How to keep two catalogs of my library in 2 different external hard drives?

[Don1462]

Hi, I have lightroom 3 and once I have finished editing my photos I export them to an external hard drive, using Lightroom and the delete them from my laptop. This was all my photos, keywords still appear in lightroom. Now i would like to make a second copy of catalog and photos in a second hard drive. Whenever I download new photos to my computer I put all photos for a given shoot in one folder and name the folder according to the subject and date. so I have probably hundreds of folders in my first hard drive. I would like the exact hierarchy to also appear when I connect my second hard drive. I was wondering if that's possible and if there's an easy way to do it. This is my first post in this forum and I would appreciate any help/advice. Thanks

 

[snowbear]

Hook both external drives to the laptop, then copy the folders containing the photos to the second drive. Likewise, find and copy the .lrcat and .lrdata files (the catalog). I'd probably grab the backup folder (in folder with the catalog files - at least on my Mac, it is) as well. This can be done through the file manager.

 

[Don1462]

Thanks for your advice. If i do that would folders from both drives appear in lightroom. I remember I did something vaguely similar, but I can't remember it step by step and lightroom gave me a message that that folder/photo is already present in the library.

 

[Don1462]

the idea is that both drives have identical folders and both drives appear in library so when I am traveling I would take either drive and would still be able to work on my photos.

 

[snowbear]

I haven't tried it, but as longs as the catalog files and the images remain in relative position, it shouldn't be a problem. My catalog is in Documents/Photography/Lightroom, and the non-archived photos are in Documents/Photography/Working-Storage (I'm a former COBOL programmer). Archived photos get moved to various subdirectories in Documents/Photography/Photos/...
The key is the common "Photography" folder - everything stays in the same place. I will gladly try it in a few minutes and see what happens.

The other way to accomplish this would be to perform two partial/selective backups using whatever backup software you have. The downside is that backups typically have to be restored in order to be used - you probably won't be able to open them directly from the external drive.

 

[snowbear]

OK - results from my test:
I only have one external drive available, so I used an external hard drive and a flash drive.
1. I created a "photography" folder on each external device.
2. I copied the "Lightroom" folder to both external devices, placing it in "photography."
3. I copied the "working-storage" folder to both external devices, placing it in "photography." Both Lightroom and working-storage maintain their relative position as they do on the laptop.
4. Launched Lightroom3, then opened the catalog from the external hard drive. LR3 needed to be relaunched in order to load the catalog, but I think this is normal. The photos are there.
5. Opened the catalog from the flash drive. Again, LR3 needed to be relaunched in order to load the catalog. Photos there, as well.

 

[Don1462]

thanks for your reply. To be honest I wasn't sure how to follow the instructions on your first post, but from your second posting i see what you mean. Each time you want to view files on a given drive you open the relevant catalog from that drive and both have identical structures. What I am trying to do is to have just one catalog which resides in it's original position in my laptop and that would have both drives displayed in my lightroom library. so you open lightroom, on the left where your drives are displayed it would show all the folders in first drive and all the folders in second drive. That way when I have both drives connected (which obviously wont be all of the time) i can simply export a folder from one to the next, all from within lightroom. I hope I'm making sense. Is it even possible to do such a thing?

 

[snowbear]

Sorry, I misunderstood what you were trying to do. I'm not really sure if you can transfer files between drives within LR. I'd say set up a test folder with one or two shots in it and give it a try.

FWIW, once I am done editing a photo, I rarely use LR to access it again. Unless I have to change more than keywords or contact info in the metadata, I use Adobe Bridge as a browser.

 

[KmH]

Lightroom can only open 1 catalog at a time.

 

[Don1462]

Lightroom can only open 1 catalog at a time.

Hi KmH
Yes you're right but what I'm trying to do is have that one catalog display identical photos that are places in identical folders in two different external hard drives.

 

[KmH]

It can't do that, because the path to the second drive is different. One catalog cannot be at the end of 2 different paths.

As an example, one drive is E: and the other drive is F:

The drive identifier is the first term in the path definition.

 

[Don1462]

exactly, so what I'm trying to do is have lightroom library display both drives E and F, but when I tried to do that it gave message that the files are already present in the lightroom library. The way I did it was select a folder in the first drive, select all it's files and press export to hard drive and as destination chose the second drive and tried to create and identical folder in the second drive