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