Can I use multiple external drives one at a time without conflicts?

DxO PhotoLab
21

@oatleyphotography and what does that mean with respect to your proposed workflow, i.e. having multiple drives all with the assigned letter of P:?

For the location of the database and the cache that will work and you could keep the relevant database and related cache together on a drive designated as P:\ (on Windows only).

For the location of the images the P:\ will simply be ignored and the UUID will be used as I described in the first post I made here Can I use multiple external drives one at a time without conflicts? - #4 by BHAYT. But provided both the drives are not mounted at the same time then the databases (and cache) will relate to the images discovered on that disk.

So, if for P(1) you discover the images on that incarnation of the P:\ drive then the UUID will be for that “version” of P:.

If you then replace that drive with P(2) also identifying as P:\ then it will have a different UUID but you will be discovering the images on that version of P:\ and providing you don’t somehow get things mixed up then you can have two completely separate environments, what fun!?

So you have on a disk with UUID 0001 (simplified UUID) and configured to have the drive letter of P:\ the database, and cache and images all relate to P(1).

On a disk with UUID 0002 and configured to have the drive letter P:\ when mounted you will have another copy of the database, cache and collection of images all related to P(2)!

You can repeat the exercise with multiple "P:" drives for as many as you feel appropriate.

The major limitation is that you won’t have a database providing a global view of all your images to coral into ‘Projects’ and to be searched but that may not be something you want!

PS:- I believe this will work because the parameters for the location of the database and the cache are stored in the configuration file and it uses the drive letter for access and identification.

BUT the config file is one that I know the least about, it certainly contains the ‘Preferences’ and it also holds ‘Export Profiles’, I believe it also stores the last directory that was being used when DxPL is shut-down.

It is these extraneous bits of data that may or may not lead to issues with the scenario I was “sketching” above!?

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Hi Bhayt,

So far I am able to do all editing I need, and exporting, with my photos in multiple folders on a single hard drive. Later I will unplug that and connect a different drive. I don’t really see any reason why that shouldn’t work. As I wrote previously, I don’t see any need for “Projects” - I am not even really sure what that is. Nothing in the software has alerted me to projects. The only place I have heard of them is in discussion in this thread.

Thanks.

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@oatleyphotography You mean I wasted braincells thinking about that procedure!

‘Projects’ are simply a way of reducing the scope of the images you are looking at in a directory and/or collecting together a group of images that may be from many directories that have something of interest to the user.

So they can be a subset of images from a directory or they can span many different directories to collect images that have something in common or are of interest to the user or are part of a users work flow organization.

They take little space in the database because they simply contain pointers to the actual image data in the database.

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In the map options. One of the first things I do. And some more.

George

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I have been using PL8 with multiple drives and two PC’s since I started using it in November, and I have not encountered anything practical that would interfere with how you are trying to use PL8. I gave up trying to use it seamlessly on two different PC’s. It’s not worth spending hours working on one PC, saving some customizations then moving somewhere else and finding all of my edited images broken.

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That is a different situation altogether.

The OP seems to use several external drives that will be attached to one PC.
Using more than one PC takes a lot more tinkering, as you have found out.

As far as I’ve tested and experienced things on a Mac, PhotoLab was, and still is, built to be used on one PC. There are no provisions that allow easy use of several PCs or drives. Imo, it’s easiest to use PhotoLab on one PC with one photo archive. Every other combination of devices can be done too, but rather as a challenge than a practical solution.

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