External hard drive for processing pictures

ndwgolf

ndwgolf

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Neil Williams
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Guys,
what is the nest way to store my photos on my iMac and macbook air using lightroom.
Right now I store the photos on the iMac hard drive but then I transfer them to a external hard drive when I travel so that I can access them on the macbook.
I was wanting to just store the photos on the external hard drive and set the backup to save them on the hard drive of the iMac but when the photos are on the external hard drive it is painfully slow to do anything with the pictures using lightroom on the iMac
Can someone point me in the right direction on what setup I should use.
Below is what I want to do;
1/. store and edit pictures using Lightroom/Bridge on my iMac
2/. download pictures from my Nikon D3s to my lightroom/Bridge program for editing
3/. have access to my lightroom pictures when I am traveling using my Macbook Air (small hard drive)

I currently have a 1T Western Digital External hard drive but the processing is slow, what about a external hard drive with firewire (note macbook air does not have firewire
 
Neil, this is what I do and it works fine with no latency when processing. I have a Mac Pro and a Mac Book Pro:

All my images are stored on an external drive Drobo S - FireWire
I have the Lightroom cache on a separate hard drive (1TB) to my OS on the mac and set the cache size to max, I think is 200GB.
I backup to a Time Capsule and to another local HD and offsite.
If I want to work on images on the MBP then I create a Collection in LR and export them as a catalogue to another external HD and attach that to my MBP and import it into LR. Once I have finished any processing I do the reverse back onto the Mac Pro. Take a look at post number 6 on this link:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3319106

Steve
 
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Neil

I have all my images stored on external FW800 drives. To be honest I don't notice much speed difference if they were on the iMac's main drive. The Catalog is on the iMac.

Steve's suggestion is what I would do. This way you do keep all the edits current

I suspect the slowness may be down to the fact that Lightroom's catalog is on an external HD, possibly a USB one. Having the catalog on the the Air's own drive would speed things up However it wont be a quick as an iMac especially if the iMac is a quad core machine. Don't forget to tidy things up when you have transferred the images back to the iMac
 
vv cephei said:
Neil, this is what I do and it works fine with no latency when processing. I have a Mac Pro and a Mac Book Pro:

All my images are stored on an external drive Drobo S - FireWire
I have the Lightroom cache on a separate hard drive (1TB) to my OS on the mac and set the cache size to max, I think is 200GB.
I backup to a Time Capsule and to another local HD and offsite.
If I want to work on images on the MBP then I create a Collection in LR and export them as a catalogue to another external HD and attach that to my MBP and import it into LR. Once I have finished any processing I do the reverse back onto the Mac Pro. Take a look at post number 6 on this link:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3319106

Steve
Click to expand...
So Steve, just so that I understand this correctly.
Move the Lightroom Catalog to say my pictures folder on the iMac
Store all the pictures on an external (I will get the G-Raid with the FT800)
back up the photo library to say a Time Capsual

Sorry if I sound thick, but I have drank a lot of beer in my time:):):)
 
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ndwgolf said:
So Steve, just so that I understand this correctly.
Move the Lightroom Catalog to say my pictures folder on the iMac
Store all the pictures on an external (I will get the G-Raid with the FT800)
back up the photo library to say a Time Capsual

Sorry if I sound thick, but I have drank a lot of beer in my time:):):)
Click to expand...

Your LR catalog should already be in your Pictures>Lightroom folder by default on your iMac, I leave mine in that folder. Yes, all my images are stored on an external drive (as is all my data) and thats what I work from whether it be in LR. PS or any other program.

I have set my TC to backup only my images (because its WIP) and I have another backup plan (different software) which backups everything to another local HD and into the cloud - this is mainly static data.

Your current drive should be fine.
Have you optimized your Catalog recently? What is the location of LR cache files and what is the max set to? I would take a look at these 1st.

Steve
 
Neil

Another option to muddy the waters is to also save your catalog to your external drive (I use this method). The only advantage is that my catalog is then available with my photos on either of my machines that I use for LR3.

For example, I am using my Windows Laptop at the moment and have everything on here that I would have if I was using my MacBook Pro.

When I get back I can plug in the hard drive to my MBP and everything is there - no updating required.

Just remember to be organised about taking back ups and back ups and back ups.
 
Buck said:
Neil

Another option to muddy the waters is to also save your catalog to your external drive (I use this method). The only advantage is that my catalog is then available with my photos on either of my machines that I use for LR3.

For example, I am using my Windows Laptop at the moment and have everything on here that I would have if I was using my MacBook Pro.

When I get back I can plug in the hard drive to my MBP and everything is there - no updating required.

Just remember to be organised about taking back ups and back ups and back ups.
Click to expand...
I did that but now the lightroom catalog on my laptop is showing all the folders but the folders have question marks beside them even though the pictures are there
 
I have Seagate Go for mac 2.5" with FW and use that. It is small and light, and performs much better overall than the stationary external WD brick, now only used for backup purposes. I think seagate will work via USB, but I suspect it may need 2 cables for more power.
 
ndwgolf said:
I did that but now the lightroom catalog on my laptop is showing all the folders but the folders have question marks beside them even though the pictures are there
Click to expand...

Hi

You need to tell LightRoom where your photos are.

If you moved them outside of LR it won't have updated it's path to where the files are stored.
 
Neil

You simply need to let Lightroom know where the images are. Simply right click on the root folder. You'll get a menu pop up. Select Update Folder Location. and then navigate to that new folders location. Select it , and then click on Choose. This should then allow Lightroom to update its catalog with the new location
 
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