I have a lot of pics, cataloged by year from 1999 to 2020, with each years folder containing subfolders by month, then by day and by 4-5 cameras etc. This structure works for me, and allows me to locate a pic or video by specific date or camera used.
I use Photomove for creating this structure. Click here for Photomove.
I noticed trying to catalog using Adobe Lightroom Classic [LR] the entire files took endless time, weeks and didnt get finished. This was from a total of 7Tb media files in a mirrored NAS on my home network, with 540,000+ files in 12,000 folders of pictures and video files..
I decided to group the years in 3-4 years and make a LR [Lightroom] catalog for each subgroup.
The LR catalog containing 2005-2009 pics information – had 75,939 LR files in 45,110 folders – total 75.5Gb. Remember LR catalogs do not store the original media or copies of the original pictures.
The NAS storage source [Synology 4 bay DS9201] for 2005-2009 pictures, contained 3,435 files in 388 folders – total 3.64Gb
Quick summary – to catalog about 4Gb of media using LR you need about 75Gb space for the catalog.
Screenshots below:
