QGIS seems to handle large data a lot better than arcmap 10.5. I have had a similar issue with arcmap 10.5 even with a full version on a brand new computer. It does not seem to matter if it is a shapefile or geodatabase. It is kind of a pain going back and forth from QGIS and ESRI but if the data is over a certain size 10.5 will just not do certain processes. So for example: if I need to do a select by location on a large data set , I just do it in QGIS and export it to a shapefile or geodatabase.
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