# Sharing a WD external drive with laptop and desktop



## Guy McCue (Jul 29, 2013)

My images are stored on my Dell work station and the WD ex. drive.  The Dell needs some repair.  I want to access the images on the WD drive with my laptop.  The Dell LR version is 3.6 and the laptop is 4.3.  I need to pick some images to send to a client.  If I edit an image with the laptop and only save it to the laptop will this prevent any problems in recalling it again to the Dell computer.  
I plan on getting both machines on the same windows version and upgrading both with the current LR version as soon as the repair is done.
Thank you


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## clee01l (Jul 29, 2013)

First of all, is there any reason you can't install LR4 on the workstation?  If you can get to a common LR version, you can place the one master catalog on the EHD along with the master images,  That way you can open the LR catalog that is on the EHD from either computer. 

The incompatibility is in the LR catalog versions. None of the LR adjustments are stored in the image file unless you specifically tell LR to Save the metadata to the file and then only if the file is a DNG or a JPEG.  Proprietary RAW format files remain just as they are when in the camera.

Version LR4 will read and understand LR1,2,3 adjustments.  LR3 will not be able to apply LR4 adjustments using the latest Process version.


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## Guy McCue (Jul 30, 2013)

I tried some time ago to update and have both machines run the current LR.  My road block at the time was trying to get the dell workstation to a compatible windows version.  It is now running with Windows XP. As I stated before the dell now has some problem booting up, which I have been unable yet to resolve. I do convert everything DNG.
Thank you.


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