I have two catalogs for testing. One contains 300,000 images; the other contains 660,000 images. They both live on a hard drive connected to my MacMini through USB 3. Re-indexing the smaller catalog takes 9 hours and 12 hours for the larger. But this tip helps to speed this process a bit – re-indexing now takes 4 hours on the smaller and 6 hours on the larger.
The re-indexing speed is faster on an SSD, but SSDs are still expensive and small by HD standards. Thus, I temporarily moved the catalog to an SSD, performed the re-indexing there, and once completed, returned the catalog to the hard drive.
I’ll outline the process by example with a catalog named “test”:
1. Re-create the folder hierarchy for the catalog on the SSD: /PhotoMechanicCatalogs/test.
2. Copy catalog.pmdb from the hard disk to the SSD at the location /PhotoMechanicCatalogs/test/catalog.pmdb. Do NOT copy the proxies folder because it is unnecessary for this process, and for my catalogs, this takes several hours. However, you must create a dummy folder named “proxies” on the SSD at /PhotoMechanicCatalogs/test/proxies/. I generated an error in the re-indexing process if I omitted the proxies folder.
3. Launch PM+ and select Catalog>Manage Catalogs….
4. Under Local Catalogs, select the name of the catalog in the window and choose “Locate Existing Catalog”.
5. Set the new location to catalog.pmdb on the SSD.
6. Re-index the catalog on the SSD.
7. When the process is complete, quit PM+.
8. Move the original catalog.pmdb on the hard disk to your desktop and keep it just in case something goes wrong.
9. Copy the catalog.pmdb from the SSD back to the original location on the hard drive. Do NOT copy the proxies folder from the SSD to the hard drive – it contains no useful information.
10. Launch PM+ and select Catalog>Manage Catalogs….
11. Under Local Catalogs, select the name of the catalog in the window and choose “Locate Existing Catalog”.
12. Set the new location to catalog.pmdb on the hard disk.
13. If everything went according to plan, you won’t get the notice to re-index the catalog. If there are any errors, you still have the original catalog on your desktop as your backup.
I hope this helps those whose catalogs still live on a hard disk.
Marv
