My Photo Storage System: External Hard Drives and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Author’s Note: There are many different ways to put together a digital photography image storage system. Image storage is not a “one-size fits all” problem. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom allows for multiple solutions to the “image storage puzzle.” With Photoshop Lightroom, you are always free to choose where to store your digital images and where to store your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog database files. I urge you to carefully study this tutorial on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Creation and Image Storage Fundamentals before proceeding on to the rest of this article. Please understand that the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog and image storage system that works wonders for me may not be the ideal solution for you.
My Image Storage Solution: External Hard Drives
Right now, I have 40,000+ digital images in my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog. Among the 40,000+ images are photos that have been published in magazines, pictures that have been used in national advertisements, precious family photos, and important personal work. The hard drive space required to store all of these images, plus my Photoshop Lightroom Catalog database files, exceeds the total storage capacity of my MacBookPro’s internal hard drive. I considered replacing the hard drive in my laptop with a bigger disk, but more storage space is not my only need. After pondering the issue for a little while, I came up with this list that takes other issues into consideration.
My Image Storage Hardware Needs:
- I want to store all of my existing digital images, and my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog, on a single hard drive.
- I need an image storage system that is easily expanded, or replaced, as I add more images into my holdings.
- I need an image storage system that is easy to backup before a disaster strikes.
- I need to be able to work with my images, and my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog, using either my laptop or my desktop computer. I need a storage system that makes it easy for me to switch from one machine to another.
- Finally, I need an image storage system that is easy to transport from place to place since I am often out on the road teaching Adobe Photoshop Lightroom seminars and leading digital photography field workshops.
After careful analysis, the answer was clear that storing all of my images and my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog on the right type of external hard drive is the best way to meet all of these demands. After much experimentation, I have come to rely on a professional-grade RAID-0 (stripped) external hard drive for my primary image storage.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Mini RAID External Hard Drive
There is an enormous difference in performance between a professional-grade RAID-0 external drive, like the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Mini (7200rpm Version) that I use for my primary image storage, and the average low-cost consumer-grade USB external hard drive. Obviously, a “pocket-size” RAID-0 external hard drive is not the right storage solution for everyone, but this drive works well for me. Our article on brands and models of external hard drivesoffers more advice and specific recommendations on this topic.
My 1.5 terabyte external hard drive provides the enormous amount of storage space that I need to hold a decade’s worth of digital images. I splurged on the fancy RAID-0 external disk because it can read and write at a much faster rate then an ordinary hard drive. A FireWire 800 port is currently my fastest option, so this is the port that I use to connect my RAID-0 external hard drive to the main computer which gives it a bit of a performance boost. With newer hardware, I could get even more performance out of an eSATA or a Thunderbolt connector.
Another reason I chose to pay a premium for a “mini” external RAID-0 drive is because it fits beautifully in a waterproof, impact-resistant, military-grade protective Pelican 1200 Case 
Because all of my images and my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog are on the external drive, my entire photographic library is portable. This is an important detail for me because I occasionally get phone calls, or frantic emails, from photo editors who want to license one of my images for immediate use in their publication. Due to the wonders of “Murphy’s Law,” I seem to only get these emergency phone calls when I am out on the road instead of when I am sitting at home with my main computer. Telling a potential buyer that I cannot deliver the file they want for weeks, or months, usually kills the deal. This was a major source of stress for me until I moved all of my images and my Lightroom Catalog over to the external hard drive. Now I can travel around teaching workshops and seminars without this fear. As long as I have my primary image storage disk with me, I have access to all of my images!
Using an external hard drive for my primary image storage also makes it easy for me to switch back and forth between multiple computers. I need to make it clear here that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not a network-ready application. You cannot use your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog with more than one machine at a time. This program is not designed for simultaneous use by multiple workstations, but this limitation is not a problem for me because I only need to use one computer at a time. If I can connect my RAID 0 drive to my desktop computer, then I have instant access to all of my photos and my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog. When I connect this external disk to my laptop, I immediately enjoy the same capabilities.
Since I have the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom application installed on both computers, I can pick up right where I left off in my one Lightroom Catalog as soon as the RAID-0 disk is connected. I tried using separate Photoshop Lightroom Catalogs on each computer, but it was confusing, inefficient, and clumsy. Now I don’t need to deal with the confusion of multiple catalogs, or mess with sophisticated synchronization routines, to work with more than one computer because all of my photographic information is stored on one external drive and this makes my life much easier.
