Photo Supreme, laptops, and multiple drives

[Stubb]

I'm looking for workflow ideas on using Photo Supreme with photos stored across multiple drives, particularly ones that aren't always connected. The particular use case I have in mind is a laptop that's regularly taken on travel and doesn't have space for everything. I currently use a four-year-old MacBook Pro with a 1 TB HD (painfully slow with DxO) and am looking at a new model with a 512 GB SSD, which would require splitting my library. How do people make this happen in a smooth manner? Travel mode seems like an all or nothing affair—can't have the disconnected images in travel mode and the local images fully accessible. Does Photo Supreme get angry if images in the catalog are on disconnected drives?

[lippe]

You can split the images and create a database for every drive like i currently do, but this not so handy.
How about using one 2 TB external harddisk connected through e-sata / usb3 / FireWire S3200 for storing the images, and the catalog on the internal SSD drive. Then you can use the travel mode when the external drive is not connected.

[george]

How about using one 2 TB external harddisk connected through e-sata / usb3 / FireWire S3200 for storing the images, and the catalog on the internal SSD drive. Then you can use the travel mode when the external drive is not connected.

This is precisely my setup (with usb3) and I can recommend it too--it works quite well.

[tstoddard]

You can split the images and create a database for every drive like i currently do, but this not so handy.
How about using one 2 TB external harddisk connected through e-sata / usb3 / FireWire S3200 for storing the images, and the catalog on the internal SSD drive. Then you can use the travel mode when the external drive is not connected.

I'm not sure that this is what the Stubb wants to do. If I understand his question, he would like to be able to store images (that are in the same catalog) on different drives and/or devices. If he's traveling with a laptop (and not with an external drive) and wants to import photos into his catalog, he will need to import them to a drive on his laptop.

I don't have first hand experience with this because I don't use a laptop, but from what I understand of PSU, storing images on different devices should not be a problem. Please correct me if I'm wrong. There are some other topics that discuss the use of "Travel Mode", which would probably be helpful to Stubb. Here is a link to one of them: Travel Mode - How To?

Travel mode seems like an all or nothing affair—can't have the disconnected images in travel mode and the local images fully accessible. Does Photo Supreme get angry if images in the catalog are on disconnected drives?

I think it's pretty easy to switch Travel Mode on and off so that you can use PSU in whatever mode makes the most sense for what you are doing at that time. It's also fairly easy to move your image files to new locations when you want and then relocate the folders that are stored in PSU. I don't think PSU gets angry if images in a catalog are stored on disconnected drives. It just shows a small red icon on the folder to signify that the drive is unavailable.

Also, in the post referenced above, Hert describes a process that makes it easy to move a catalog from device to device using back up and restore features. Perhaps that would be helpful in Stubb's workflow.

[Stubb]

I'm not sure that this is what the Stubb wants to do. If I understand his question, he would like to be able to store images (that are in the same catalog) on different drives and/or devices. If he's traveling with a laptop (and not with an external drive) and wants to import photos into his catalog, he will need to import them to a drive on his laptop.

Yes, that's the idea. I'd like to keep the catalog on my laptop as well as raw files I'm actively using. This would be photos I'm ingesting on the trip and perhaps other recent photos that I'm working with. The rest would reside on an external drive or NAS kept at home.

I don't have first hand experience with this because I don't use a laptop, but from what I understand of PSU, storing images on different devices should not be a problem. Please correct me if I'm wrong. There are some other topics that discuss the use of "Travel Mode", which would probably be helpful to Stubb. Here is a link to one of them: Travel Mode - How To?

The post from Hert in the linked thread looks very helpful. Many thanks for the reference!

—Andreas