Lightroom Question... External HD

[RightAngle]

I'm trying to figure out the best way to keep my photos archived. I have an external drive that I keep a majority of my files on but I want to be able to keep them in my library even when not attached. I loaded them all in and just let them be missing from the library but LR didn't seem to like that and kept freezing up. Am I overlooking something.

Thanks for your help.

[Peruna]

Have you updated to 1.1?

[RightAngle]

yes I have

[Peruna]

Not sure what the problem is then because 1.0 was unstable for many reasons. In the past I just had a low res thumbnail for files that I stored on an unattached drive and once the drive was attached they would be "found" again by Lightroom.

[RightAngle]

Thats what I did with 1.0 but it kept killing the application when I brought it up. Should I just create another catalog in 1.1? I haven't had time to look into how to do it with the new upgrade.

[Peruna]

You could try. 1.1 is far more stable. And the catalog system is much better than the library system of 1.0.

I also keep my images on an external HD permanently conected to my desktop. I put a separate catalog with a copy of the files on my laptop full of my best images.

BTW, how big is your catalog? Lightroom has trouble with catalogs over 5,000 images, especially if you have the auto save prefernce on.

[RightAngle]

yeah, I keep close to 1000 CR2s on my laptop (current projects, portfolio, etc) then another 9000-1000 CR2 and JPGS on my external HD. I think it just couldn't keep up with it.

[Peruna]

Think about breaking up those 9,000-10,000 images in different catalogs. I keep a separate catalog for images that I don't think I will be searching for in every day use. For instance I have an "events".

[RightAngle]

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it and I'll try that out and see if it helps out.