There is great danger lurking in my image storage system. If I don’t prepare for disaster, then I will lose everything when my RAID-0 external hard drive fails. My external hard drive, like all other hard drives, will eventually fail. Their meltdown is inevitable. Thus, part two of my image storage system is to plan and prepare for total disk failure. Sitting right beside my RAID-0 external hard drive are other lower-priced external disks. These disks, which work as my backup hard drives, do not need to be fancy RAID-0 drives. They are “clones” of my primary storage disk and my computer’s internal hard drives. I have Professional-Grade Backup Plans that I stick to everyday. Our storage systems may differ. Our hardware, software, and our style of photography may differ. What is universal, though, is the need for a backup system. Do not let the failure of one electronic device destroy a lifetime’s worth of precious photography.
Filed Under: (01) Getting Started • (04) Computer Hardware Advice • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
About the Author: David Marx is a digital photography instructor whose engaging teaching style inspires photographers of all skill levels. David is an Adobe Certified Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom Expert. David has led Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Lightroom seminars and digital photography field workshops for The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, FirstLight Workshops, The American Society of Media Photographers, and the world-renowned Blackberry Farm Resort. To learn more about David's software seminars and field photography workshops, please visit 
Dear Joel,
Your first question is easier to answer then the second one. After copying your photo folder from one external hard drive to another do the following:
1. Quit (Exit) Lightroom.
2. Safely eject the old external hard drive.
3. Restart Lightroom.
4. In the Folders panel right-click on your top level folder (I believe yours is called “my lightroom folders”) and then click on the “Locate Missing Folder” button. Guide the dialog over to this folder on the new drive and then you are all done. Easy!
I am afraid to give you advice though on deleting the duplicate “my lightroom photos” sub-folder. Without seeing your screen I am afraid that I might do you great harm if some of these files differ from the other copy or if they are in lots of collections. Before you delete them I want to be sure that they are not the most up-to-date version, or the version with the best metadata, or tied into lots of collections. Check all these things and if they are truly useless then delete them. (Personally, I would be sure to back up the whole drive first and my Lightroom Catalog too before this kind of massive change.)
Best of luck,
David
David,
I want to replace my primary external hard drive (contains all of my photos “my lightroom photos” with a new one. After copying the photo folder from one external HD to the new one, how do I ensure Lightroom recognizes the new source (HD)where the photos are stored? Also, somehow the folder “my lightroom photos” was copied as a subfolder where the photos are duplicated. Can I delete the subfolder “my lightoom photos” without any consequences to the main folder “my lightroom photos”? I am working with Windows XP and LR2. Thanks.
Joel
Dear Denise,
You are right that Lightroom edits are nondestructive regardless of your file format. Lightroom edits are stored in the file’s metadata block versus Photoshop type edits that are stored at the pixel level. This is a dorky way of saying “you have nothing to worry about no matter what file format you use in Lightroom.” Now that said, raw files are the most flexible are usually the most advantageous format for your initial capture.
You are right too that you can sort your files by file format. This is easily done either using the “file format” sort order option on the tool bar or through the metadata filter drop down.
–
David
Thank you, David, for clarifying the catalog and file setup. The links were helpful too. I am going to put everything on an external drive, and work with that for a while. Then I may get adventurous and try exporting the catalog to the laptop to work with the files offline.
I see in your reply to Marg Wood that you recommend keeping all versions and formats of a file together, rather than in separate folders or drives. I have been I am working with TIFF files, not RAW, and exporting jpg for web or print as needed. Since LR edits are nondestructive, is it correct that even my JPG files will remain unchanged by LR? I like the idea of keeping all file formats together, stacked even, as it will make things simpler all ’round. I assume I could always search to find TIFF or JPG only and export the photos as a collection if needed.
I appreciate your updating the info about Acronis True Image as well. It seems like a good backup option.
Thanks again for your helpful replies, tutorials, and articles.
Dear Carol,
I don’t know what happened to those video tutorials on Acronis True Image but I tracked them down and made them into a new post. Sorry about that. You can see the new post here.
http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/03/backing-up-windows-computers-using-acronis-true-image/
–
David
I am so glad to have found your website and great videos, and hope you can help me with a few questions. I am not a professional photographer, but am trying to use Lightroom 2 to organize and tag a collection of historic photos. I am scanning as TIFF files which are too large for Photoshop Elements (which was nice and easy for genealogy), and need to add metadata and convert to jpg files. I attended Scott Kelby’s LR workshop but haven’t implemented his file storage yet and I think your idea for using external drives makes more sense for my purpose.
I don’t understand, however, some things about the catalog. I now have images and catalog on PC-XP desktop. I plan to move all to an external MyBook, and backup to a 2nd MyBook following your videos. I would like to be able to work on my laptop with the catalog for the metadata tagging. Can I do this, and how do I get the data back to the MyBook catalog? Is that sync function? It seems like two copies of the catalog might create more confusion.
