Workflow - Bridge - CS4

[crockny]

Well Bridge has slowed to a crawl and I understand more RAM is in order. I was wondering if uploading my pictures to an external hard drive instead of the C drive would be a work-around ... I'm not that technically savvy -- Bridge has to access the pictures anyway so not really sure how it works ...

I shoot with a 7D in RAW and shoot birds in continuous mode so I have a lot of pictures to go through ... any ideas?

[zona5101]

if ram is the issue an external drive will not have any impact. You need more ram and (guessing) a faster processor to load the images.

[crockny]

The pictures load OK but the thumbnails do not resolve quickly, some not at all, and going to 100% in full screen mode is either horribly slow or doesn't work at all ...

[zona5101]

i had a similar problem... i believe i narrowed it down to a crappy video card with no memory to speak of. There are some specs for optimum video card performance on Adobe's site. You should be able to google and find them then compare to what you have.

[crockny]

This is the graphics card I have - I thought it was a good one ..

Graphics Processor / Vendor NVIDIA GeForce GT 230

[jdepould]

A USB external drive will only make it worse.

Is this a new problem? Did you change something in your workflow? New camera?

[crockny]

No not lately - I thinhk it's just too many RAW files from my 7d - I've deleted a whole bunch and defragged my computer and Bridge is working again! Eventually I'll max out my RAM - I have 8GB and will go to 16GB ...

[jdepould]

A high-speed (eSATA or Firewire) external drive will help things run more smoothly. When you're running a program that's installed on the same drive from which it's accessing data, it can slow things down. Basically, the computer ends up reading from two different parts of the drive at the same time. Additional RAM will help too.

[crockny]

I'm not sure what you meant in your previous post about a USB external drive making it worse ... how is that different from what you just recommended (not trying to be difficult, I just don't understand)?

[zona5101]

Originally Posted by crockny

I'm not sure what you meant in your previous post about a USB external drive making it worse ... how is that different from what you just recommended (not trying to be difficult, I just don't understand)?

The data transfer speed on a usb external drive is too slow - . A SATA connection is much faster.