# Using a mapped drive with lightroom



## ecbyrt (Nov 20, 2019)

Hi. I have my lightroom classic catalog and image files on dropbox on my main computer. (I do know to give it lots of time to update before opening elsewhere to avoid corruption.)
I have a laptop that does not have a big enough hard drive to sync the dropbox files (about 1.5 TB, yes tons of images) so I have mapped my dropbox folder on the main computer to my laptop - so drive X: links to \\maincomputer\users\ecbyrt\dropbox across my local network. The reason for using the laptop at home is that I need to sort out, tag and delete the bad ones of all these images and I would like to do that in the evening while I'm watching tv instead of having to sit in my office.

In my lightroom catalog I have both my local dropbox folder and the mapped dropbox folder X:. Synchronizing dropbox images does not synchronize the X: drive.
So, I'm guessing the duplicate folder is doubling the size of my catalog and probably slowing things down.

If I mapped the dropbox location to X: on both computers and used only that folder for my files would it be an issue? I'm wondering on my main computer whether a mapped drive has to run through the router for every access and would be slower to use.

I hope that all makes sense. Thanks!


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## clee01l (Nov 20, 2019)

If your network is local  or via a VPN, you don't need to use Dropbox at all
Your image files can be stored on a mapped network drive.   Your Lightroom Catalog and Previews will always need to be on a Local drive.  If you need to share the catalog file between several computers with the Image files always consistently on the same mapped network drive,  then you only need to manage the master catalog so that every computer can have exclusive use of it on  its local drive.
The previews folders need to be located in the same folder with the master catalog file, but you can have separate copies of the Previews folder on each computer.


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## ecbyrt (Nov 20, 2019)

HI. Okay I think I follow all that except the Previews folder. Would I just copy the previews folder to each computer and if I'm using the same master catalog on each, would the preview folder have to be on the same path on each computer? Thanks!


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 20, 2019)

ecbyrt said:


> HI. Okay I think I follow all that except the Previews folder. Would I just copy the previews folder to each computer and if I'm using the same master catalog on each, would the preview folder have to be on the same path on each computer? Thanks!


Like Cletus said: they have to be in the catalog folder.


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## clee01l (Nov 20, 2019)

Previews have to be available for the copy of the catalog in use.  They do not need to be the same previews and they do not need to exists as Lightroom will create an empty Previews folder when you open the catalog file  located on that computer and proceed to build new previews files for the images that you open with that catalog file copy. 

I would store a master copy of the catalog file some place (X:\?) where each computer can see it and copy a upto date file to its local drive.  Once copied, then open that instance of Lightroom and it will find your cataloged image files on on X:\ (?).   When you have finished that session of LR, exit and copy the updated  local copy of the catalog back to the location (X:\?) where the master catalog file is stored.  It is now available for any computer that can run Lightroom. 

There is a better way:
Since you have a subscription, you have the Cloudy version of Lightroom (v3.x).    On you master computer Sync all of your Lightroom Classic images to the Cloud.     On all of the other computers including mobile devices, install Lightroom (cloudy). From that app, you can access all of the images that are sync'd to the cloud.  Any Lightroom (cloudy) changes that you make will sync back to the cloud and back down to Lightroom Classic.  If you import images via any other computer, the master image files will sync down to the master computer running Lightroom Classic.


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