Advice sought from Lightroom users

[Jules]

I've just purchased Lightroom 3 and wanted to get some advice from experienced LR users before I go too far down the path of setting up my catalogue and importing files.

I was planning to have both my catalogue and the images on an external 2Tb HDD, rather than on my internal HDD (with backup to a second external HDD of course). I've always kept my images on external HDDs rather than fill the internal drive of the computer and would prefer to continue that way.

I know the default LR location for the catalogue is on the C drive, but is that just for simplicity's sake, or is there a good reason to have the catalogue on the computer's drive?

TIA for any advice on this.

[kiwi]

Performance I believe

But I haven't noticed a great deal of difference when the catalogue is with the drive either

Also, if catalogue on c drive and the hard drive crashes you've not lost all your edits.

I thoroughly recommend you get kelbys book on lightroom, there's a pretty cheap ebook version too

[agb]

http://www.slrlounge.com/ have 117 videos on their web site about lightroom, although it might take a long time to look at them all.

[Jules]

Thanks guys.

Darren, re: the crashing HDD contingency - is it possible to duplicate the catalogue on the c drive and the external drive, do you know?

I have Kelby's book on order at the moment and just checked Martin Evening's LR3 book out of the library today, so I probably have the answer sitting in front of me, if I'd do a little study.

[kiwi]

You do a backup and you can specify where that backup goes, it's just saved as a catalogue with another name really.

Lr will prompt you to do a backup on a predefined schedule, I think at least monthly is the default

[Jules]

Cheers Darren. I backup at least once a month anyway so that suits me and if the catalogue is duplicated on my backup HDD I'm not likely to lose edits if a drive crashes. (Now watch me suffer a massive computer disaster with all three drives crashing at once!)

[flame70]

I start a new catalogue every month. i find this loads quicker and should you have any problems with a catalogue you haven't lost everything and yes duplicate backups.