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Tom Goodell
Tom Goodell
Known Participant
May 25, 2023
Question

Lightroom Classic with files copied on two drives?

  • May 25, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 927 views

I work with files that sometimes get quite large in photoshop. I have a 1 TB SSD drive on which I keep the files I'm currently working on, to provide the fastest response time I can get in photoshop. Every evening I have those mirrored to a hard drive, which is where I keep permanent copies of the files. The folders and files are the same name on both drives. I'd like to be able to also see both sets of files in Lightroom. Is that possible, or will I create problems if I have identical folders and files on two different drives in the same Lightroom catalog?

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1 reply

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 25, 2023

Don't do this. Keep the mirrored disk outside of Lightroom. Lightroom does not understand redundancy, so it will see the same images on both drives as different images. That means that any edits you make to one of these images do not propagate to the copy. It is also completely unnecessary. Lightroom can handle multiple disks, so you can store some files on the other disk and manage these in Lightroom, without having to import a full mirror.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
    A
    AlexC2
    Participant
    May 29, 2023

    Hi everyone,

    I have a similar kind of question, I think. Iwas wondering if it was possible to safely work from two different external hard drives on Lightroom, with exactly the same content. I'll explain my situation.

    I have my Lightroom photos stored on two diffent external hard drives, using the exact same structure. They are basically a clone of each other. One of the drives (let's call it HD A) is a desktop drive and would be the one I am using when at the office. The other one (HD B) is a portable drive and would be used when I am out on the field or not in the office. But they both contain my entire photo library, that I need to access all the time. The Lightroom catalog I work from is on my laptop's internal hard drive that I use both in the office and on the field (I have a backup copy on an external hard drive as well, of course).


    When I am at my desk, I work and edit my images from HD A. Before going to the field, I'd mirror HD A and HD B using Carbon Copy Cloner for example, so that HD B has all the latest edits of my pictures. When on the field, I'd work from HD B. When back at the office, I would be mirroring HD B and HD A, so that HD A is updated with all the latest edits that I did while on the field. And then, I'd be working again from HD A, and so on.

    What would be the easiest and safest way to handle this situation? I can't keep changing in Lightroom the location of the photos each time I plug in a different hard drive to my laptop as it is time consuming and not convenient. The only solution I found so far is to name both external hard drives (HD A and HD B) the exact same way (calling them both HD A for example), so that Lightroom thinks I am working from the same disk. But I don't know if this method can have drawbacks I am unaware of. Is there a better and safest way to work in my situation, like having Lightroom recognising the two drives as one even if they have different names, since the contents are identical (same number of files, same size, same names, same structure, etc.)?

    Many thanks in advance for your responses and apologies if this topic has been answered somewhere else already.

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 29, 2023

    Naming the disks exactly the same way is by far the best procedure and does not have any special drawbacks I can think of.

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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