Mosaic Dataset or File on Disk for Faster Raster Geoprocessing

[MorganHarris]

Hey everyone,

I have about 1300 raster layers that I am iterating through on multiple processes and I am just wondering if anyone has an opinion on mosaic datasets vs just having your rasters in a folder on your disk. These rasters I am using are not meant to be mosaicked as they overlap extensively and the differences where they overlap are important . So each raster layer needs to be treated individually in geoprocessing. Would holding these rasters in a mosaic dataset make iterating through each layer faster, or would it hinder the process?

[JakeSkinner]

Hi Morgan,

Since each raster needs to be individually geoprocessed, I would not recommend creating a mosaic dataset.  A mosaic dataset will read the rasters from disk and mosaic them on-the-fly when you add the dataset to ArcMap. More information can be found at the link below:

ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)