What's bottle-necking my editing speed?

Hey everyone,

Been on these forums for over 4 years but rarely post anymore since I've been so busy with school but this is a question that just been begging to be answered since it's slowing me down astronomically.

Firstly, I'm using LR 5.3 64-bit. The main issue is speed of applying edits to images as well as going through the images and using the zoom at any factor.

Here's the specs of my computer:

Asus Z170A LGA1151 MOBO
16GB - Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400Mhz RAM (stock clock)
i7 6700k 4.0Ghz Quad-core (stock clock)
Radeon Sapphire R9 280 (stock clock)
EVGA SuperNOVA 750W PSU
Crucial MX100 256GB SSD (contains all programs and OS)
ProRaid HFR2-SU3S2 Raid system with 4X HGST Deskstar 3.5in 2tb 7200RPM drives plugged in via Firewire to USB 3.0 (This setup contains all of my work files [CR2 files and edited files])

That should be all of the important information. My best guess is that my RAID system is just too slow for the rest of the system, but other programs slow down too and I did a test with files on my SSD and it was no different. Catalogs are on the RAID too. I'm pretty frustrated after spending $1400 on a computer several months ago and getting hardly any better performance over my previous laptop which was 4 years old and had similar specs but much older.

Any help would be great!

I believe the Asus Z170A has a M.2 port. Use that instead of the SSD that you are using and
you will see a speed bump.

Regards,

110yd

I'd anticipate that my system would be exponentially faster than my old laptop which had an SSD/HDD hybrid drive in it (about the second fastest speed behind an SSD at the time, but still exponentially slower). There must be something else, but I can look into this. Don't really want to buy another SSD if possible

110yd

further research and I'm absolutely blown away by the price of these drives! They're ridiculously cheap! What am I missing here? I'd be more than happy to purchase one of these and move a massive majority of my data onto one of these, but I feel like there has to be a catch. Not sure this will speed up my editing times though

I was juggling multiple balls when responding to the original post. The M.2 drive is multiple times faster than the SSD that you are using. The SSD uses a PCIe interface which is much faster than SATA. I am not completely clear on the RAID configuration you have. Does it involve an external box with multiple drives just for your DATA???

Regards,

110yd

The short answer (and obnoxious one, sorry!) is LightRoom is your bottleneck.

I don't think M2 will help, if the delay is in the RAID array.

Where is your LR library? And the files your editing?


You say the array is plugged in "via Firewire to USB3"
I don't even know what that means, but it doesn't sound kosher.
What kind of array is it? Is it RAID 5?

Other than my tongue and cheek answer, the historically accurate bottleneck has been for many years, storage subsystem.
I don't think your SSD is being any help as the files and library are all likely on the questionable raid.

Let us know about that RAID array.

I just looked up that Media Sonic RAID, I would use it for external storage, but not for working off of. If your using RAID 5, it's likely even slower. Try some benchmarks on it vs an internal single drive, and see if it is the problem. I would bet it is.

Plug two (or one) fast internal 4TB drive internally into your PC.
Use that as your working directory, and use the Mediasonic as copy/storage.

Move LR library to your SSD (if you can, LR is weird to me)

Upgrade to latest version of LR, I understand it is always getting a little faster.


Your PC is VERY fast set up, and you are correct to be looking for the bottleneck. The PC should be plenty fast without a chain around it's ankle.

I will agree that the RAID subsystem can surely be a problem, but the M.2 PCIe interface blows SATA away.

The RAID configuration is not exactly clear to me...

Regards,

110yd

I figured the RAID was my major issue. The firewire to USB 3.0 is simply that, a cable that goes from firewire (on the RAID) and plugs in via USB 3.0 in my system, so that's not too messy but obviously isn't the fastest. I'm running RAID 5 through it (one redundant and 3 working together). Have 4X2tb drives in it (8tb total) and it's allowing 5.45tb total for me to write on (approx 1.5tb used). The RAID is an external enclosure with my 4 drives in it. It is self contained and handles all RAID actions (no options or programs on my computer to work with it). Everything having to do with LR is on my RAID except LR itself. All files (edited and no edited), all catalogs, the library, the files I"m working with, files I'm not working with, everything is there.

I can see LR being my issue, but I'm optimized it as best I can I believe. Even tried giving it like 8gb of RAM and it's not using much and is still slow

Agree on the M2, the problem is he won't be putting a massive archive of RAW files on it (not likely)
Unless he can replace his approx 12TB array with an M2!

All great ideas! I'll have to take a look at this. I, unfortunately, have everything saved and pretty much organized on my RAID system and would rather not deal with completely reorganizing the last 4 years of my life, or even starting new and trying to find a new system, but if it's loads faster, then I'll have to give it a shot

xarik wrote in post #18038740
I figured the RAID was my major issue. The firewire to USB 3.0 is simply that, a cable that goes from firewire (on the RAID) and plugs in via USB 3.0 in my system, ....

SATA or ESata? no firewire involved surely?


RAID5 can be a bear for write times, unless it's a very high end system.

It's a box shaped plug, not esata or sata (has that connection available but couldn't find anyway to make it work for some reason...I haven't tried plugging it directly into the board, but tried using an ESATA card plugged into the board and routed out the back but the card seemed to not work. Any ideas?

Internal SATA and eSATA are not the same, (lower voltage) so converting from an onboard SATA port to eSATA often will not work.

With USB 3 speeds I doubt eSATA would be any faster. I just did a side by side test recently (external enclosures with both connectors, same drives) and found in a number of situations the USB3 was much faster!

I think your "Firewire port" is just the other end of a USB cable "Type B" connector

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18038732
The short answer (and obnoxious one, sorry!) is LightRoom is your bottleneck.

Sadly, this is all too true. It seem like no matter how much horsepower you throw at it, the UI remains laggy. LR6 will use the GPU (or is that nVidia only?) to accelerate certain functions.

Re: M.2--

M.2 slots can accept SSDs which run over the PCIe bus (faster and more expensive) or the SATA bus. You cannot simply say that M.2 is faster than SATA because your M.2 SSD may actually be a SATA drive in M.2 packaging.