Using External Storage

Because of their limited performance and reliability, we do not recommend using conventional SD cards, USB sticks, or external USB 2 hard disk drives to store your working files. They may still be appropriate for backups.

External Solid-State Drives (SSD) connected via USB 3 are generally reliable and fast enough for your originals, database, and storage folders. This lets you, for example, index on one computer, eject the drive, and then connect it to another computer to browse your pictures.

Keep in mind that database files may not be binary compatible in some cases, for example if the version or computer architecture does not match. They can also become corrupted if you disconnect an external drive before all changes have been written to disk. We therefore recommend that you regularly create database backups so you can restore your index if needed.