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Question

Storage workflow - with removable storage

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
April 28, 2018
5 replies
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How to manage storage of photos?

My ideal general approach might be: (but I welcome discussing other methods for interest)

SDcards for the prime originals - we only add to these and buy cards as needed. Never delete. No, not even total dross. They live (usually) offsite (in my work drawer). I already do this.
Treat some sort of removable storage (USB-C flash sticks or fast SDcards) as the "working originals" that I keep nearby at home. We freely delete complete dross via "Flag as Reject" from these.
Adobe Cloud as "backup+sharing2family". Ideally I'll shove up only "Flagged as Picked" and maybe even "Rated 3+ stars" or something.
Adobe Cloud is also useful for "I have some phone pics that I'd like to share back to my Mac and ultimately put on other storage".

I have just bought a Macbook Pro with 512GB of local SSD. I don't want this to be clogged up with my entire collection and I cannot let it sync down everything that might end up on the cloud, as that's going to grow. Use of built in SSD for caching and catalogue and previews would be preferred.

Am I going to need to work off a big external disk/NAS that can always hold my photo collection and expand this as my collection expands?
Or can I work off multiple flash devices, plugging them in as required?
Something else?

2 is preferable as I can work on the train, taking a small subset of work with me.

2 is also more organic - run out of space, buy another device.

Small USB-C flash devices will also be faster than my NAS because I'll buy the good ones.

But I'm not sure if it fits with LR's handling of storage?
Is LR happy with subsets of photos being available intermittently under one catalogue?
Will it prompt me to insert the correct storage flash (stick/drive) if I try to work with a particular photo?

Sorry if the question seems dumb and confused - I'm starting with LR(web/CC+Classic) from cold and I'd like to get organised with the right storage workflow straightaway (processing workflows are easier to evolve).

Thanks folks

This topic has been closed for replies.

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TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

As a follow on I was wondering:

So your external disk is old and/or too small and you want to move your photos (original full) to new storage. How do you do that without messing up the metadata and work in LR?

Found this, which is most useful and worth mentioning here:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/move-photos-another-hard-drive-leaving-catalog/

I did see the option "Find Missing Folder" whilst messing around yesterday.

This means, however you start with managing storage, it can be changed later. Disk too small - no problem... Stored on internal drive and want to move to external - I don't see why that wouldn't work too.

JoeKostoss

Inspiring

I am always amazed with the desire by photographers to keep all images ever created on a single disk. If a disc is full, why do they want a larger disk to store these images plus all the new images in the future? Lightroom is perfectly happy playing with several disks. If the one you have is full, so be it, get a new one and move forward. Within 12 months or so, you will find yourself referencing the old disk less and less until it becomes another storage item sitting in you desk drawer. Why spend the $$ for a new larger disk only to fill half of it with old images, leaving only enough room for half of your future work? I for one do not do this; looking to hear from those of you who do to give a valid reason. What am I missing here?

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TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

I'm not sure if you were addressing me or the thread in general Joe: but I said as one thing: "So your external disk is old " which is a scenario you would want to move stuff off it onto a new disk (even SSDs don't live forever).

The main reason I posted that link is that it is useful to know you can move stuff around, which means not having to fuss too much to get it right first time.

It's a real pain, with systems that don't make it easy to change your mind, to have made a fundamental architectural mistake and have to live with it forever. I design and run IT systems - I am forever having to try to make sure systems don't have basic errors in their setup and have room to grow/expand/evolve (within reason).

LR is new to me - so I needed to see how much I needed to "get right" from the start. Seems, it's reasonably forgiving - so less worry

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TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks everyone - some very useful information there

Now I need to go buy a decent SSD external disk...

JP Hess

Inspiring

Not really. If you're expecting a big increase in speed with an SSD, you won't get it. The catalog is where all the work is done.

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TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

I try very hard not to buy spinning rust if I can help it SSDs are so much more robust and reliable...

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TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

Hi Joe - yes, I see where you are coming from. Whilst sticks/cards are becoming very much faster (but not as fast as SSD disks), I have realised I have overlooked the flash endurance as a factor. I haven't got the data to hand, but bashing the wotsits out of a stick might lead to early failure compared to an SSD EHD which has a massive endurance (block erase cycles).

Perhaps that matters less for occasionally pulling a photo into PS, but you probably would want to put a catalogue or the Cloud sync target on it.

But overall, given the screenshot in my last post, I can see how 1 or 2 big EHDs would get less messy on the panel than a dozen cards or sticks as every volume that touches it leaves an entry.

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TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

Hi Ian -

I see - that's interesting (code paths) - I assumed LR would just deal with the standard filesystem layer in the OS without much caring about what the actual endpoint device is. However, it is also clear it must be aware it's dealing with removable media (below). I'm used to the generally POSIX filesystem handing of Linux, rather than whatever Darwin+MacOSX does.

