Using External Storage

Due to their performance and because they can lose data over time, we do not recommend using conventional SD cards, USB sticks or external USB 2 hard disk drives to store your files, except for backups.

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

Note, though, that database files may not be binary compatible in some cases (e.g. if the version or computer architecture does not match) and could also get corrupted when 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 easily restore your index if necessary.