Stil not happy with catalog location and sync fuction

[guido.coza]

Hi All

after many battles with trying to get two lightroom catalogs to sync how I want it, I decided to move the LR catalog onto a external USB 3 HD where most (98%) of the pics are.
The drawback is LR becomes very sluggish and there the first question
IF i had to move the catalog on an external media which one would be the best. As the pic folder is around 1.6 TB a ssd is out of the question.
LaCie offers a 2 TB thunderbold drive (non SSD) I could keep pics and catalog on one media
than there would be the option of a SD card only for the LR folder with catalog (around 5GB)
As I only have 2 USB ports on my MBP I would like the idea of sd card. It is small and easy to store, but have no idea with the performance.
A second problem I have is that always some of the pics are not showing, wish is normal. (BTW is there a way to rename the desktop on a mac? As the catalog has two desktops(imac/Laptop) but shows only one its a hassle to check wish is wish one) Now I click a folder and go to library "find all missing pics". I only want to know the missing pictures from ONE specific folder however!!!??
I have no idea which pics are really missing as always the pics from the not connected machine are counted as well!!! That makes no sense and I can't be the only one with this request!
Really a missing feature!!!!!

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

A USB hub could solve your ports problem (probably a powered hub if it has rotating EHD).

I have no real data to support this suggestion but SD cards are NOT targeted generally at being hard drive replacements. I would guess it would be pretty slow, and would also guess they may not tolerate the level of usage very long before failing (here "long" is relative to a EHD or external SSD with more reserved space). But in a quick search, I could find no manufacturer data on how much (if any) reserved space is on SD cards for wear leveling (a flash cell will have a lifetime, maybe 10,000 to 30,000 writes or so -- this is mitigated for hot spots by wear leveling which essentially moves hot spots around so the wear is more uniform; the less reserved space you have for this, the more likely a hot spot wears out. If you think think about in-camera use, that's tens of thousands of format-shoot-download, which is a lot; if you think of a catalog being updated continually during use, it's not that long). But again, no data, just a gut feel.

The catalog also (by default) stores the preview cache. Depending on how you are dealing with previews as you move things around, this could both be an issue for performance, and also why you do not sometimes see the images (though they should appear eventually if so, just wait; if they do not appear eventually you have a different issue). It is possible to separate the preview cache from the catalog by a symbolic link, though doing so AND trying to move the EHD between multiple computers will introduce another level of complexity. But is something to consider. For things like grid view, the preview cache might actually be more busy, in terms of IO, than the catalog.

But this whole idea, when you say things like "the pics from the not connected machine are counted as well" makes me think you are trying to do something more than just migrate an entire lightroom environment from one machine to another on EHD. So no idea there. But syncing lightroom between multiple computers is always an exercise in frustration, and the more complicated you make it with exceptions, the more frustrated you are likely to be.

 

[guido.coza]

H

A USB hub could solve your ports problem (probably a powered hub if it has rotating EHD).
But this whole idea, when you say things like "the pics from the not connected machine are counted as well" makes me think you are trying to do something more than just migrate an entire lightroom environment from one machine to another on EHD. So no idea there. .

Hi Ferguson
Thanks for the reply!
I have a iMac and a MBP. The MBP i take on frequent work tours while the iMac is obviously my home machine. The bulk of my pics are however on a external HD. To avoid constant merging and importing of catalogs from one machine to the other I found a relatively satisfying way in having the LR catalog on the HD where the pics are. After I plugged the HD ones into each machine and got all the pics of both machines loaded to the LR catalog the catalog is always up to date. If I import pics onto the MBP the LR catalog from the exHD is open and "does the work" if I shift pics around it is always via the same catalog. Same for the iMac, the only issue is performance. As I'm a safari guide, I have to consider every piece of equipment i take into the bush. so ideally i would have everything on one thing!!
The other issue is, lets say I have the exHD on the MBP and want to check if all the new pics on the MBP are in the catalog. I can select "desktop>mbp janpic" but LR still searches the whole list and tells me 3000odd pics are missing as it cant find the pics on the iMac. Makes sense??

 

[rob211]

You have TWO desktop folders. One on the iMac; one on the MBP. If your machines have the same drive names, like MacintoshHD, perhaps Lr would think they are one folder, but could easily get confused, because they aren't. The desktop folder is necessary for macOS, and you shouldn't use it to store photos, as it will always cause you problems in the system you have set up, or be just too much of a pain to fix. Use another folder on the external instead.

 

[guido.coza]

I named now all folders iMac....., MB..... , its not perfect but I get around. More annoying is that i can't select a specific folder or location to sync or find missing pics.