Lightroom 3 with 2 iMacs - Catalog Question

Wayone

Hi,

I'm going to try to make this as clear as posslbe.... please help!

I'm a professional photographer using Lightroom 3. I have two iMacs one is an i5, the other an i7, both running OSX Lion. I have a NAS (Synology DS410j) to store my images and I then link the catalog to the images on the NAS.

Camera Raw Cache is on an external USB and works great. I've even experimented with putting the catalog on the external USB and no speed issues.


Now that I have two iMacs I'd like to find a HDD or an enclosure that I can use to place catalogs on while working on them. I know VERY well that you can't use network storage to place the LR3 Catalog because Adobe won't allow it (various reasons I already know).

Question - Does anyone know of an External Hard Drive or an Enclosure with two Firewire 800 ports that does not act like a network attached device? I need it to act like a hard wire attached hard drive so I can put multiple LR3 Catalogs on it and access them from the i5 or the i7.

Note:
I do not plan to have two people work on the same catalog at the same time.
Users would only open a catalog (on the attached device) that is NOT currently being utilized.
I would however, have two computers accessing the device at the same time via Firewire 800.

Bottom Line:
want to work on one wedding per catalog then import them into a Master Catalog when completed (I have my reasons). Because I have all of my images on a RAID NAS that catalog is easily opened by any computer on the network and the files can be easliy linked.
If I'm editing a wedding and then want to pause with that one and open another catalog someone else was just working on and then closed the catalog I don't want to copy/paste the catalog from the other iMac or move an external hard drive...
I just want to be able to open it on the HDD attached to both computers that house all of the catalogs.
I also want to ensure User 1 and User 2 can access any catalog on the attached device at any time (unless it's currently opened by the other user) and be working on catalogs simultaniously (once again, not the same catalog as the other user... a totally different catalog but on the same device).

Thanks so much and I'd love to know if anyone has ever done this!



I can't wait for a Thunderbolt Drive!

mordisco

Hi, I'm not an expert on this but a search with Google had this result:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/firewire/topic2199.html

Hope this helps.

Henk

CatOne

Firewire 800 cannot do that. You will likely have data corruption, as the protocol has no concept of shared storage (same as SCSI and fibre channel do not).

You should just use one cable, and unplug the drive from one machine before plugging it into the other.

Manfr3d

Did you try putting a LR catalog in a shared folder?

Wayone

Manfr3d wrote: »

Did you try putting a LR catalog in a shared folder?

Yes, but I can't use it if it is not directly attached to the computer. If it is on the other Mac, it won't allow you to open it. You have to copy it to the mac you are working on.