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Author Topic: Request user Specified location for Raw cache  (Read 14734 times)
atodzia
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« on: August 04, 2010, 12:36:03 AM »

I just looked at the size of my Raw cache and it is 12GB and I have only cached a few folders and a very small percentage of what I have on my hard drives. There is no way I will want to cache everything I shoot on my C drive. It would be nice to be able to specify another drive location for the raw cache. Lighting raw sounds good but at what cost to overall performance and resource usage. Please don't respond to get a larger hard drive because they are inexpensive. I have a 300GB 10,000 rpm Velociraptor for my C drive which I have no intention of bogging it down with Gigs of photo images. Is there a solution I have overlooked?

Andy
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Terry-M
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« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2010, 07:20:36 AM »

Hi Andy,
Quote
There is no way I will want to cache everything I shoot on my C drive
You don't have to. There are settings in Raw preferences to not do it at all; the thumbnail menu allows you to cache specific folders and there are options in Utilities to manage the cache, it's up to you. The whole point of the new features seem to me to give you full control on how to manage your cache.
Like you, I don't keep all my images on my 300GB C-drive but copy older images there if I want to work on them and when finished, move back to their original location. I've regularly deleted orphaned and old thumbs in the past so that management process will continue.
Quote
It would be nice to be able to specify another drive location for the raw cache.
That exists already, in Utilities there's an option to Migrate/Copy Application Data, that includes the cache. I'm not sure how that affects the efficiency of running QU though.
Quote
I have a 300GB 10,000 rpm Velociraptor for my C drive
That seems small for a modern quad core machine; in recent investigations I've done to upgrade, 500GB seemed to be the minimum and 1TB is common. However you appear to have other HD space but Windows Application/Program data is on the C drive and many other programs use it for various forms of "cache", so it seems a good idea to have a good sized HD  :-\.
Terry
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Fred A
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« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2010, 09:12:28 AM »

Quote
I just looked at the size of my Raw cache and it is 12GB and I have only cached a few folders and a very small percentage of what I have on my hard drives

Andy,
Did some testing here.
1000 Raw images from my 20D Canon uses about 4.6 gigs of HD space.  I have a friend with a GH1 Lumix, I got a thumb drive with a load of his images, which are 12 megapixel images, and 1000 cached files of those was 5.0 gigs of hard drive space.

Bearing the above in mind, two items mitigate the building of the thumbs and the cache.
1) You do not have to cache load *ALL* images on your hard drive if you don't want to use space. Just cache the folders that are still being used. You can always cache a specific folder by selecting it in Qimage Ultimate.
So you have full control.

2) The speed that the thumbs build now is excellent, and the IMPORTANT part is being missed. This whole operation, of how many folders get cached, or how many images get cached, or cache them all..... might slow the computer a bit, but it is a ONE TIME operation. Tolerate it for the time it takes to cache your images, and you are back to your normal fast operating mode.
 Fred
« Last Edit: August 04, 2010, 09:46:33 AM by Fred A » Logged
Terry-M
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« Reply #3 on: August 04, 2010, 09:59:41 AM »

Quote
Tolerate it for the time it takes to cache your images, and you are back to your normal fast operating mode.
I agree, it's worth it.
The other thing to bear in mind when managing your images, keep the number in a folder to a sensible level so that you can get on working with a folder in a reasonable time.

If a card contains images taken over several days, FlashPipe can help by splitting them up into folders by image date.
Terry
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atodzia
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« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2010, 11:19:52 AM »