Thanks again for your help.
Dear Denise Levenick,
I think that you are confused about where metadata goes and the roll of the Lightroom catalog. Both are common confusions and the topics that take the most time to explain in my workshops. Assuming that you turn on the one critical preference switch in Lightroom (see the mega-important automatically write changes into xmp switch) then your metadata– the tags / keywords, captions, etc.– are all written into your files as you type them. The catalog merely reflects the information that the files actually contain.
So if you move your catalog and your images over to an external hard drive then you are free to use your catalog and images on any computer– laptop / desktop, mac / pc–as long as that computer has the Lightroom application installed and your hard drive is plugged in. Once your catalog is on the external disk you can delete the one that was original created on your computer’s internal hard drive. Since there is now only one catalog– the one on the external disk– there is no need to sync anything. All work that you do will happen within this catalog. The backup disk is just a mirror image of this entire drive. We never do anything to the files on the backup disk. Good software like Acronis True Image will take care of all the files on this disk.
By going with a single catalog on a single external hard drive you are not tied to any specific computer and you will never need to use the sync command! I hope this helps but again this is the trickiest part to Lightroom. For more advice see:
George Jardine’s Video on the roll of the Lightroom Catalog.
Martin Evening’s article on Importing and Exporting Catalogs.
–
David
I use Win XP. so I would need TrueImage for a clone backup. I clicked on the 3 links above and it says “this video has been removed by the user. So if not here, where can I view the videos on how to use True Image?
Thanks
Dear Glenn,
I like your thinking! The only trouble that I see with your plan is the disk size. This should work fine as long as there is plenty of free space on your laptop’s internal drive. In my case your plan isn’t going to work because I have about 500GB of images but only a 320GB internal hard drive. Remember too that you need to leave about 20% of your computer’s internal drive free for the operating system to use as a “scratch disk.” But if you have the free space to spare go for it when you are traveling!
–
David
P.S. I should add here Glenn that I always travel with a second external hard drive that is a backup of my laptop. There is nothing worse then getting ready to teach a class and discovering that your laptop is dead and that now all your presentations are gone.
I have an iMac, MacBook and two 500GB portable external drives. This is exactly what I want to do – thanks for the explanation. However, one further question: Since I want to go light in the field and carry only one external drive (as primary) is it practical to reverse the role of the laptop and external drive for backup purposes. In other words set up as you describe with the external drive as primary, but in LightRoom choose to backup to MacBook folder. That avoids using another program for the backup and maintains two copies of the photos. I’d do a third copy to the other external drive once I returned home.
Does that make sense?
Glenn
I just saw the comment from Mark back on Nov 30, 2009 and your answer. This answers my previous question concerning keeping the catalog on my laptop.
Thanks again for all of this very helpful information
I have just moved from a pc to a macbook pro and am delighted to find your site. Your articles have answered many of the issues I am having. I have always stored my images on external drives (multiple) and have just purchased the LaCie little big disk 1TB drive to use as my working drive with the LaCie Starck 2TB drive for the desktop backup drive. I use my macbook pro for travel and when in the office I dock it with an external LaCie monitor, keyboard, etc.
My question is….what is the advantage to having your Lightroom Catalog on the external drive if you only have one computer? The catalog doesn’t take up much space so my plan was to leave it on the laptop.
I am not looking forward to moving my folders within lightroom. I have close to 1TB of images to move and I am thinking it will take forever. I know you said be patient but I’m wondering if moving individual folders over is the only way.
Thanks again for providing such great information,
Carol
I have recently set up lightroom on my laptops (3) I have just taken a 9 hour course on lightroom and have purchased Scott Kelby’s book, “lightroom 2 a book for digital photographers” There Scott recommends using a 2 hard drive system, one for the edited photos, one for originals. This requires one usb 2cable and one firewire ieee 1394 cable. The problem is none of my laptops support firewire and I have been told that this method is obsolete in all new laptops. Is there anyway to get lightroom to differentiate between edited and non edited files, and still have backup copies of each on seperate harddrives?
Dear Marg Wood,
I must admit that I do not have a copy of Scott Kelby’s book on hand so I can’t check his exact advice but I have a few thoughts. First, I wonder if your new laptops do have built in Firewire ports but I would not be surprised at all if these are the Firewire 4-pin (mini) variety? For more on Firewire and its profusion of plug shapes and sizes please click here.
Even if you don’t have Firewire ports there is no reason why you couldn’t follow Scott Kelby’s system using only USB external hard drives. The type of connection–USB vs. Firewire– has no effect on what a drive can or cannot do. The drive connector only changes its data transfer speed.
