I have successfully established my Lr catalog on both my laptop and desktop machines. I would like to keep them both the same with updates that I do with keywords, photo edits, facial recognition, etc. I have established a folder "new stuff" for NB files that I create/modify in the field. I can integrate these new files NB->desktop. Then I work on the imported and maybe resident files on my desktop machine. How do I keep my versions of the Lr catalogs exact clones of the other?
Maybe this isn't possible, but I decided to post here before making determinations. I know that one option is to keep ONE catalog on an external HDD (the portable catalog option). But I prefer not to lug around an EHD, so I've created a partition on my laptop data HDD that I've dedicated to Lightroom.
Thanks for your words of wisdom.
Lee
Hi:
1. I use Lightroom Classic CC on my laptop, but have placed all of my original digital photos (all RAW, some DNG, and any original JPEG or scanned photos inside 12 or more folders on a tiny external SSD specially named and identified by me as my main image data drive (let's call it A). The Lightroom Catalog resides on drive A inside a parent folder, called 'Pictures', in a sub-folder called 'Lightroom'). This subfolder also contains all Previews and the backups Lightroom creates when it closes (if you so instruct it). When images are imported to Lightroom from anywhere, thereafter Lightroom knows where the images can be found. Lightroom has been instructed by me to save .xmp sidecar files in the folder containing the worked-on original images and is informed that the catalog is located as mentioned above. Even after doing this I know there are other folders and files residing on my Windows 10 laptop which are crucial to the operation of Lightroom. See below.
2. When I perform a complete backup of my Lightroom support files to a different, larger backup external drive, lets call it drive X, I copy a disk image of Drive A to Drive X. In addition, I copy some other data folders and files that the Lightroom installation on the laptop's C drive requires, such as presets and templates, any plug-ins that have been installed, as well as Settings shared with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), including Develop default settings, custom point curves, lens profile default settings and any other custom lens or camera profile I have created (this follows the advice of The Lightroom Queen) which can be found at the following website:
Which Lightroom files do I need to back up? | The Lightroom Queen
3. I use Acronis True Image Home when I backup the entire external drive A as a disk image, as mentioned above. Then, using Acronis, I 'restore' the disk image to a new external drive the size of drive A and test it to ensure that it can be used in place of drive A. I also use Acronis to make an image copy of my C:\ drive so I can restore the OS and the other files mentioned above needed by Lightroom to the replacement for Drive C:\ should it fail.
4. As an extra precaution I copy everything from Drive A and the files mentioned in paragraph 2 to an additional backup drive.
5. Since I do not use a desktop computer, I don't need to replicate all of this on a second computer, but do not see why this would not work to allow me to swap Drive A between 2 computers as long as I take care to ensure that the files mentioned in paragraph 2 reside in the same locations on each computer. All the rest of the files are on Drive A. Of course, I have never tested this latter scenario.
6. As a further backup I also copy the entire contents of drive A and the files referred to in paragraph 2 to another large external drive, but not as a disk image.
It would be useful to discover if anyone else does the same thing and if it works well in the scenario described by Lee Beck.