Having your Lightroom Catalog and Photos On and External HD??!

[D-B-J]

So, I just ordered a new MacBook Pro. The issue is that I opted for the SSD, which will be faster than a conventional drive, but money wise I chose the 512gb. I currently have a terabyte drive in my laptop, and it's full of about 900gb, probably 500-600 of that being photos and such.

Now, my idea is to have an external 2TB drive, for my main catalog and photos. My thought is that I'll import photos to my laptop, edit them, work them, etc, and every week or so I'll dump all of those off there and onto the external. That way I'll limit the photos on my actual laptop to only the most recent ones.

That being said, is this is a tricky process? I've not tried to transfer Lightroom edited photos and resulting info from a laptop drive to an external.


OR, the other option is to always have to plug in my external drive when I want to edit, so that way I never have to worry about moving/transferring.


Thoughts?
Ideas?

Jake


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[jsecordphoto]

I use an external hard drive to store my LR files, it's actually really easy. I do have it set up so I have to plug in my HD to open LR, but it's not so bad. There are really easy to follow guides online

 

[astroNikon]

Sometimes I edit photos locally
but my main storage is on a 4TB external drive.
In Lightroom you simply drag and drop folders/files to the other drive and everything is all set.
I do have my Catalog locally though.

 

[D-B-J]

I use an external hard drive to store my LR files, it's actually really easy. I do have it set up so I have to plug in my HD to open LR, but it's not so bad. There are really easy to follow guides online

So, you just plug in your external and act as if it were the HD in the laptop? I was thinking it might be cumbersome to always have to plug in the external, but that seems to be the easiest/simplest way to go about it.

Jake


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[SnappingShark]

If you go external - just remember, 7200rpm will make a WORLD of difference against a 5400rpm drive.

 

[D-B-J]

If you go external - just remember, 7200rpm will make a WORLD of difference against a 5400rpm drive.

You think?

I was looking at LaCie's Rugged 2TB thunderbolt drive. And I think that was a 5400 rpm drive...


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[Wizard1500]

Just remember, the external drive is not immune to failure....I've had 2 die......whatever you do, (if you value your work), have at least 2 backups.....I retired as an IT Systems Manager, and cannot stress enough, the importance of multiple backups....

 

[D-B-J]

Just remember, the external drive is not immune to failure....I've had 2 die......whatever you do, (if you value your work), have at least 2 backups.....I retired as an IT Systems Manager, and cannot stress enough, the importance of multiple backups....

Oh I know. I'll have the rugged 2tb as main, a second 2tb for backup, and I'm also considering an online backup.


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[SnappingShark]

If you go external - just remember, 7200rpm will make a WORLD of difference against a 5400rpm drive.

You think?

I was looking at LaCie's Rugged 2TB thunderbolt drive. And I think that was a 5400 rpm drive...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yea - If you want storage for storage sake, get 5400rpm - but if you are going to be accessing those files constantly, go 7200rpm. You will notice the difference.

 

[astroNikon]

I do have multiple external HDs, one backs up the other one.

But it's a simple process and I don't worry about the speed. The cost of having a large laptop HD is prohibitive to me, thus the external HD. Otherwise I'd just install a 6TB 7500 rpm 6gbps SATA hard drive and be done with it .. if money were no object.

 

[D-B-J]

If you go external - just remember, 7200rpm will make a WORLD of difference against a 5400rpm drive.

You think?

I was looking at LaCie's Rugged 2TB thunderbolt drive. And I think that was a 5400 rpm drive...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yea - If you want storage for storage sake, get 5400rpm - but if you are going to be accessing those files constantly, go 7200rpm. You will notice the difference.

So, I looked more into the different LaCie models, and found that the two options for me are a 5400rpm 2tb w/ thunderbolt and a 7200rpm 2tb with USB 3.0. The mbps for transfer for both are 110. Which means that it's an exact trade.

Jake


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[Woodsman]

I have my photos in subdirectories on a 2TB USB external for reading in for the lightroom catalog. I rework photos locally and the catalog is stored locally. However I also have the files stored on DVD as backup and a copy on a NAS drive in the basement. The local USB external though gives me faster reads that the NAS when reading the files for a catalog update. I use the NAS to store the catalog backup,

My C: system files and separate local data HD are backed up with Acronis and stored on a different external HD than the lightroom files.

 

[D-B-J]

I have my photos in subdirectories on a 2TB USB external for reading in for the lightroom catalog. I rework photos locally and the catalog is stored locally. However I also have the files stored on DVD as backup and a copy on a NAS drive in the basement. The local USB external though gives me faster reads that the NAS when reading the files for a catalog update. I use the NAS to store the catalog backup,

My C: system files and separate local data HD are backed up with Acronis and stored on a different external HD than the lightroom files.

So you store your catalog locally but the photos externally?


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[TreeofLifeStairs]

I just bought a 2TB external usb 3.0 drive for photos and back up. I set it up to house all my photos so none of them will be local. LR and PS are on my SSD; the question is whether LR/PS edit those photos on the SSD and then simply save them to the external HDD or if they edit the photo from where it's saved. I would tend to think that while it's being edited it does so locally where the program is located since I could load a photo then disconnect the external drive and be able to continue editing it. In which case it really wouldn't matter if the drive was a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive

 

[D-B-J]

I just bought a 2TB external usb 3.0 drive for photos and back up. I set it up to house all my photos so none of them will be local. LR and PS are on my SSD; the question is whether LR/PS edit those photos on the SSD and then simply save them to the external HDD or if they edit the photo from where it's saved. I would tend to think that while it's being edited it does so locally where the program is located since I could load a photo then disconnect the external drive and be able to continue editing it. In which case it really wouldn't matter if the drive was a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive

And that's my thinking. The editing bit will take place on the SSD, so I won't need to worry about read/write speed while editing.




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