Second and more universally useful, I don’t like Mr. Kelby’s advice that you should use “one drive for edited photos and one for originals.” With all due respect, I think this is a very inefficient way to manage your digital images and it makes protecting yourself with a mirrored backup system much more difficult. Before I go bashing Scott Kelby’s plan though let me point out that we are in complete agreement about the need to have multiple copies of your files stored on multiple hard drives.
As you can see from this tutorial, I believe in keeping all of my files–whether I have edited them or not–on a single hard drive. This drive is my working drive and it is regularly backed up (mirrored) to another external using quality backup software. Whenever you “edit”–edit here meaning to enhance or change the look of a digital photo–Lightroom marks the file’s thumbnail with a series of badges. The “Plus / minus” badge indicates that this file has been adjusted in the Develop Module. The “Cropping Badge” indicates that the thumbnail that you are seeing in Lightroom is a cropped version of the original file. If you are not seeing any of the badges in the lower right-hand corner of your Grid Thumbnails then you need to enable this feature.
Not only does Lightroom mark which files have or have not been developed or cropped but these labels are also searchable. You can easily tell Lightroom to find all of your files that have never been “edited” or to find only the ones that have been cropped using the power of Smart Collections For more on Smart Collections please check out this excellent article from lightroomsecrets.com.
Hope this helps,
David
Hi Dave,
I travel a lot and take my computer with me when I travel. I will often edit shots and print them on the road. I also only use my laptop – no desktop. Do you have any suggestions as to how best set up my system for that? I don’t believe it will work to have a LR catalog on my laptop and my external HD; or is there a way to merge them when I return home? I do plan on storing my photos on an external HD, quite convinced of that, so I will download the photos off my laptop to the HD when I return home. But what about the LR edits and such?
Thanks,
Richard
Dear Richard,
Apologies for the delay. I wrote a response a week ago but digital gremlins ate it. This is a great question and its exactly why Lightroom has both an “Import Catalog” and “Export as Catalog” feature. Let’s assume here that you set yourself up my way with both your photos and your catalog on an external hard drive. Now when you need to travel you have two choices. One is to disconnect the external hard drive and then launch Lightroom. Since your main catalog is unavailable Lightroom will create a new one. Unless you tell it otherwise the new catalog will live inside a “Lightroom” folder inside of your Pictures folder. So far so good. You go out on the road and use this catalog to empty your memory cards and do your work.
The tricky part though is merging this work in with your main catalog when you get back home. To do this you need to restart Lightroom and force it to load your main catalog. There are many ways to do this but I think the easiest is just to browse over to your external hard drive, find your Lightroom Catalog file– its the one that ends with “.lrcat”–and double click. Be sure you launch the right file though because we are going to merge everything that you did on the road into this catalog using the “File > Import from Catalog” command.
Once you hit “Import from catalog” you will need to guide Lightroom over to the road catalog– the one that lives inside your internal Pictures folder–and select the “.lrcat” file. When the Import Dialog box pops up be sure to tell Lightroom that you want to copy all of the new files over to your external hard drive and that you want it to take everything including the “negative files.” Negative files, in this case, means the actual images regardless of file format and not just their Lightroom thumbnails.
Once the import is successful backup your external hard drive so that all of your new work is safely stored on more than one external hard drive. When you are sure that everything worked and that everything is safe I suggest deleting the travel catalog and all of the road images from your laptop’s hard drive.
For an excellent article on this process please read this excerpt from Martin Evening’s The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers.
–
David
P.S. Before you do any of this you need to really understand whats going on inside the Lightroom Catalog itself. This video from Adobe Evangelist George Jardine might help.
Dear Joey,
In my system, Time Machine has been disabled. I think that Apple deserves lots of praise for including Time Machine into the core operating system.
I love Time Machine for its ability to protect everything on my Mac’s internal drive but I don’t like Time Machines default scheduling. I think that running the backup every hour is overkill though you can change this with the free Time Machine Scheduler.
I also find that using Time Machine to backup an internal drive + an external hard drive onto a second external disk can get complicated. Again, in my system Carbon Copy Cloner does everything that Time Machine would do but I find it much easier to set the schedule and designate what gets backed up where with Carbon Copy.
I am not trying to convince you that my system is right and that your idea is wrong. There are no rights and wrongs here. What’s important here is that you find a backup system that works for you and that use it regularly!
Happy Holidays,
David
Thanks for this long thread – very helpful.
One thing I haven’t noticed on this is how Time Machine fits (or doesn’t fit) into all of this.
My thought was to include a partition for Time machine in the main external drive that then gets copied to the other external HDs via carbon copy.
