Bridge Cache-fast, Lightroom Cache-Sloooooow

Doing it right now.

PS: Well, it is noticeably faster and I can live with this. Time to reorganize how I use all my drives now, and backups.

WhooHoo! Some light has been shed!

I'd say take a close look at moving the Camera Raw cache over there too -- sometimes LR can get slowed down doing complex adjustments in the Develop module (the local adjustment brushes are an example of things that can get sluggish) so you might save yourself some future headaches by making that move!

As far as organization, I freely use external drives for library folders/files once I am done with the initial processing. So, what I do is I download/import a shoot into an internal drive, using LR to create a dated/named destination folder and then naming my files accordingly with a sequence# so that my LR catalog has that folder in a current shoots "mother folder" on my internal data drive. Then I do my processing and keywording and some kind of collection. At that point I do an Export to get stuff up to my Web/gallery host (PBase) and then I'm done with short-term processing.

From there I move the folder onto an external (USB 2.0) drive into a year-denominated "mother folder", all done in LR so that it all stays in my catalog. From there I back up to a separate external drive (which I unplug when I'm done backing up) and then it's time to move on. So, the bulk of my 40k or so library "lives" on internal drives, always accessible but I don't need the internal drive speed for when I occasionally have a reason to do something to one of them and my cache and catalog/previews are all on an internal drive. I can, if needed, select a whold shoot/folder and create 1:1 previews to speed up the Develop module for a whole shoot as well.

I'm moving the Cache over right now

Well, I'm relieved and happy you've had some real success! Sometimes people have problems and nobody has answers, and you just end up scratching your head and wondering if they ever solved the problem!

I'm still somewhat perplexed why Bridge works so well and LR doesn't on the Drobo

Well, I'd say it just has less "work" it is doing -- just bear in mind that LR is incorporating Catalog "stuff" into it's process while Bridge, not so much. I don't know if there is a big difference in their preview processing, maybe LR is doing more of that than Bridge?

In Library mode, what it could be doing more. The thumbnails aren't any sharper. Actually in Bridge I have some meta data displaying under each thumbnail which would be more work.

Yeah, I don't know -- maybe that would be something to ask either Victoria or the LR forum -- a bunch of real LR experts actively participate there, including Jeff Shewe, Martin Evening and Victoria and occasionally one or more of the developers, and someone may have some insight.

reading around I saw something about having a corrupt preview folder, so I deleted mine which was almost 4.2GB and rebuilt it and now its 1.6GB and its waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster than before !

under your lightroom folder there will be a file previews.lrdata (maybe a folder on PC) just delete it, but then you have to scroll through all your files to have it rebuild which took me probably 20 mins or so

but it seems to be well worth it so far

now on my screen I have the thumbs as small as possible with 15 x 9 of them at once and I can scroll up and down through the 28000 files without a hitch !

Ok. I've moved everything around. All my source images are on the Dobro, all the Libraries/Caches are on an internal drive and all is working well.

Well, good! Did you consider putting your most recent shoots on the internal while you do your initial processing?

This seems to be working well. I picked a few images that I know did not have 1:1 Previews generated and they zipped along fine in Develop. I'll leave it as is otherwise I have little use for the Drobo

Thanks to all for your assistance.

though i didn't have the same problem (i don't use LR, and i don't have a Drobo), i was victim to a monstrous cache that was really bogging down my computer performance...glad i got that sorted.