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New to Lightroom: Question about Catalog and Photo Storage

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KentFrazier

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Jul 13, 2010
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Ogden, UT USA
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Hi all,

I'm a new Lightroom user and just received my copy of LR3 from Adobe two days ago. I've been watching video tutorials I've found on the web to help me get started. Most seem to encourage the storage of the photographs on an external HD along with the catalog, while others store the photographs on the external HD, but seem to leave the catalog in the default location. This second option seems to make the most sense to me as if you lose one of the drives you only have to recover either the photos or the catalog from backup.

I'm curious as to what folks do here before I start to import and catalog my own photographs.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit on an ASUS Gamer's Republic laptop with a Seagate 5''GB portable external HD for my photos and a WD MyBook 1TB external used as backup.

Thanks,

Kent
 
Welcome to Lightroom Forums.

Not surprisingly, there is no one right answer to your question. There are pros and cons to each approach involving performance, ease of backups, ease of recovery in case of disk failure, transportability to other computers, available storage space, etc.

Since your machine is a laptop, I would definitely put the catalog on the internal disk. It is likely to be much faster than the externals, and you'll still be able to work without the externals connected (Develop and Export will be impossible for photos that are stored on a disconnected external drive, but you can still work in Library).
 
[quote author=badfrog88 link=topic=1'428.msg7'348#msg7'348 date=1279'51'43]
Most seem to encourage the storage of the photographs on an external HD along with the catalog, while others store the photographs on the external HD, but seem to leave the catalog in the default location. This second option seems to make the most sense to me as if you lose one of the drives you only have to recover either the photos or the catalog from backup. [/quote]

There is no right storage method. However, your interpretation of the reason people choose the second option is completely incorrect. It has nothing to do with backup capability, because in this scenario neither the catalog file nor the photos are backed up, and losing either hard disk will be catastrophic. (Perhaps you are operating under the mistaken assumption that your photos are actually stored in the catalog file.) You need to back-up both Lightroom and the photos to a separate physical disk, that is the only safe way to back things up.

The reason some people leave the catalog file on the internal hard disk is that many people feel that the catalog works better if it is on your fastest hard disk.
 
The O/P indicates he has two external HD. My choice would be
a. Default location for the catalog and previews on the internal HD.
b. Image files on the 1st external drive. Backup copies of the catalog.
c. Back up of Image files on the 2nd external HD. Another backup of the catalog.
 
The tertiary consideration is portability of the catalog. Many folks with laptops also want to access the catalog from a desktop as well, either occasionally or as a standard part of their workflow. In this instance, you might consider revising Denis' a) to reside on b) and move the b) catalog backup to a).
That would make the catalog easily portable.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. Let me add some additional information along with another option for opinions:

Both of my external drives are USB2.'. None of the computers in our home are desktop (at the moment). My wife has a MBP, my daughter has another Windows machine. At this time, I'm not interested in cross-platform compatibility.

Would I be better served to put both my photos and catalog on my internal drive for the boost in performance? Then using both external drives as backups, along with an occasional burn of DVDs? This is as a hobby only so I don't want to make it too complicated. I currently have 233GB free on my internal disk (83% free).

My initial thought was to use Nikon Transfer to transfer my images (RAW) from the card to my WD MyBook. Then import them with LR converting them to DNG. Any comments/suggestions on this? I'm still learning my camera, a Nikon D9', and I like that ViewNX will show me my focus point.

Kent
 
Well LR is cross platform compatable so you can have the OS on two computers, win or mac, and the catalog would be usable on either system. Another plus to have the catalog and images on the external. Plug and play on either system with the external drive. My initial thoughts were that there would be better performance with the catalog, previews on the internal drive. (Catalog and previews are very read write intensive and performance would be optimized on the internal drive.)
The option is up to you.
 
First off I would import from the card directly into LR you do not need Nikon Transfer for anything. It is an extra redundant step.

Second (and perhaps this should be the most important) It is critical that you have a good thourough system backup that coveres your most criticval files This includes more than just LR but everything that is important to you.

With only 233GB on your local HD you will eventually fill up the HD with LR images and previews etc.
I maintain my most reent three months of image files and my master catalog on the local drive. As Images age I have a manual process that moves the images to another HD for storage and to access if necessary by LR should I need to go back for a new print or pull up an image for review. I use LR to move the files andf this keeps my catalog location pointers intact. LR is very happy to access more than one HD for images. So the answer is you can keep part of your master images on the faster local drive but there is no need to keep all of them especially if you may never recall them again .

External backups can corrupt the backup catalog if LR is open and active. For this reason I use the LR catalog backup feature. in addition to the system wide backup.

Whether you convert to DNG is optional. My RAW images from the camera are already DNG, but if they were not, I would probably not convert them. There is not really any need to keep two versions of tha master file. If you decide to convert to DNG, you can consider deleting the NEFs (But then some would never delete the NEFs).

If you have three computers at home, you probably have a home network. If so, you should probably look into getting a Network-attached storage (NAS). they are cheap and cost about the same as the equivalent USB attached device. With the right setup you can do RAID and have redundant immediate backup of the files on the NAS. The NAS drive is accessable by every user on the network. So you store one place and everybody can access. This is good for image files but LR does not allow the catalog to be stored on a network device.
 
[quote author=clee'1l link=topic=1'428.msg7'362#msg7'362 date=1279'7489']
...

If you have three computers at home, you probably have a home network. If so, you should probably look into getting a Network-attached storage (NAS). they are cheap and cost about the same as the equivalent USB attached device. With the right setup you can do RAID and have redundant immediate backup of the files on the NAS. The NAS drive is accessable by every user on the network. So you store one place and everybody can access. This is good for image files but LR does not allow the catalog to be stored on a network device.
[/quote]

I do have a home network, correct. I also have a NAS (a WD MyBook World Edition 1TB) I didn't mention it previously as my understanding was that LR wouldn't work with NAS. Is it only the catalog that can't be on a NAS? If I can store my photos on the NAS this is what I would do.
 
I'd start with the catalog on laptop internal drive and the photos on NAS. I might also put some photos on the USB externals and compare the performance to see whether there's a significant enough difference for you to consider; NAS can be slow, depending how it is architected.
 
I have a 2-1TB drives in a Netgear Stora NAS configured as RAID1. I have mapped that in windows as Drive A: This is where I put all my images that are older than three months. On my 32-bit Laptop I have Gigabit network speeds. On my newer 64 bit desktop the network connection is 1''Mbit wired or ~27'Mbit wireless. I do not really notice a difference in speed between opening a local RAW image file or a Network stored RAW image file.

Only the catalog needs to be on a locally attached HD. This is to preserve referential integrity to the single user database that is the LR catalog.
 
I never thought about using my dropbox account. I am concerned about the previews in the catalog quickly using up my alloted space.
 
Hi...
Is your catalog over 2GB?

I only have my catalog and settings folder in dropbox, that is why you need to use the mklink.exe (windows) or ln (Mac) to create symbolic links

/dan
 
[quote author=badfrog88 link=topic=1'428.msg7'377#msg7'377 date=127914'146]
I never thought about using my dropbox account. I am concerned about the previews in the catalog quickly using up my alloted space.
[/quote]The Catalog is the *.lrcat file. The previews reside in the folder named "{Catalog Name}Previews.lrdata" The contents of this folder are regenerated whenever LR needs a new review. It is not necessary to backup this folder anywhere.
 
OK, I understand now. I may give that a try at a later date.

For now, I've decided to put my photographs on an external HD and leave everything else in the default location. I really appreciate everyone's help.

Kent
 
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