Make sense? Are there better options?
Thanks,
Joey
Excellent points Giordy! You are definitely taking the right steps to prevent disaster.
Interest post. If I may, I’d like to add a couple of suggestions:
- About your suggestion that “The second disk can be a different brand and a different size. Identical brands or models is not the important part.”, I would say that you should make sure that the second disk IS a different brand. Different HD’s of the same batch are much more likely to fail at the same time. If you buy different brands, you are safer from this point of view.
- I keep an additional external HD backup in a safety deposit box in the bank. That prevents you from losing everything in case of fire in your house or office (even fire-proof safes are usually not safe for hard drives).
Giordy
Dear Mark,
These are good questions. First, I don’t think that you will notice a significant performance difference if you move your catalog from an internal disk over to an external Firewire 800 disk. There maybe a slightly longer pause when the program launches but after that there shouldn’t be any noticeable difference.
Moving your catalog to an external is easy and as you say the file path’s are absolute. Nothing to worry about here but an article that I wrote a few months ago might help.
How to Get Your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Hard Drive
You last question is the toughest. Like you, I tried keeping my catalog on my laptop’s internal drive so that I could “work” on my files even when they were offline. What I soon learned though was that I couldn’t actually do much. I could add metadata– keywords, labels, rating stars, etc.–but I couldn’t do much else especially in the develop module since the actual files are not available.
If you are adding metadata, and if your files are offline, you need to be really careful about backing up your catalog. Since the files are not available, the metadata that you add is stored only at the catalog level. Until the hard drive is reconnected this information cannot be passed down to the file level.
So what I learned the hard way is that if you do a lot of work while your images are offline, and if your catalog gets lost or corrupted, then you haven’t accomplished anything. :< Yes, its nice to travel without the external hard drive, and yes it is nice to have your thumbnails even when the files are offline, but its risky and it makes life far more complicated.
My post on the Write to XMP Switch might add some relevant info on this topic.
Hope this helps.
David Marx
Mike-
Sorry about the delay. Your question slipped through the cracks. Apologies.
I don’t think that you will like the Lightroom + a server combo. Truth is that Lightroom is not a network ready program. Using a server as a backup is no problem but I think that you will have problems if you choose to keep your working files on a server or network disk.
There is a network version of Extensis Portfolio 5.0 but I have not tried it.
best wishes,
David Marx
I’m using a set up similar to what you’ve described, with one difference being that I have my catalog on the internal hd of my desktop. I’m considering moving it to the external drive where the bulk of my images are sitting. This would certainly make working with 2 different Macs a lot smoother,however,i have a couple questions/concerns about doing so:
A) Does performance suffer by having the catalog on an external (FW800) drive rather than the internal sata bus?
B) What’s the Best Practice for relocating an exiting catalog? If files from multiple volumes on included in the catalog are there any concerns about moving catalog or are the references to volumes absolute? (I suspect they are.)
C) At times I’ve enjoyed being able to work “offline” on my laptop (i.e. not connected to the disk with the RAW files). Of course, this limits me to Library functions, and it can be tricky to apply any changes made on the laptop back into the “Hero” catalog back on the main, desktop Mac. What downsides have YOU found to always having to have your external drive with you?
I’d love to here peoples thoughts on dealing with multi-user, multi-platform situations!
Thanks – great discussion
Great and helpful information. I am using a two drive system at the moment but I am thinking of adding a server for older images any thoughts on this?
David,
Thanks, I get it now regarding the question above. Thanks. Although I just created a new problem that I have sort of fixed. Was watching your tutorial on moving your LR Cat to an external. I bought this Mac and LR at the same time and started from scratch using your 2 drive system but somehow screwed up and had my catalog on what appeared to be my internal hard drive and external library. Watched you video on moving cat to external library drive and did what was instructed. Then moved the LRcat file from internal to the trash. Reopened LR and none of my folders containing pics were there!!! CRAP! almost died. Ended up importing entire catalog from Photo Library drive using the import button on left side panel in Library module. Only 550 pictures so not too big a deal. Then had rename folders. Now have duplicates of all folders on Library drive. Not sure why LR can’t see the original folders??
Dear Jacki,
If both drives have Firewire ports I would definitely daisy chain. Daisy chaining is one of the best things about Firewire since it means that you don’t need to buy a hub or install a whole mess of ports on your computer. Plus, daisy chained devices still run at Firewire speeds which will make your drives perform faster than they would if connected via USB.
best wishes,
David
David, Thank you for such a clear description. I have one question, as I am ready to make the plunge for the two drive storage/backup.
