External Drives ref. Seth's and Michael's Tutorial

[JPrimgaard]

I'm looking for feedback.

I am considering using an external drive as my primary library.

Here's my thinking:
I will have all my original files on the external with all lightroom system files.  This drive will be with me on the road for use with my laptop and then be connected when at home to my main system.

All imports will come to this drive via lightroom either on the laptop or desktop depending where I'm at thereby negating the need to synchronize or update anything between the two machines.  I will have full access to all files on the road this way.

The laptop will have no information regarding the external drive other than catalog BU's done on the road.  BU's done at home will reside on the desktop.

Each time I return home and anything has changed on the external master drive I will first do a BU of the external to a drive in the desktop which will then automatically BU to other sources.  This should give me redundancy of the external main library for failure or corruption purposes.  

Since the external drive is the master then lightroom will be identical in it's folder structure, keywords etc. between machines.

The only downsides I see to this are slower performance on the desktop working from an external drive vs. internal (which for large projects can be worked around by using the internal drive after updating and then backing up after the project back out to the external).  As well as taking more space on the external than required by not carting around the original files.  For me this is not an issue due to my library size (10,000 +_ images) and large drives now being very cheap.

I am not a pro and these images are not my livelyhood (copyright/usage issues), thus the loss of the drive from theft is not an issue as I will have full BU's at home.

Any comments on this approach vs. Seth's technique of exporting the catalog to the external take along drive?

Thanks
Jake

[Ronny Nilsen]

That's more or less what I do. But I use a drive that have both eSata and USB2 connection so it's also reasonably fast
on my main computer. And I have both synchronized copies as well as backups with histor (generations of files) as well as
back ups to off line USB drives.

Ronny

[JPrimgaard]

Hey Ronny,

Thanks for the input.  I've chosen a very compact external that is USB only due to space constraints when I travel.  The extra speed of firewire would be nice.  

How do you deal with keeping the metadata, keywords etc. synched between the two machines?

Jake

[Ronny Nilsen]

Hey Ronny,

Thanks for the input.  I've chosen a very compact external that is USB only due to space constraints when I travel.  The extra speed of firewire would be nice.  

How do you deal with keeping the metadata, keywords etc. synched between the two machines?

Jake

I have both the images and the LR catalog (with all keywords etc.) on the same drive, so whatever machine have the drive,
have it all. No synchronization needed.  
Not optimal for speed, but I can live with that. The only thing I need to copy manually is my develop preset etc.
as I don't store those in the catalog.

But I do have a robust multiple redundant backup/archive on my main computer so I don't risk data loss by taking my main
drive with me. But LR on my main computer and my laptop use the same catalog on a 1.5T external disk.

Ronny