Hi Tony,
With my ex-engineer hat on, you probably ought to do some actual timings, re-build thumbs & raw cache in a folder and time for QU to finish its part in the printing process.
Cache and all other similar stuff is in here C:\ProgramData\ddisoftware.
I'm not sure about excluding My Pictures, can some image files contain a virus? Something for you to Google.
Terry

One other point, the deeper down a directory tree the images are, the slower access will be for an application to "drill" down to them. I know Fred has his images in  folder in the root of C drive ie. C:\Photos. Perhaps I should do the same!
Terry

Ah well!

Stopwatch says no change. But it looked faster. How annoying when fact clouds opinion!

But at least I have tried. What I have found is that the more complicated the 'filter' the more time it takes the spacebar to bring up the finalised version. But I suppose that is logical when one thinks about it - more processing to do.

T.

"I am in the Anti-virus business". So you are the one to ask, then. It is not the first time I have read that running too much real time protection can be counterproductive.

With MalwareBytes I untick all the boxes in the tab marked Protection. I have a Quick Scan scheduled daily (at 1.00 am) and an Update scheduled each morning (at 10.30 am).

With MSE I make sure the box is ticked for Real Time Protection in the Settings tab. I have a Quick Scan scheduled daily (at 3.00 am) and check for the latest definitions before running the scan.

And, to follow Fred's guidance, I run Acronis each morning around 04.30.

Fred,

With my new SSD machine in my studio I run Acronis at the end of each useage and leave it to turn off the machine. When I was buying that machine I did some reading, endorsed by Terry, that suggested that SSD drives wear out from over use. So I assumed it was better to turn it off. The second reason being that, as it does not spin, it is less likely not to want to spin on power up. Also, again due to the SSD, it is quick to boot.

This desk machine is the slow two core with a normal hard drive. I leave it switched on 14/7 except when I go on holiday. At night it runs those two virus scans and the Acronis backup (to an external hard drive).

When I turned it on a week ago, having been away for a week, there was quite a noise. My guess is that it is rubbish in the power unit as it quietened down within ten minutes - and the machine booted normally which suggests that the HDD was running correctly. I suppose what I ought to do is to take the vacuum cleaner to the power unit and see if it removes any rubbish.

The other thing I remember people saying is that the cooling down and heating up of the memory boards can sometimes cause the pins on the chips to gradually come loose. That's the other reason for leaving the machine running.

However, I do a reboot around once a week - usually forced upon me by something like Adobe Flash requiring a re-start.

Tony