Do you hook both drives up to the computer using the 800 and a usb port? or do you daisy chain the two drives together. a very basic question, I know, but I’ve never used a back up drive in all these years. Feeling like my luck wont last forever…
Thank you!
Jacki
Dear Scott,
Apologies. I just noticed that your question is still unanswered. Let’s see if I can help. To start with we have two drives: A = LaCie 250 and B = Some other 500GB.
If you start out using A (the 250) as your primary storage and you use an automated backup system like Carbon Copy Cloner then there is absolutely NO reason to turn on the “backup on import” option in Lightroom.
(I am not a fan of this button at all. Yes, this button makes a second copy of your files but it does not update their metadata nor will it ever update them after the import operation is over. This means that if you ever need to use these files, say after your main drive fails, that they lack your copyright, keywords, etc. and they are still full of the problems that you had already fixed.)
But again if you use Carbon Copy the way I do then you have nothing to fear. Carbon Copy will put your files onto the second drive and it will keep them up to date too.
So when the first drive gets full, I would promote the B drive (the 500GB.) Drive B becomes the new primary storage and then we go out and get an even bigger one to use as our new backup drive. We teach Lightroom the name of the B drive and we setup Carbon Copy Cloner again. In ten minutes you are all set to go and the old little LaCie can be used for any other purpose.
Does this help?
–David
David,
Strongly considering your 2 drive system. Was thinking ahead and a question popped up. Background…I just switched over from PC to Mac Bought a MBP and LR2 which I have not yet installed. Bought a LaCie 250 G Rugged to use as a back up. Was planning on using the LR “backup on import” function with this drive. Here is the question. If I use your set up and use the LaCie 250 for my “photo library” disk and another say..500 GB drive for the “photo backup” drive. When the 250 library drive gets full and I begin using a new drive while still using the original 500gig back up drive..Will the clone program wipe out the info on the back up drive if I am mirroring the data? I am thinking it will think hmmm….I’ve got all these photos and this new drive has none, I’m mirroring it so I’ll delete all this data to match the new one. Sorry for the long drawn out question.
Scott
P.S. Graduated from Southeastern Center for the Arts in ATL which Neil and Jeanne owned before founding RMSP and moving west. They are a couple of great folks! Miss them.
I made a mistake in my previous post, the My Book Studio II 2TB is WDH2Q20000N.
Your setup is so simple, thanks for taking the time to share this. Today I ordered a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II WDH2Q20000. It has two 1TB hard drives and can be setup as a RAID 1 drive, automatically and continually making two identical copies of your information. The interface choices are Hi-Speed USB, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 or Serial ATA-300. Hopefully this will be a good setup for me to implement your system. (The Wikipedia article on SATA indicates a max 3 meter cable length for ATA-300.)
Hi Dave,
Like your comments and the way you teach. My question for you is how to send photo’s from LR2 by email. I think I have set it up correctly but when I go to send them the email page is not up.
Also how do I get to see all of your movies?
Thanks
I happened across this link from the adobe forums (I am new to Lightroom).
What I use to backup my images (Windows Vista) is SyncToy from Microsoft. It is a free download and does much of what the carbon copy does for mac. It has a few extra features that I like.
It can allow you to mirror changes across network shares. In the windows world, this is \\remotemachine\share . So for my laptop, I set up the master to be \\desktop\photos and the mirror to be c:\photos. This lets me copy everything to my laptop, including the latest changes, before I go. But I set them to the “Synchronize” option, so if I do any work on the laptop, when I get home, I run SyncToy and it copies everything back to the desktop. For my backup drive, I use the ‘echo’ setting to just copy everything to the drive like shown in your video. SyncToy has a 32-bit and a 64-bit version for the various flavors of Windows.
But I also have 2 backup drives, one of which lives at my brother’s house and gets updated about once a month.
Leslie,
I wanted to chime in on your discussion about which photos to keep. I’ve struggled with the same issue. For now, my solution has been to keep my “point and shoot” images in iPhoto and my professional work in Lightroom.
This has its limitations, obviously, as sometimes photos I take “for fun” end up being “keepers.”
I’ve certainly not found a perfect solution yet…
-Scott
I’ve been working all day editing a 5 day personal shoot I did last week on a trip with friends and dogs and it has me thinking about your comments on the site about only keeping your best work. I keep a lot of my work because I photograph for a lot of different reasons, not only artistic / technical merit. Some of my favorite shots for memories aren’t all that great technically. I’ll give a DVD to my friends of nearly all the photo’s for a memory of the week. Only around 5% at most are photographs I think I could use artistically, but I do want to keep all the photo’s for memories for the future. I wonder if I should burn a DVD of those events, so I have the “memories” shots saved but then edit down to only keeping the best in Lightroom.
