Beginner Where to store Lightroom Classic catalogue (and how many)

D_Fivehundred

D_Fivehundred

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Darren
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As per the title really. Setting up a new system with Lightroom Classic and I'm looking at storing images on an external SSD. Should I store the catalogue/s on the external drive too, or would it/they be better stored on the C drive? If storing on the external drive, presumably it'll get full at some point and I'll get another. How would the catalogue know which drive images were stored on? Or, would it be sensible to have a catalogue per external drive?

I also can't decide whether to do a single catalogue, or multiple based on themes (wildlife, landscape, aircraft, motorsport, etc)?

Grateful for any advice.

Cheers all
 
You do not need to put RAW files on same drive as LR catalog file. Putting both on SSD provides the advantage of being able to move the SSD to a different computer, and if each computer has it LR preferences know to look at the SSD by default, you can work on images on any PC that has a copy of LR installed on it.
It seems like burdening yourself unnecessarily by filing different catagories of images in different catalogs; that might be fine to use separate catalogs for personal photos vs. photos taken in conjunction with a photography business. You can use keywords associated with each image to file/retrieve different categories, rather than to use different catalogs..
 
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I keep my photos and catalogs on the same drive. I create three catalogs for each year, events, clients, and family. Then when the drive gets full I just get another one and continue. Oh, and I do export my keywords and import them in to the new catalogs.
 
I keep my images and catalog on separate drives only for speed.
The catalog is stored on my internal SSD and the raw files on a NAS. As the catalog is being written to constantly while editing I want this to be as fast as possible. My preview files are also stored locally on my SSD.

If you have a very fast External SSD connected through a fast USB-C / Thunderbolt port and you want to move the external disk from PC to PC then I would just store everything on the external drive.

As for the number of catalogs, I have one. Having multiple catalogs negates the entire point of a catalog.
 
I only use one catalogue and the search process allows one to find anything very quickly providing you use some keywords. My catalogue is on the C drive but the Photos are on the D drive and both are backed up on a NAS. The catalogue is just a database with a few thumbnails so is very small compared to the photographs.

Dave
 
I have one catalogue on an internal SSD together with the photos, the catalogue is backed up every time LR is used to a separate spinning disk and once a week the whole lot is backed up to an external drive.
The only time I get a new catalogue is when LR does a major update and needs to create a new one
 
Similar to Chris, above.

1 catalog on internal SSD (along with operating system and applications)

Image files on internal spinning disk.

catalog and image files backed up daily to external HDD
 
I can't really add to anything above. I have an external SSD that has my single catalog in one file and another for all my images, I do work on a desktop and a laptop so I take it with me often. I will say that I add a 2nd external backup drive that when I'm connected to my desktop both those files are copied to it for redundancy. Your workflow will help you decide how you will set this up.
 
Albums on my NAS
A catalogue every 10 years

Catalogues stored on Synology drive (works as dropbox so you have catalogue files local by synced across devices)

Whole packages synced via NAS with additional daily back up on external drive
 
iludovico said:
Albums on my NAS
A catalogue every 10 years

Catalogues stored on Synology drive (works as dropbox so you have catalogue files local by synced across devices)

Whole packages synced via NAS with additional daily back up on external drive
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Just curious as to why every ten years. Is there an advantage or is it just a space thing, speed? I'm just at 12 years and it never occured to me that I need to start another catalog. Unless you are archiving clients, I guess that makes sense, in my thoughts anyway.
 
I started using LR in 2007 and have kept a single catalogue since then. However I fully appreciate the needs of a professional photographer are totally different to the needs of an amateur.

I tend to keep the cat and the photos in the same place (My Pictures) and that whole folder is backed up with backup software on file change + 1 hour. I don't trust LR's backup feature as it doesn't backup a lot of the profile settings (or the photos), so my main backup gets them as well as the catalogue and the photos all in one hit.

I don't know if it's a similar thing, but I used to run a course on Lightroom, and students would have the cat on the C drive and their photos on a removable drive. The amount of problems that caused was interminable, so I quickly got students to put the cat on the same drive as the photos and the majority of issues went away. Mostly it was down to the computers allocating different letters to the drives and the cat not being able to find them as you alluded to in the OP. Whether this was down to school IT issues, students messing, or an Adobe issue I don't know and never had the time to figure out. This was also a few years ago and things may well have changed now.
 