I'm happy to be gently dissuaded, by I like to understand why (is there a reason other than "everyone does it that way"

I've just done some experimentation with LR Classic connected to my Adobe Cloud account and a few images on both a Sandisk stick and a Lexar SDCard

I plugged them in, imported the 2-3 test pictures and then ejected the devices. The smart preview remains available, as does a shadow of the 2 devices (above, SDCard-2 and SANDISK-1). Any attempt to edit in PS fails until the relevant device is remounted.

Interestingly - as soon as I connected to my Adobe Cloud account, it started syncing down full copies of 5000 photos I have previously uploaded via LR Web. Obviously, I don't want that, so I was pleased to find that the local sync location can be moved.

In fact, you can move it to any external device, including the SDCard-2 as above ("Lighroom" folder with a typo)

Thank you - I'm starting to understand the mental model a bit more.

As I've not done anything with the images on Adobe Cloud, I might trash the catalogue and reimport the originals.

It would seem reasonable, as you suggest to get a decent SSD external drive and shove everything on there, then reimport. It's clear that if that drive fills up, then it's a simple matter to add a second drive.

The only thing I'll have to think about is the default sync location for stuff that originates from Adobe Cloud - eg stuff I uploaded from my phone direct. If the volumes remain small, that could be the internal SSD.

Cheers and thank you,

Tim

D

dj_paige

Braniac

Generally, Lightroom does not allow photos to be on removable flash drives (although bugs have been reported where users can do this). I don't know why a "taking a small subset of work with me" requires a flash drive, if it truly is a small subset it should be able to fit on your computer's internal drive.

My only other comment is that using SD cards as your storage for originals is probably not the best use of these cards, as I'm pretty sure that true hard drives provide longer term life than SD cards. I never understood the need to keep the photos on the original cards anyway, computers make EXACT duplicates of the files on these cards (and if the process fails, which happens raretly it is pretty obvious that the process has failed when you try to open the file in LR, it will either not be openable or it will be corrupted).

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TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. To answer your queries:

I thought I saw LR (classic) a few years ago as being sold on the concept it could work with multiple sources of originals (but one catalogue).

1) How do you add the subset to the computer on demand? I presume you mean copy them off the flash stick and onto the internal storage. Is this any different to LR to just plugging in external storage (which appears in a fairly integrated way with MacOSX)? It would still be an intermittent presentation of the originals to LR - which is the bit I'm not sure about...

And it is very convenient as a workflow to think "I'll work on the 2017 collection today, that's this stick here" - No messing around copying back and forth.

2) There's a very good reason to back up originals:

a) To remove the originals to another location as a physical backup;

b) To mitigate "user error" in case accidental mass deletion. That's why I run with a policy of "add, never delete and buy new, not very expensive slow but quality, cards".

c) I'll trust an SDcard over a spinning disk for archival - yes, one needs to periodically check and copy when the card gets older - same with a spinning disk.

d) SDCards are fantastically compact - I can keep lots in a small hard waterproof impact resistant case.

T

TimJWattsAuthor

Known Participant

I really feel lost here. On the one hand you say you are talking about previously imported photos, while in the next part of your text you want to import these into LR. Re-importing previously exported photos is never (NEVER) a good idea.

You seem to be treating Lightroom as a file explorer, where you can just attach the flash disk with the photos and work on them. Lightroom is not a file explorer, it is a database, and you must work within the database. You not only have to import the photos (once), but after that if the file is not in the expected location, you have to tell LR where the file is. As I said, Lightroom does not generally allow photos to be stored on a removable flash disk ... so ... you would have to copy the photos from the flash disk to some actual hard disk (internal, external or network) and then tell Lightroom where the photo is located on the hard disk in order for any of this to work.

dj_paige wrote
I really feel lost here. On the one hand you say you are talking about previously imported photos, while in the next part of your text you want to import these into LR. Re-importing previously exported photos is never (NEVER) a good idea.
You seem to be treating Lightroom as a file explorer, where you can just attach the flash disk with the photos and work on them. Lightroom is not a file explorer, it is a database, and you must work within the database. You not only have to import the photos (once), but after that if the file is not in the expected location, you have to tell LR where the file is. As I said, Lightroom does not generally allow photos to be stored on a removable flash disk ... so ... you would have to copy the photos from the flash disk to some actual hard disk (internal, external or network) and then tell Lightroom where the photo is located on the hard disk in order for any of this to work.

Let's step back a bit...

If I have photos on external storage devices A,B and C:

I would import the photos on A,B and C once.

At some point, I would want to work on some photos from B and do some editing.

There is insufficient space to have the originals from A,B and C all at once in the Mac's internal storage.

I understand how the catalogue works and the fact it contains a preview.

There is no importing twice.

So when LR needs access to the full sized file so I can see it and work on it, is it capable of dealing with those full sized(original) files being on a number of external devices?

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