# LR - long load time



## texasmacs (Mar 22, 2015)

I don't know if this is normal or not, so I thought I would ask.  I have Lightroom 5.7.1 via Creative Cloud.  It takes Lighroom well over five minutes (and sometimes closer to 8-10) to load.  I have cleared out my hard drive. I am running 260 out of 500 Gig of disk drive.  I have cleared out my cookies.  I don't run any other apps while loading.  I have less than 100 photos on my hard drive.  However, I have over 10,000 on my external drive that I do not have plugged in, but I do have smart files that I run on all of them so that I have access to them when the external drive is disconnected.  So, my question... is it normal for LR to take that long to load?

Thanks!


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 22, 2015)

Er....absolutely not. If it takes more than 10 seconds or so on either my MBP or my quite old Win7 desktop then I'd start looking around to see what's going on. So there's obviously something not working properly, but we'll need a more experienced Mac user to drop by to help you figure out what's going on.


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 22, 2015)

Definitely not normal.  Is the 500GB drive the internal drive?  If so, it's probably only a 5400rpm, and I do find that slow on my Mac Mini - but not 5 minutes slow.

Do you have the same problem accessing photos from the external drive?

Victoria


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## texasmacs (Mar 22, 2015)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Definitely not normal.  Is the 500GB drive the internal drive?  If so, it's probably only a 5400rpm, and I do find that slow on my Mac Mini - but not 5 minutes slow.
> 
> Do you have the same problem accessing photos from the external drive?
> 
> Victoria




I have a macbook pro.   I believe that it is a 5400 rpm.  Nothing else on my computer is slow to load, only Lightroom.  I don't have problems accessing any of the photos (internal or external) once the program has fully loaded.  It just takes forever for it to load.  Once it is loaded, it works like a charm.  I will keep working to see if I can figure out the problem.  

Thanks everyone for you help.


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## kolesoff (Mar 22, 2015)

texasmacs said:


> I have a macbook pro.   I believe that it is a 5400 rpm.  Nothing else on my computer is slow to load, only Lightroom.  I don't have problems accessing any of the photos (internal or external) once the program has fully loaded.  It just takes forever for it to load.  Once it is loaded, it works like a charm.  I will keep working to see if I can figure out the problem.
> 
> Thanks everyone for you help.



Could you please clarify what state is "loaded" state?
Try to see if your hdd is ok with Disk Utility (verify disk). Also, what system you are using?


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## MutantLabs (Apr 8, 2015)

On my 2010 MacBook Pro it takes about a minute to boot up LR. Just for a reference. Painfully slow already, but nowhere near your annoying 5+ minutes load time.

To find out what's slowing down your LR boot time, I'd suggest to create a new empty catalog and set that one as the default. Then see if the boot time changes when you load LR with this default-catalog. If it's faster this way, we have to look at your catalog.
But mind that when I open LR, close it and re-open it again, it's very fast (just a few seconds). So for this test, a reboot after changing the default catalog would yield more accurate results.


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## Modesto Vega (Apr 8, 2015)

I have a similar problem with my Mac Book Pro late 2011, I have not timed how long it takes to load but it is noticeably slower than before. It started after the upgrade to Lr 5.7.1 from Lr 5.7. The upgrade fixed a couple of other problems but introduced this one. I wonder what causes it but never had the time or willingness to research it; this is also partially because I have a perpetual license and I am a confessed subscription skeptic and don't want to find out that Lr is waiting on an internet connection.


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## Modesto Vega (Apr 8, 2015)

Just time it 32 seconds before I had control of the library module. This is on Mac Book Pro late 2011 with 8 GB of memory, a 500GB disk with over 100GB free, the system report leads me to believe that it is not an SSD because it quotes a rotational speed of 5400, if it is indeed a mechanical disk it must be tiny and super quite. 

It appears to be allocating memory but it has all allocated under 500MB. It also appears that the 1st time I start it takes longer than the 2nd time; if I start Lr for the 1st time it takes at least 32 seconds to load, if I then close it and restart it again it starts instantly, it is worth you trying the same, this leads me to believe that something is kept of a system cache.

Also my Lr is configured to backup and optimised the catalog when I close it, when I tried this exercise I opened Lr, timed how long it took to load, close it skipping the backup, and open it gain; I also know the last time I had used it and closed it, on Sunday, both a backup and catalog optimisation took place. I am wondering if something is done to the catalog like freeing database space when Lr loads and opens the catalog after a back up.

Activity monitor also detect some network traffic which I find interesting considering i don't use Lr mobile and have a perpetual license.


