iphoto frustrations!

Drobo - End of Sale Drobo FS
1

Hi There,
This is the second time around trying to get Drobo to be my network drive. I bought the first generation Drobo and returned it as the performance was quite slow. This time around I thought I’d try the Drobo FS.

I’ve consolidated all my files to the Drobo (it took a LOOONNNGGG time to transfer about 1.2TB), but now when I try to access my iphoto library, it takes a good 10 minutes for it to open. THe library contains 14K photos…about 60GB. Is this going to be a problem?

Once open it performs horribly to the point that it’s not usable. I’m connected via gigabit ethernet through a gigabit switch to a MacBook Pro i5 with 4 GB of RAM.

The only thing odd that I can possibly think of is that I have quite a few shares set up…(one for videos, one for music, one for photos, etc).

Anything I can try to verify that my setup is correct before returning yet another drobo?

2

Your Drobo FS is OK.

60GB for an iPhoto library is way too much!!!. You need to split the Library in to separate (maybe) 2 or 3 libraries. I would split a library after the 25GB mark. I do the same for Aperture 3 and works fine.

3

I’ll try that. Thanks Jay. So I guess this is specifically an iphoto issue…not a drobo issue?

4

Yes, iPhoto and Aperture suffers from the same issue. If the Table of Contents is too large, it will become slow, even worse if you have lots and lots of mega huge pixel photos or lots of videos.

RAM is also important when working on very large photos in iPhoto/Aperture.

Another thing that make iPhoto slow is Faces recognition. Read here
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applications/386066/iphoto-face-recognition