Guidance for catalog on networked archive drive.

[FairfieldPhoto]

I am just getting going with PM+ (hey, I find myself with lots of free time right now). 

I would like advice on the best process for using the catalog function on a local and archived drive set up.

I run a local 1TB hard drive for the current year's photos and do a mirror copy of that drive periodically (typically after an event ingest and first cull) to a networked Drobo as backup.  At the end of the year, I remove that year's photos from the local drive and start the new year with a fairly empty local drive.  All of the images for each past year is on the Drobo and I can go pull them from that source.

Should I be cataloging the local drive for this year's photos AND cataloging the photos on the Drobo after the mirror backup or is there a better way to manage a "current year" catalog and "archive" catalog?

Thanks!

-Mike

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

I am just getting going with PM+ (hey, I find myself with lots of free time right now). 

I would like advice on the best process for using the catalog function on a local and archived drive set up.

I run a local 1TB hard drive for the current year's photos and do a mirror copy of that drive periodically (typically after an event ingest and first cull) to a networked Drobo as backup.  At the end of the year, I remove that year's photos from the local drive and start the new year with a fairly empty local drive.  All of the images for each past year is on the Drobo and I can go pull them from that source.

Should I be cataloging the local drive for this year's photos AND cataloging the photos on the Drobo after the mirror backup or is there a better way to manage a "current year" catalog and "archive" catalog?

You should be able to have one catalog that you use with the Drob and the local drive.  Photo Mechanic Plus should track the movement of your files from the local drive to the Drobo as long as you move the files in Photo Mechanic Plus.  If it doesn't work when moving (meaning that the catalog loses contact with the files) then that's a bug that we'll have to fix.

-Kirk

[FairfieldPhoto]

Thanks for the clarification.

Alternatively, since I use a separate drive backup/mirror program that only copies new/changed files to the backup drive, would it make sense to have a catalog for the archive drive and one for the current year's local drive?  Every ingest would get cataloged on the local drive for that year, then when I run a backup, switch catalogs and run the cataloging process off the Drobo for the additions to the backup environment? 

Running a purpose built backup program has benefits over just doing a copy/past or drag/drop within a program like PM.

-Mike

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

Alternatively, since I use a separate drive backup/mirror program that only copies new/changed files to the backup drive, would it make sense to have a catalog for the archive drive and one for the current year's local drive?  Every ingest would get cataloged on the local drive for that year, then when I run a backup, switch catalogs and run the cataloging process off the Drobo for the additions to the backup environment? 

If you're going to do things that manipulate the filesystem outside of Photo Mechanic Plus, then I'd recommend having separate catalogs.  The only data that isn't able to be rebuilt from the metadata in the images themselves is Collections data.  As long as you're not creating Collections in your "current year's local drive" then it won't be any loss at all to deal with adding images to your "Drobo catalog" at the end of each year.

HTH,

-Kirk