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## Rendezvous (Apr 9, 2015)

I often have a similar problem. I am using an iMac, standard sort of hard drive. The catalogue is on the iMac, the image files are on a USB3 external. Initial load can take up to a couple of minutes. Subsequent quit/open LR only takes a few seconds.


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 9, 2015)

On my Mac, I have my photos on an external USB3-connected G-Tech drive (7200), and if the drive is taking a nap it might take up to 20 seconds for Lightroom to finish loading. On a close and restart of course, it's pretty near instant.

On my Windows system, the photos are on an internal 7200 drive, so startup is always pretty fast as there's not much in the way of "waking up" needed.

Just as an experiment, trying creating a catalog with some photos on an internal drive, then try your startup test using that catalog. It may be all the problems are with the external drive....


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## davidedric (Apr 9, 2015)

Interesting.  I have a fairly well specified Win 7 machine with the Catalogue etc on an ssd, and have been used to very quick, sub 10 secs, load time.  I have recently found it taking significantly longer, not stupidly long, maybe 30secs.  Reading this, I also recently made the switch to having Lightroom delivered on subscription via CC.  It's not every time, and now I am thinking it may just be first time each day.

So, does anyone know how often CC Lightroom 'phones home, and how long a delay that might cause?  I am guessing that very little data will move, so internet speed won't be an issue.   It would be a relief to know that was the cause, and I wouldn't have to worry about anyone else.

Dave


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 9, 2015)

I wonder if it's actually the CC Desktop App that does the checking with "home" to make sure your subscription is still all paid up? Would make more sense than each individual app doing it.


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## Rendezvous (Apr 9, 2015)

Lightroom CC phoning home. That's something I haven't thought about. 
On a side note, my catalogue file is 1.6GB with 77,000 images.
I just timed opening, it took 2 minutes 20 seconds. The library window appears after about 45 seconds, then at just over a minute images in the grid appear. On the left hand side, where the collections as listed, no numbers appear next to the collections until 2:20.

0:45





1:30


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## Modesto Vega (Apr 9, 2015)

Rendezvous said:


> Lightroom CC phoning home. That's something I haven't thought about.
> On a side note, my catalogue file is 1.6GB with 77,000 images.
> I just timed opening, it took 2 minutes 20 seconds. The library window appears after about 45 seconds, then at just over a minute images in the grid appear. On the left hand side, where the collections as listed, no numbers appear next to the collections until 2:20.


When was the last time you optimised your catalog? That is awfully slow.

If you close Lr and open it after a few minutes, is it any faster?


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## Rendezvous (Apr 10, 2015)

The catalogue gets optimised once a week when it backs it up, this hasn't made a difference. Recently I created a new catalogue and imported all the images from my old one. Still no difference!

If I close the application and load it again a few minutes later it loads in less than 10 seconds.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 10, 2015)

I have a feeling that might be due to drive speed. On my MacBook pros with ssds, my catalog loads quickly. On my Mac mini with a basic spinning hard drive, the same catalog takes a couple of minutes to open. Once it's been opened recently, it loads quickly because it's still in memory.


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## davidedric (Apr 12, 2015)

Update re the posts about possible delays caused by 'phoning home.

Just for interest, I switched off my router and started Lightroom.  Start time around 5 secs (and starting straight into Develop).   Not proof positive, but I don't think I'll investigate any further.

Dave


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## Modesto Vega (Apr 12, 2015)

davidedric said:


> Update re the posts about possible delays caused by 'phoning home.
> 
> Just for interest, I switched off my router and started Lightroom.  Start time around 5 secs (and starting straight into Develop).   Not proof positive, but I don't think I'll investigate any further.
> 
> Dave


Do you have a perpetual license or a subscription?

I have a perpetual license; a similar experiment, completely unplugged the computer from the network, results on a wait of just under a minute, which is almost double the previous timing. But I am not comparing like-for-like because I upgraded OS X to 10.10.3 in between both timings.


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## davidedric (Apr 12, 2015)

Subscription - I changed earlier this year.

Dave


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## Cuzzinbrucie (May 16, 2017)

I searched this forum for "lightroom long load time" and found this thread. After reading this thread I'll draw some conclusions. For those of us that have the CC subscription running latest release on Win10, we should expect a "long" (up to a minute in my case) load time at the first launch of the day. If I close and re-open LR several times during that day, my load times should be significantly shorter. This is normal behavior. Until I read this thread I suspected that something was wrong with my PC (possible malware).


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