Posted by Brian Reilly on April 15, 2009 at 4:40 PM
I'm new to Lightroom 2. I'd like to edit with my laptop but have only 160 GB hard drive, much of which is already full. Is it reasonable or even recommended to store the photo files on an external hard drive and connect by USB or firewire when editing? What specific type of set up is working well for those of you doing this? Thanks Brian (My laptop has USB and a firewire 400 port)
Posted by Greg Barteluk on April 15, 2009 at 4:59 PM
A rule of thumb I go by is to store my images in at least two places. It's not a matter of "if" and hard drive will fail, but "when." I use a couple of lacie HDs to store images when on the road and routinely edit images stored on one of the drives. Cheers.
Posted by Frank Field on April 15, 2009 at 5:10 PM
My Lightroom catalog is split across the internal HDD in my PC and and external USB 2.0 connected HDD. My most recent work is imported to the catalog and stored on the PCs internal HDD. From time to time, I migrate directories in the catalog from the internal to external HDDs. The moves work seamlessly as long as you execute the moves from within Lightroom.
My PC has a 160 GB internal drive and I used 500 GB external drives. I have a second external drive that I used to keep a back-up of all my images.
I strongly recommend "The DAM Book" -- it has some great ideas on organizing your images and keeping them backed up.
Posted by David Taylor on April 15, 2009 at 11:10 PM
Good question Brian -
I've been using Lightroom since it was a brand new beta, and I use it primarily on my MacBook Pro. I will be purchasing a new iMac soon as well, so I've got a new system that may work for you. With Lightroom, I've always kept my RAW images on external drives. My current system is this: 1 1TB Seagate external USB2.0/FW800 as Archive 1, this is mirrored (after each LR session) to another 1TB Seagate external called Archive 2. This is mirrored monthly to a 3rd 1TB Seagate external drive and stored at a secure location and is called Offsite Archive. I also store a copy of my LR Catalog (lrcat file) and LR Previews (lrdata file) on each drive. My lrcat file is only a couple hundred mb's but my lrdata file (the Previews) is almost 55 gigs! Your images won't be the only files taking up space on your drives.
I will be getting a DROBO drive bay with my new iMac and will use FW800 for the connection, since there is no eSATA option on an iMac. The Drobo will have 4 drive bays and can store up to 8 gigs at a time. 1 drive will be my main access drive, and another as a backup. The 3rd drive spot will be used to sync a drive for offsite storage and the fourth spot will be for misc. files/videos/iTunes/business. I'll also have 2 500 gig portable drives for on-location storage (1 as a backup). Each of these will also have a copy of the lrcat & lrdata files on them so I can view all of my images (not the original file image - but at least a full size preview) where ever I am. It sounds complicated, but with backup software out there, it's quite easy - just hit start and it does it's thing while I sleep.
You also asked about FW vs USB. I recently did some studies on my laptop (which has both USB2 & FW400 - but no FW800 ) I compared the transfer speed (USB 2 is 480 mb/s & FW400 is 400 mb/s) and FW400 is faster than USB2.0. Although USB2 has a higher "rating" for speed, it actually functions at a slower speed. I tried transferring 500 mb to the same drive through each cord and timed each transfer separately - the FW400 was over 9 seconds faster (even though it's rated as being slower). I've never found anything that USB2 is faster at than FW400. I'm looking forward to USB3 & FW3200 though! Anyway, sorry for the rant & novel Hope this helps!
Brian, you should be fine using external drives for your photo's,
one thing you will notice though is that they will load a bit slower when opening them in photoshop.
once they are open, its just as if they where on your local drive.
You actually raise a few issues here. First using external HDs in LR is the best part of LR. Your catalogue will tell you where the master file that the thumb in your catalogue represents is actually located. So, if your catalogue spans several HDs as in my case you can leave them turned off until you locate the image you want then turn on the drive you need to get the master file.
The other issue implied in your question is image storage.
I typically keep one years' work on an internal drive (500 Gig) and back that up to another internal drive and 2 externals. One of the externals goes to my office for off site storage.
After the New Year turns I migrate my files to an external drive, again backed up to 2 others, one of which goes to work. So, I use the internal drives for current files and the externals for older images, but all are backed up with 2 additional copies, one stored off site.
LR catalogue points to the internal drives and the external drives that live at my work station. The thumbs tell me which drive has the master image.
Discussion
5 repliesMy PC has a 160 GB internal drive and I used 500 GB external drives. I have a second external drive that I used to keep a back-up of all my images.
I strongly recommend "The DAM Book" -- it has some great ideas on organizing your images and keeping them backed up.
I've been using Lightroom since it was a brand new beta, and I use it primarily on my MacBook Pro. I will be purchasing a new iMac soon as well, so I've got a new system that may work for you. With Lightroom, I've always kept my RAW images on external drives. My current system is this: 1 1TB Seagate external USB2.0/FW800 as Archive 1, this is mirrored (after each LR session) to another 1TB Seagate external called Archive 2. This is mirrored monthly to a 3rd 1TB Seagate external drive and stored at a secure location and is called Offsite Archive. I also store a copy of my LR Catalog (lrcat file) and LR Previews (lrdata file) on each drive. My lrcat file is only a couple hundred mb's but my lrdata file (the Previews) is almost 55 gigs! Your images won't be the only files taking up space on your drives.
I will be getting a DROBO drive bay with my new iMac and will use FW800 for the connection, since there is no eSATA option on an iMac. The Drobo will have 4 drive bays and can store up to 8 gigs at a time. 1 drive will be my main access drive, and another as a backup. The 3rd drive spot will be used to sync a drive for offsite storage and the fourth spot will be for misc. files/videos/iTunes/business. I'll also have 2 500 gig portable drives for on-location storage (1 as a backup). Each of these will also have a copy of the lrcat & lrdata files on them so I can view all of my images (not the original file image - but at least a full size preview) where ever I am. It sounds complicated, but with backup software out there, it's quite easy - just hit start and it does it's thing while I sleep.
You also asked about FW vs USB. I recently did some studies on my laptop (which has both USB2 & FW400 - but no FW800
one thing you will notice though is that they will load a bit slower when opening them in photoshop.
once they are open, its just as if they where on your local drive.
Wim
The other issue implied in your question is image storage.
I typically keep one years' work on an internal drive (500 Gig) and back that up to another internal drive and 2 externals. One of the externals goes to my office for off site storage.
After the New Year turns I migrate my files to an external drive, again backed up to 2 others, one of which goes to work. So, I use the internal drives for current files and the externals for older images, but all are backed up with 2 additional copies, one stored off site.
LR catalogue points to the internal drives and the external drives that live at my work station. The thumbs tell me which drive has the master image.
Hope this helps.