Harlequin565 said:
I don't know if it's a similar thing, but I used to run a course on Lightroom, and students would have the cat on the C drive and their photos on a removable drive. The amount of problems that caused was interminable, so I quickly got students to put the cat on the same drive as the photos and the majority of issues went away. Mostly it was down to the computers allocating different letters to the drives and the cat not being able to find them as you alluded to in the OP. Whether this was down to school IT issues, students messing, or an Adobe issue I don't know and never had the time to figure out. This was also a few years ago and things may well have changed now.
Click to expand...

That might be just a Windows thing?

Ive been using LR since the first public beta in 2006 and have just one catalog, which I keep on the internal drive of my Mac along with the last 12 months of RAW image files. All the other image files are cascaded periodically to progressively slower external storage drives, running to multiple terabytes of data and north of 150, 000 images.

I have never had any issue with the catalog losing track of files, but Mac volumes are labelled with names rather than single letters, so that may account for it.
 
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Musicman said:
That might be just a Windows thing?
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That and the fact that the computers were locked down tighter than something very tight because during the day, 16-18yr old students were doing their best to break them.
 
PhotoVanGogh said:
Just curious as to why every ten years. Is there an advantage or is it just a space thing, speed? I'm just at 12 years and it never occured to me that I need to start another catalog. Unless you are archiving clients, I guess that makes sense, in my thoughts anyway.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely right. In my case was because a big event happened so I preferred to do a before/after. By chance the "before" was 10 years. Nothing else
 
Thanks everyone, useful info and it's given me some options to think about. I think I need to learn/understand a bit more about the capability of the catalogue. For example, if I set up a catalogue on my C drive and store images on an external drive, it'll find the images when I look in Lightroom and the external drive is connected. But, when that external drive becomes full and I start a new one, I'll only have one plugged in at a time. Is it the case that the catalogue will only show the images it can see on the second drive? Or does it show them all because it uses the thumbnails but I won't be able to load the ones that aren't on the connected drive? I also think I was worried that the catalogue would become too big or messy over time. Apologies, these are very basic questions - I'll track down some YouTube videos so as not to mither too much on here!
 
D_Ninety said:
Thanks everyone, useful info and it's given me some options to think about. I think I need to learn/understand a bit more about the capability of the catalogue. For example, if I set up a catalogue on my C drive and store images on an external drive, it'll find the images when I look in Lightroom and the external drive is connected. But, when that external drive becomes full and I start a new one, I'll only have one plugged in at a time. Is it the case that the catalogue will only show the images it can see on the second drive? Or does it show them all because it uses the thumbnails but I won't be able to load the ones that aren't on the connected drive? I also think I was worried that the catalogue would become too big or messy over time. Apologies, these are very basic questions - I'll track down some YouTube videos so as not to mither too much on here!
Click to expand...
I think is where the Smart previews kick in as invaluable. I
 
D_Ninety said:
Thanks everyone, useful info and it's given me some options to think about. I think I need to learn/understand a bit more about the capability of the catalogue. For example, if I set up a catalogue on my C drive and store images on an external drive, it'll find the images when I look in Lightroom and the external drive is connected. But, when that external drive becomes full and I start a new one, I'll only have one plugged in at a time. Is it the case that the catalogue will only show the images it can see on the second drive? Or does it show them all because it uses the thumbnails but I won't be able to load the ones that aren't on the connected drive? I also think I was worried that the catalogue would become too big or messy over time. Apologies, these are very basic questions - I'll track down some YouTube videos so as not to mither too much on here!
Click to expand...
have a look on youtube/ spacereX channel. There are 3 videos on lightroom and nas
 
D_Ninety said:
does it show them all because it uses the thumbnails but I won't be able to load the ones that aren't on the connected drive?
Click to expand...

It does this.

Any cached thumbnails and JPEG previews for files on an offline drive will load in Library mode, but you won't be able to use Develop mode or export the images (unless you enable Smart Previews but I have never really used them that much).

My externals are currently two SSDs of 1 and 2 TB respectively (tiny and easy to carry with me if they are needed) with the most recent years' RAW files on them, and 10TB HDD desktop drive for the deeper archive. Every few months I cascade a chunk of the files down the line to the next drive in the chain, moving them within Lightroom. Keeping my folder structure organised by YYYY > MM > DD makes it easy to move a month of data at a time; Collections and keywords much better suited for semantic organisation of image data than a folder hierarchy IMHO.

TBH I could fit everything on the 10TB external, and in the fullness of time it will be the final destination for everything, but the SSDs are just more convenient for occasional use away from a desk. If / when the price of 4TB SSDs comes down a bit more, I might replace both the SSDs I'm using now with just one device.

Everything gets backed up simultaneously to a NAS on my LAN and Backblaze in the cloud BTW. Backblaze likes to have each of the drives plugged in at least once a month to keep them in the backup archive there.
 
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