As a followup on Ken's post re his new OSC SSD for his catalog and images…I wanted to see what the split is on keeping the catalog on an internal drive vs putting it on an external drive.
I'm specifically referring to using an external and moving it between the desktop and laptop for on the road usage verses doing the main catalog on the desktop that Steve uses and a road one on the laptop with the requisite export/import cycle into the main catalog. The single catalog gets around the export/import cycle obviously…and for the purpose of the poll you can disregard the tangential discussions about keeping the single copy on an external…because I will always have adequate backups of the catalog and images on different drives both at home and on the road that get updated daily. I'm currently using the dual catalog method but am seriously considering switching to get away from the export/import routine…and currently I only keep the catalog, smart previews for all images just in case I need an older one away from home, and current year images on the internal SSD and older year images out on a RAID which again has adequate backup…and this arrangement will be the same if I go the external SSD route. I know people use both methods and can't really see any downside to going to the single catalog route given adequate backup before I take the drive with the laptop and continue to backup while away (which happens anyway currently with my dual catalog setup). As a long time IT sysadmin…I know backups are your friend and I seriously have too many of them
. I realize the internal SSD is a bit faster but since the external would be connected via Thunderbolt 4 to both computers the speed difference is not a significant factor in the decision. I didn't include internal single catalog as a choice in the poll since that doesn't make a whole lot of sense…if you use the laptop at home and on the road there's only going to be a single catalog anyway.
I'm specifically referring to using an external and moving it between the desktop and laptop for on the road usage verses doing the main catalog on the desktop that Steve uses and a road one on the laptop with the requisite export/import cycle into the main catalog. The single catalog gets around the export/import cycle obviously…and for the purpose of the poll you can disregard the tangential discussions about keeping the single copy on an external…because I will always have adequate backups of the catalog and images on different drives both at home and on the road that get updated daily. I'm currently using the dual catalog method but am seriously considering switching to get away from the export/import routine…and currently I only keep the catalog, smart previews for all images just in case I need an older one away from home, and current year images on the internal SSD and older year images out on a RAID which again has adequate backup…and this arrangement will be the same if I go the external SSD route. I know people use both methods and can't really see any downside to going to the single catalog route given adequate backup before I take the drive with the laptop and continue to backup while away (which happens anyway currently with my dual catalog setup). As a long time IT sysadmin…I know backups are your friend and I seriously have too many of them
. I realize the internal SSD is a bit faster but since the external would be connected via Thunderbolt 4 to both computers the speed difference is not a significant factor in the decision. I didn't include internal single catalog as a choice in the poll since that doesn't make a whole lot of sense…if you use the laptop at home and on the road there's only going to be a single catalog anyway.