Hi Andy,
Quote
There is no way I will want to cache everything I shoot on my C drive
You don't have to. There are settings in Raw preferences to not do it at all; the thumbnail menu allows you to cache specific folders and there are options in Utilities to manage the cache, it's up to you. The whole point of the new features seem to me to give you full control on how to manage your cache.
Like you, I don't keep all my images on my 300GB C-drive but copy older images there if I want to work on them and when finished, move back to their original location. I've regularly deleted orphaned and old thumbs in the past so that management process will continue.
Quote
It would be nice to be able to specify another drive location for the raw cache.
That exists already, in Utilities there's an option to Migrate/Copy Application Data, that includes the cache. I'm not sure how that affects the efficiency of running QU though.
I didn't notice that option. Thanks for pointing it out. If space is it issue I'll try that. If anyone has experience on the performance aspect of moving Qimage application data to another hard drive I would be interested in hearing about your experience.
Quote
I have a 300GB 10,000 rpm Velociraptor for my C drive
That seems small for a modern quad core machine; in recent investigations I've done to upgrade, 500GB seemed to be the minimum and 1TB is common. However you appear to have other HD space but Windows Application/Program data is on the C drive and many other programs use it for various forms of "cache", so it seems a good idea to have a good sized HD  :-\.
I have 5.5 GB of hard drive space but my C drive (and D drive) are my fastest drives. It sounds like you are not familiar with Velociraptor drives and building performance machines. They are noticeably faster than the other fast drives I use which are WD Black 1 GB drives. WD just released a 600 GB version this year but I don't want to pay the premium price ($300) just to store a few more images. Maybe I can migrate my Qimage data to my D drive and see what happens. Perhaps it will allow me to do other things at the same time because my C hard drive wont' be so throttled when the cache is being built.
Terry
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Terry-M
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« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2010, 11:26:50 AM »

Hi Andy,
Quote
It sounds like you are not familiar with Velociraptor drives and building performance machines.
That is correct, but I know now, thanks  Wink
Quote
Maybe I can migrate my Qimage data to my D drive and see what happens. Perhaps it will allow me to do other things at the same time because my C hard drive wont' be so throttled when the cache is being built.
Worth a try but Mike would be the one to comment on its effect on the C drive.
However, as we said before, it's worth the wait to get those images cached but there's no need to do them all at once.
Terry
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atodzia
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« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2010, 11:39:17 AM »

Oops! I meant to type I have 5.5 TB of disk space.

Andy
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atodzia
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« Reply #7 on: August 04, 2010, 11:53:54 AM »

Well, I just migrated my data to the D drive and it appears Qimage does not migrate the RawCache folder. Also, after migrating, and then viewing a raw file in Qimage, it didn't create a RawCache folder in the new location on the D drive. Is this an oversight when Mike added lightning raw to Ultimate and added a RawCache folder?

Andy
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Seth
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« Reply #8 on: August 04, 2010, 01:46:45 PM »

Well, I just migrated my data to the D drive and it appears Qimage does not migrate the RawCache folder. Also, after migrating, and then viewing a raw file in Qimage, it didn't create a RawCache folder in the new location on the D drive. Is this an oversight when Mike added lightning raw to Ultimate and added a RawCache folder?

Andy

You are correct.  There seems to be confusion in some responses as to the difference between fle storage and caching.  Caching should be done to the non-OS drive, if available.  Just as paging should be done that way also.  I use an older, smaller drive as a totally separate cache drive for PS, etc.  You should be able to delegate where caching is done.
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Seth
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« Reply #9 on: August 04, 2010, 01:51:47 PM »

A few things here:

(1) First of all, if your raw cache is taking up 12 GB, then the raws associated with them are taking up at least double that amount and potentially up to 4x that amount of space.  I think most people working raws realize that they take up a lot of space and increasing the space requirements for raws by 1.5x (max) is a small price to pay for near instantaneous access to them.

(2) Also keep in mind that if you are using other programs like Bibble, ACR, whatever, you'll have to create TIFF or JPEG copies for Qimage (or any other program you intend to open them with) to print or gain access to them anyway.  This is saving you that step and the associated hard drive space needed for "developed" folders so that you can work on the raws directly in Qimage.

(3) This is fully controllable.  To turn it off, open "Edit", "Preferences", "Raw Format Options" and move the dot down one notch below "Lightning Raw".

(4) It's fully manageable.  Go to "Utilities", "Manage thumbs and raw cache" and you can keep an eye on space, delete thumbs/cache, and only build the ones you want/need/use after that.

(5) The location of the Qimage application data is also user selectable.  When you install Qimage Ultimate, it gives you the option of where you want to store the application data: change it and you select where it goes: thumbnails, cache, and all.  If you've already installed it, there's the migrate option under "Utilities".  Right now it doesn't migrate the raw cache.  This is intentional because many times when you are migrating, you are migrating to a new machine and unless your file structure (of where your images are stored) is identical, your raw cache will end up being nothing but orphans.  I'll update it in the next version to migrate the raw cache but give a warning that it won't be of much use unless images are stored in the same path.

Mike
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