# LR catalog on USB 3 flash drive?



## rob plant (Jan 3, 2016)

Having been disappointed to realise that ironically LR CC will not afford me the same level of access on my laptop to synced folder from my desktop that I can now get on an iphone or ipad, I've been looking at some older methods described for moving between the two.

While some of the dropbox-based methods are appealing, a lack of adequate broadband rules these out for now

I'm also not keen to lug around a portable harddrive with everything on it

However I'm due to acquire an Sandisk Ultra Fit 3.0 128GB flash drive, which is tiny. It claims t/f speed of 'up to'130mb/s (is this enough?

Anyhow, I wondered if anyone has experience of using this type of setup, storing catalog, previews and smart previews on the USB drive, and keeping the master files on a hardrive attached to the desktop. I could set then swap the USB between computers with relative ease, and setup each to backup locally on closing LR as insurance against losing flash drive

My total library is about 5-600GB at present with the previews/catalog taking up about a further 28GB

Any ideas if this would be feasible...or alternative suggestions if not?

Thanks


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 4, 2016)

Hi Rob, welcome to the forum!

I would anticipate desktop<>laptop syncing would appear in a future version, but the sync would be much more complex as the current mobile sync only syncs very specific data.

If your broadband isn't fast enough for Dropbox, but you want an equivalent offline option, you could try File Sync software to keep the catalog and previews up to date on both computers.  You'd have to make sure you'd let it fully sync before switching machines, but it might be another option to consider.

I don't have any experience with that specific kind of flash drive, but if you're getting one anyway, you could certainly give it a shot.


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## rob plant (Jan 4, 2016)

Victoria

I'm not familiar with File Sync, and a google search shows lots of things that call themselves file sync or variations thereof....could you post a link to the one you mean?

Does it allow a computer-to-computer sync over wi-fi or Ethernet or something like that as a way to keep synced, or is it software that would sync the flash drive with the catalog on the harddrive of whichever machine...like windows Sync-Toy maybe?

I can always try out the speed of the flash drive by running some large task like creating a load of smart previews and see how it compares to the same task on the desktop

Thanks


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 5, 2016)

File Synchronization software - for example, Chronosync on Mac, or Vice Versa on Windows are both great options.  And yes, sync over wifi or wired network, or between local drives.  I use it as backup software too.


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