Mobile Lightroom library

[Deleted member 67219]

I have a bit of a difficult situation. For one reason or another I'm separated from my desktop computer for most of the week, which includes my image library. As I often need my images to illustrate articles I write this is a problem for me.

At the moment I have all my images on one hard drive with a Lightroom catalogue that includes them all and all my cataloging etc. I'd like to make this portable. I've bought myself a large enough usb 3 hard drive to handle all my files, but I'm wondering what the best way is to transfer my library and catalogue files onto the portable hard drive. I'm on a mac.

Also is there a way to automatically mirror my portable hard drive back to my desktop hard drive every time I plug it in? At the moment i use time machine. I'd like to keep a back up in case it gets lost while I'm on the move.

 

[boyfalldown]

which version of Lightroom do you use?. If version 5 I'd use smart previews which are intended for exactly this situation

 

[JonathanRyan]

The simplest way to do this is to go into the finder and locate (1) your LRCAT and (2) the source files. Drag them over to the USB 3 drive. Then open the LRCAT from the USB 3 drive (double click), go to the folder in the left hand panel and right click (option click on a one button mouse) and choose the option to find the folder. Everything should cascade from there though you'll have to do this once for each top level folder.

To mirror the drives I'd use Chronosync. $40 and there is a free trial to see if you like it. You can literally set it so that when the drive mounts the sync runs. HOWEVER, syncing LR databases can be dangerous. If you have made changes on desktop and USB drive then AFAIK no sync package will get it right every time (especially Dropbox - do not try this, eventually you will lose data). That's because it's a database stuffed into 1 file. A better option might be to make sure LR is storing .xmps with the files (it's in the preferences) and sync just the source files. Then in LR rescan the source folders.

But a better way to do this might just be to work off the USB 3 drive on both machines - so you have just one copy and don't have to sync it.