play around with a particular photo or manage my collection.

Ideally, I'd build a desktop with a big HDD backed up to the NAS/OneDrive but I can't afford it right now. Any other suggestions?

Raymond Lin · 12 Jul 2018 at 19:51

Ideally you need to do 3 stages

1 - PC, keep nothing here, so if it gets hit with a virus and your OS dies on its feet your files are okay.
2 - external HDD for processing. Better if you can run this as a dual mirror drive. Something like the WD Duo
3 - NAS for "archive" backup
4 - Cloud/off site.

RSR · 12 Jul 2018 at 21:01

Interesting topic, as I have been looking at a simlar setup options as I feel my current lightroom setup need a bit of a overhaul.

Does lightroom support working off a NAS? As I have been playing around with but seems to be hit and miss some times.

iamtheoneneo · 13 Jul 2018 at 10:40

yes all Adobe products can fetch and send from a NAS, you can make LR work off the cloud too, I tried it with Onedrive once, it was slow but it worked.
NAS will obviously be a bit better. I just prefer to have the NAS as a backup of the files and have a SSD drive dedicated to LR on my main computer.

LostPhil · 15 Jul 2018 at 22:25

Raymond Lin said:
Ideally you need to do 3 stages

1 - PC, keep nothing here, so if it gets hit with a virus and your OS dies on its feet your files are okay.
2 - external HDD for processing. Better if you can run this as a dual mirror drive. Something like the WD Duo
3 - NAS for "archive" backup
4 - Cloud/off site.

Perhaps I'll have to find an external drive to use via USB or even just connect the NAS via USB and see if it's any quicker. Always been wary of external drives, but if it's sitting on my desk, not gonna be much worse than an internal drive. I'll probably just keep my output files on the cloud as I won't be doing anything too important.

Minstadave · 15 Jul 2018 at 22:44

Raymond Lin said:
Ideally you need to do 3 stages

1 - PC, keep nothing here, so if it gets hit with a virus and your OS dies on its feet your files are okay.
2 - external HDD for processing. Better if you can run this as a dual mirror drive. Something like the WD Duo
3 - NAS for "archive" backup
4 - Cloud/off site.

Why keep no files on the PC? I keep all my catalogues on my PC whilst I work on them as its fastest, mirrored to an external drive and then backup to NAS/cloud.

Minstadave · 15 Jul 2018 at 22:45

LostPhil said:
Perhaps I'll have to find an external drive to use via USB or even just connect the NAS via USB and see if it's any quicker. Always been wary of external drives, but if it's sitting on my desk, not gonna be much worse than an internal drive. I'll probably just keep my output files on the cloud as I won't be doing anything too important.

If you really want to increase the speed I'd look at either an internal or external SSD to hold your files whilst you work on them. You already have a NAS to back them up so this should be robust.

In terms of speed, you've got:

NVME SSDs - 2-3GB/s
SATA SSDS - 500MB/s
Mechanical drives internally - 100-150MB/s
USB3 - 500MB/s
USB2 - 20-30MB/s
Gigabit network - 100MB/s

Raymond Lin · 15 Jul 2018 at 22:50

Minstadave said:
Why keep no files on the PC? I keep all my catalogues on my PC whilst I work on them as its fastest, mirrored to an external drive and then backup to NAS/cloud.

By files I mean the actual RAWs.

I have a separate HDD backing up the internal HDD daily.

Minstadave · 15 Jul 2018 at 22:55

Raymond Lin said:
By files I mean the actual RAWs.

I have a separate HDD backing up the internal HDD daily.

I keep all my RAW files on SSD (separate to OS drive) to edit them as that's the fastest. Don't you find it limiting accessing your RAW files over USB, or have you got a USB SSD?

Raymond Lin · 15 Jul 2018 at 22:58

Minstadave said:
I keep all my RAW files on SSD (separate to OS drive) to edit them as that's the fastest. Don't you find it limiting accessing your RAW files over USB, or have you got a USB SSD?

Thunderbolt.

Admiral Huddy · 16 Jul 2018 at 13:41

I have all my images (RAW) on a 2tb hard drive which LR point to. This drive is mirrored daily to a secondary 2tb drive, and periodically to an external drive. I toyed around with Know How Cloud storage but I found that it slows my PC down and a i started getting random re-boots. However, It a great tool for photo delivery.

I don't tend to stored the JPG equivalents.. I can always export them whenever I need them.

jasonsony735 · 1 Aug 2018 at 09:48

My current setup works like this ,

1 : 120GB SSD Running Windows 10 and nothing else!
2: Samsung Pro 500gb M.2 SSD Running Lightroom & Sony Vegas only ( Super fast ) I find this makes processing photos very quick with no lag.
3: When ever I put photos on my PC I have it setup to Automatically upload and store the photos on amazon Prime photo collection.
4 : I save and store edited photos on 1T Drive.

I find this works best for me and my pc runs super smooth this way. worst thing you can do is put stuff on your desktop and loadup screen so try and avoid this at all cost and keep LR on its own drive if possible on its own.