Lightroom Catalog (Where to put it)

Hey guys. I am a long time Aperture user and know it like the back of my hand. Due to a few reasons I am making the switch to LR4. I just have a question about the LR Catalog. In Aperture I used a managed library so all of my images were stored inside the library, thus the library needed to be on a large drive for storage.

However, since LR is a referenced database, I am wondering the following:

I have an SSD boot drive. Would it make things run faster to keep my image files on a standard large drive and the LR Catalog itself on the SSD? How big does the Catalog itself get? I know it stores metadata, keywords, the directory etc, but it also stores preview info. How big does that preview file get? I am just wondering if I can store the images on a large drive and the actual LR Cat file on the SSD, or if the LR Cat file should be on the same drive as the images due to size. I obviously do not want to fill up my SSD with large preview info for just a few thousand images.

Cheers

I think I have discovered my own answer. I created a test catalog and imported 400 images from a shoot and made edits to about 30 of them. The Catalog is already at 400+MB. looks like it will stay on the larger drive and I will just leave the application itself on the SSD.

Cheers

Hmm, if I were buying an SSD, I'd get one large enough to install Lightroom and Photoshop, to keep my Lightroom Catalog (with the previews until they "expire" after 30 days and are deleted), and then also to hold my Camera Raw Cache, which holds "full-sized" previews (used to edit). In fact those previews are very valuable for "quick grabs" from that SSD.

My images would go first onto a fast internal drive for short-term processing, and then after that I'd move the shoot folders (with the images), using Lightroom to move them, onto an external "Library" drive. My backups are done to another external drive that normally stays disconnected.

But, I don't have and SSD drive, and I understaind that the bigger ones can get "spendy", I won't try to tell you to spend money that I can't spend!

My game plan at this point I think is to have the catalog and images stored on a HDD but have the application and the current project I am editing on the SSD. Then once I am done with that project, move the folder with the images over into the filing system of the HDD to free up space on the SSD. I have 128GB SSD (Samsung 840 Pro) So there is plenty of room for the OS, Apps and the images from the current project I am editing. If figure if the RAW files and the application are on the SSD it should make the edit processing faster.

P.S. Tony - I saw your link for your Mt. St. Helens stuff. Pretty cool. We have some friends that have a cabin on Silver Lake that we stay at for the weekends sometimes in the summer. I got up at 4:30 one morning to get up there by sunrise. Here is a picture from that morning. No picture I have ever seen can really capture the feeling when you are up there alone at dawn. The mountain is so ominous. I understand why people way back in the day thought there were fire gods and such. That thing looks like it is staring right at you when you are standing up at Johnston Ridge. (I still have not figured out how to load a full size image on here and keep it under 150kb)

Ah, 5ifty, let's see, yeah you have to decide what goes where...

And, Mount St Helens, yeah!

As to loading pics to here, it depends on the software you are using ...what are you using?

The best way is to put it on a photo sharing site that does not have such stringent size restrictions and hot-link it to here, using the yellow icon. It still should not be more than 1024 pixels on the longer side, but it can be any file size because it is not using POTN band width.