More room for Lr Catalog & Previews

[MCAsan]

I was starting to run out of space on my iMac’s internal 512GB SSD. So moved the Lightroom folder that has the catalog and previews to an external 1TB SSD connected via TB3. I got back 256GB of space on the internal SSD and now have plenty of space to build all the 1:1 previews for the ~100K images in the catalog. I changed the default catalog location in Preferences and verified all is well. The external drive is included in TM backups.

So if you have space constraints on your boot drive to handle your Lr catalog and previews, you might consider using an external fast drive on a fast transport. You can not notice any performance lost. I have not noticed any performance hit.

Your milage may vary.

 

[Apple fanboy]

I was starting to run out of space on my iMac’s internal 512GB SSD. So moved the Lightroom folder that has the catalog and previews to an external 1TB SSD connected via TB3. I got back 256GB of space on the internal SSD and now have plenty of space to build all the 1:1 previews for the ~100K images in the catalog. I changed the default catalog location in Preferences and verified all is well. The external drive is included in TM backups.

So if you have space constraints on your boot drive to handle your Lr catalog and previews, you might consider using an external fast drive on a fast transport. You can not notice any performance lost. I have not noticed any performance hit.

Your milage may vary.

I had a similar issue on my iMac. So I bought a Mac mini with a 2TB internal SSD.

 

[MCAsan]

The problem is really coming from the Previews more than the catalog file. Keeping 1:1 previews for 90K+ raw files takes up space. I have the raw images on an external drive. So having the catalog and previews on an external drive is no problem.

The new Mac minis are sweet. Huge step up from the previous generation. Looks like a PITA to add more memory; but, at least the user can do that.

 

[Apple fanboy]

The problem is really coming from the Previews more than the catalog file. Keeping 1:1 previews for 90K+ raw files takes up space. I have the raw images on an external drive. So having the catalog and previews on an external drive is no problem.

The new Mac minis are sweet. Huge step up from the previous generation. Looks like a PITA to add more memory; but, at least the user can do that.

I went with 32GB which should be more than I need for the next little while.

 

[MCAsan]

Agreed. We got our iMacs last year with 8GB and then I put 16GB additional to bring them to 24GB. I would not want less running Adobe apps, C1P, or most other photo editors and plugins.