Granted, one reason I have this cross-over problem is that I’m not just using lightroom for professional shots, but also my snapshots. I wonder if I should separate those out or will it start breaking down in the future?
Once again I come back to how I wish I could use Lightroom like Cumulus! I could easily have more than one catalog without separating out the photos. Wonder if there’s anyway to convince Adobe of the benefit of that?
Thanks for the response, David. I’m trying to wade through the different ideas for using Lightroom. There are some really complicated systems out there and from my own experience using databases, I’ve found that you should keep it simple and don’t start dividing up your photos. I have to agree that I really don’t like the idea of having separate, duplicate images for different catalogs.
I wish that Lightroom could behave more like Cumulus where you can have different catalogs open at once and drag an image reference to a different catalog while maintaining the location of the file.
Dear Leslie,
I have read Eric Scouten’s post and I respectfully disagree with his advice. I find his four separate catalogs idea complicated and cumbersome. Not to pick on him (because this is a place where there is no one right answer) but what is the point to his “family selects catalog?” Couldn’t he accomplish the same goal– the best photos of his friends and family– using a single keyword and a single colored label or star rating?
I just can’t see the logic to creating an entirely separate catalog for this purpose when a smart collection that looks for say images with the keyword “family” plus say “the five star rating” would accomplish the same goal. Why make life more complicated?
As far as the warnings about large catalogs upsetting Lightroom, I believe that you have nothing to worry about. I have never heard of Lightroom having problems that were caused by lots of keywords.
Now it is true that Lightroom v.2 has an 100,000 image limit, but how many of us have shot 100,000 photos total much less 100,000 that are actually worth keeping? My advice is put everything into one catalog but be sure to make regular backups of both your catalog and your images. Backups, backups, backups! That’s the key to success and a good nights sleep in the digital world.
best of luck,
David
PS. Thanks for the kind words and the subscribe to comments suggestion.
I like the idea of having one catalog. I really don’t like separating my files, but I’ve read that Lightroom can get grumpy if it gets too big or has too many keywords. Have you read Eric Scouten’s blog post?
http://blog.ericscouten.com/2009/09/lightroom-2-technique-how-i-organize-my-catalog-and-why-2009-edition/comment-page-1/#comment-5461
I’m about to catalog and keyword 8 years of digital images, so trying to get my game plan.
btw, think of adding the plug-in “Subscribe to Comments”
Great site!
Colin,
The Edit in Photoshop function will just fine. To get the best performance, make sure you’re using a fast external hard drive (I try to use 7200 RPM drives whenever possible) and a fast connection (Firewire 800 is a great choice).
-Scott
Thanks for all the info, I’m new to mac and building up my knowledge of Lightroom so nothing is too obvious. My question is, how does storing all images on an external drive affect the edit in photoshop function? Can you run CS4 on the internal drive and store all your images externally and still work fast? I assume you use the internal disk as your scratch disk?
Thank you
Meg,
I’ll answer for Dave quickly. You can most definitely do that. That’s what Lightroom was designed for!
When importing images, you specify where those images are to be stored; be it the same drive that holds the Lightroom Catalog or a separate internal, external, or networked drive. See this post on Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to Copy New Images in from a Memory Card.
If you have a catalog or images you’d like to move, this post on How to get your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Hard Drive might be helpful.
Let us know if you have more questions about this.
-Scott
Hi Dave,
Do you know of any way to keep one catalog for just browsing and thumbnails, but that refers to images stored on multiple hard drives? That would really be idea for our studio since we have way more than a TB of photos to store and sort.
Thanks,
Meg
Thanks Kat for the kind words and the support! Backups, backups, backups. You can never have too many. Drives are cheap. Replacing lost images expensive or impossible.
Hey Dave,
I just want to emphasis with your keeping dual hard drives. I am up to two hands need to count the number of hard drives that have crashed in the last three years. Keep DOUBLES everyone! It’s extremely important!
I love you stuff Dave!
Kat
The more backups the better! A backup does not guarantee that your data will survive a massive disaster. But no backup is a guarantee that nothing will survive. Having an offsite backup as well as onsite greatly increases your odds of success!
I’ve been worried about a theft or power surge destroying the computer and two external drives. I just picked up a third drive so I can rotate one offsite.
I think this will also make me more comfortable when taking a drive (or two) on a field trip.
Lightroom lacks a “vault” function. It does have an automatic backup option, but sadly this feature only backs up your catalog and not your actual photographs. Still, programs like Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac) or Acronis True Image Home (PC) make it so easy to backup an entire drive that I can easily get around Lightroom’s limitations with minimal extra expense or difficulty.
