daldds wrote:
Big Sur 11.6
LR Classic 10.4
Library WD 365GN with 359 available
Photos WD 1.63 T, 1.12 available
Previews minimal
PS will usually run concurrently, but often not until LR’s opening (& importing)
Nothing else most often is running
Download Black Magic Disk Speed Test from the App Store and check the transfer speeds of each of your drives.
My M1 MacBook Air hauls A** from the internal SSD at 3200+ Mega*bytes* per second (MBPS) write speed and 2800+ MBPS read speed. But from a Samsung T7 2TB SSD plugged directly into a Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 port, those numbers drop to 662 MBPS read and 691 MBPS write speeds. When I plug that same drive into my CharJen Pro USBC Ultimate Dock Gen 2, I only get 545 MBPS read and 555 MBPS write speeds. But those speeds are still fast enough for the 4K video I edit.
HOWEVER, my old 3TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro drive, connected via USB 3.0, only gets 32.3 MBPS read and 30.3 MBPS write speeds! That's only 1% of the MacBook Air's internal SSD speeds! DANG!!! No wonder it's only a backup device.
The moral of the story is that many factors influence drive speeds:
> Type of drive (5400 RPM conventional, 7200 RPM conventional, SSD, NVMe M.2, RAID array of some configuration...)
> Type of interface (Internally connected, bus type, external interface (Thunderbolt 3/USB4, USB 3.2, USB 3.1, etc.)
> Cable type (Using the wrong USB-C cable with a fast drive WILL slow it down. Thunderbolt 4 cables currently support all standards and the highest speeds of 40 Gigabits per second, but they are pricey! Using a cheap USB-C cable with a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 device is a foolish idea.)
For conventional spinning platter hard drives, disk fragmentation matters, especially as the drive fills up. This is NOT an issue with solid state devices.
For solid state devices, you WILL reach a point where the startup drive has no room for the operating system to swap files. The solution to that is to keep at least one third of the drive empty at all times, so the OS can "breathe."
Don't skimp on drive or cable or hub/dock/dongle quality. Your system is only as fast as the slowest component in the chain you're using.