Network storage for photos

[martinog]

I have an ethernet LAN shared by my wife and myself. I want to store all our photos on a Network hard disk.
Can Lightroom be set up so that we can both access these photos using a common Catalog and Preview database also stored on this Network storage?

Thanks

Martin

[Nat Coalson]

Yes, you can use Lightroom with this setup. As long as your computer can access the network drive Lightroom will not have problems. You'll just need to be careful about who's using the catalog and when, etc. You won't be able to open one catalog on two computers at the same time.

In my experience, though, even with Gigabit Ethernet, the connections to network drives are too slow for everyday photo editing use. I'd always opt for USB 2 or FireWire instead.

I like to keep my LR catalog files on the same drive as the images, so it's all portable.

[martinog]

Thanks Nat,
Portability for me is not an issue but speed is. Will have to try it once I've set up the Network storage.

[DavidB]

Not quite.  The images can be on a network volume, but the catalog needs to be on local disk.  The database engine that Lightroom uses refuses to lock files properly over most network filesystems.

[Nat Coalson]

DavidB - I stand corrected, thanks.

On attempting to open a catalog on a network drive LR displays the message "Note: Lightroom Catalogs cannot be on network volumes or in read-only folders".

I guess my memory failed me; I thought I'd done it before.

martinog, turns out that if you want to share the LR catalog you'll need to use a USB or FW drive and swap it between machines.

[MBehrens]

I stand corrected, thanks.
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You're not entirely incorrect. On Windows and possibly Apple there is a work around that will allow you to open a catalog on a network drive.

The key is to not use the drive letter that is mapped directly to the network share, but use a virtual drive created with the SUBST DOS/NTFS command (Windows, OSX must have an equivalent).

Suppose the drive letter N: is mapped to the network share. To create a virtual drive P: use the command
SUBST P: N:\
To get to the comman-line to enter the subst command: Start - Run... , enter CMD, click OK.

You can now open LR catalog through the virtual drive P:

As Nat says, this is not as fast, even with gigabit networking, as being on the local PC diskdrive. And only one user can open a catalog at one time.

I've found this helpful in archiving. I simply Export as Catalog... to the network share. When I need to access the Archive I simply open the catalog from the network, its not as fast but I'm probably just printing or exporting for some purpose. If I need to do more work either copy the folder with the cataolg, pictures, and previews to the local disk and open from there. Of course the option to import the catalog into a local catalog, directly from the archive, is an option.

This provides a lot of flexibility and my network storage is a RAID 1, so it provides a piece of my data security policy. I've been doing this for a while with the D-Link DSN323 NAS Device and it works pretty well.

The SUBST command can be added to a batch file and placed in the startup folder to always be available.
 - Morey