Originally posted by reivax Thanks for all of the recommendations!
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by SSD's being limited by the pipeline.
Also, using externals, I would keep my catalog on the hard drive and the actual files on an external, right?
Are there any caddies you recommend? Also, if I'm using multiple hard drives, would it be smarter to get smaller hard drives (1tb or 2tb instead of 2tb and 4tb. To have the whole "Don't keep all your eggs in one basket" idea).
By the "pipeline" I mean the connections between the SSD drive itself and your Mac. There are two components to that: the interface (the connection within the enclosure), and the method of connecting to the Mac's ports (usually Thunderbolt or USB). The SSD has a maximum speed it can read/write data, but so does the interface, and so does the type of USB or Thunderbolt connection. Getting a file off an SSD is only as fast as the slowest one of those. In real world use USB 3, for example, is somewhat slower than SATA III. USB 2 is way slower, so it would drastically limit the speed of even a faster SATA III SSD. Both are faster usually than a cloud connection though.
Generally the best way to use Lr is to keep the catalog itself (which contains Lr's database, previews, and other such stuff) on your boot drive, which is generally the fastest one. Then store the images themselves on external drives. Or a combination of the two; I import at first onto my boot drive, and later use Lr to move them to an external after I've culled the lot.
I recommend the Plugable caddies, USB 3. They've been super reliable for me. As to size, consider that photo files just keep getting bigger and bigger, and if you generate TIFFs WAY bigger. How much is that content worth to you? Get it at least big enough for the content you have now plus a big factor for expansion.