So I have an external drive connected to my main Alienware Laptop via either usb, I do a lot of photo editing and processing but I've found the biggest time waster for me is whenever I browse through my thumbnail files on any of my external drives, they take such a long time load the thumbnails. I can hear my computer working to load each file's thumbnail and I'm just sitting there watching them appear 1 by 1 with hundreds of files.

Isn't there a way for the computer to cache these thumbnails and remember it each time I shutdown and load up the computer so in the future when I revisit a folder, all the thumbnails should appear instantly? I would estimate 50% of my time is used up simply during the 'waiting for thumbnails to load' process. It would save me enormous amount of time if the thumbnails could just appear instantly.

Any advice?

Device name ALIENWARE
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz


Installed RAM 64.0 GB (63.8 GB usable)
Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 20H2
Installed on ‎3/‎29/‎2021
OS build 19042.985
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.2020.0