Now, as far as what to bring to school each day during the Rocky Mountain School of Photography’s Summer Intensive Program I would bring only my working photo storage drive and I would leave my backup disk at home. This is what I do whenever I am traveling.
In my world, my backup disk always stays on my desk at home so that the working disk, the active photo storage disk, can travel with me. This way if disaster strikes; bike accident, rain storm, TSA / luggage monkey abuse in an airport, etc., my backup disk is still safe and sound. That said, please bring both disks to our first class together so that we can help you get everything setup. See you in a few weeks!
Dave, does Lightroom have a vault function for backing up an entire photo library to an external drive? Apple’s Aperture has this feature, so you need not create a mirror image of the library with a separate program. Second, with all the biking around town we are supposed to do during SI, would two portable external drives work better?
Scott, Dave,
Thanks for the replies.
Dave,
).
I might’ve misformulated that I split up my catalog *because* it’s getting slow and bulky. That wasn’t the only reason, obviously.
I have so many different things going on, and I’m a perfectionistic control freak, that I get annoyed if things get messed up.
I have a separate catalog for all my trips to different countries, just because I don’t want to mess up my information. I know I can make separate collections within one catalog, but that still itches (I know, I know…!
As for the hardware… aside that one issue that I’m running Windooms, there’s little I can do about the rest, except for buying a whole new system, which I’m not ready to do (yet). Dual single Xeon 1.8Ghz, I have a bunch of hard drives hooked up, all 7200rpm, 4Gig RAM (of which XP only reads 3 anyway).
Optimizing catalog once per week.
Not much else left to do, or is there?
Arno,
I am a big fan of the one, and only one catalog, model. It’s what I truly do and its part of what I love about Lightroom as the “google index” of my digital images. I feel like the use of multiple catalogs for your own image storage weakens Lightroom.
Here’s my logic. Let’s say that you have images in one catalog, say weddings, and then an entirely separate catalog of landscape images. All seems good up until the day when decide to put together a portfolio, or build a web page, that includes both your best wedding and your best landscape images.
See, if you make multiple Lightroom Catalog how can you put together a single collection that includes all of your best work regardless of image type without lots of extra effort?
Likewise, I use a lot of Lightroom Export Plugins, like the plugin that takes my photos directly from Lightroom to Flickr, and I have built important presets for things like my copyright and contact info. If you have configured Lightroom the way that I suggest then all of these settings are Catalog specific. If you start making multiple catalogs then you have to remember to copy all of your settings from one catalog over to the others. If you don’t copy these settings then your metadata preset, for example, will be missing.
Is copying the settings folder from catalog to catalog hard? No, but I would call it a totally unnecessary complication. One catalog keeps it simple.
Now not everyone agrees with me, and I will admit that I too make separate tiny catalogs for projects like my class examples and my lectures. The ability to have multiple catalogs is a nice feature if you know what you are doing, but I would urge you to stick to maintaining just one big, all-inclusive, 100% of your digital photographs catalog.
You say that you split up your catalog because it was getting slow and bulky. First, I would ask when is the last time that you ran the optimize catalog feature? Then, I would suggest that its your hardware that needs upgrading– more ram, faster rotational hard drives, a stronger processor. I would rather install more RAM than make my life more complicated, and my workflow less efficent, by building multiple catalogs.
David
Arno,
I’m sure Dave will chime in shortly, but I do have more than one catalog in a few, specific instances. Typically, I don’t recommend multiple catalogs for beginning Lightroom users because of the high risk of confusion, duplication, and misplaced files/edits. I have no doubt that you can handle it, though, Arno.
Here are some tips that I give for having multiple catalogs:
-Make sure each original file (negative file) only exists in one catalog at a time. (Don’t have more than one catalog pointing to the same exact photo.)
-It’s much easier, organizationally, if your separate catalogs contain photos which you would never need to work with or see together. In other words, it doesn’t make sense, for me, to put all my wildlife photos in one catalog and all my landscape photos in another because I may want to see those categories together at some time. If you think about wedding photographers, on the other hand, it would be unusual that they would need to see photos from more than one wedding together. It makes sense to have each individual wedding stored as one catalog.
-Make sure that you are completely comfortable with the way catalogs, backups, sidecar files, and original files are moved, referenced, and stored before trying to tackle multiple catalogs.
Scott
Please follow this link if you need advice on how to properly format an external hard drive.
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/01/formatting-an-external-hard-drive/
Hey Dave,
Just wondering… Do you have only one LR Catalog?
I split up my catalog in multiples, because I found it became very slow and bulky, even after 15,000 images already.