I read here that Lightroom V3 Catalogs can handle lots of images, but the largest database anyone mentioned was 60k. Meh! ;)
I currently have over 300k RAW + 200k JPEGs (from days long gone) clocking in at around 3 TB and its growing rapidly. Everything is sorted into 14 catalogs (e.g. Finished, Light Graffiti, Photoshoots, Work, etc.) because way back when I switched from RawShooter to V2, I found that large-ish Catalogs were wayyyy slow, even on a quad-core with 6 GB of RAM.
I would love to go back to the simpler days of 1 catalog, but I'm scared it's gonna get messy again... not to mention the import will take bloody forever ;)
Does anyone have any real-world experience working with MASSIVE catalogs (> 500k) and can tell me what I can expect performance-wise? Are some operations meh, speedy or time for a coffee-break?
NOTE: I'm particularly interested in Windows 7 experiences, as it seems to me that LR generally runs faster on Macs.