Lightroom can't store library database on a network

I just bought and installed Adobe Lightroom. I wanted to store the central

library database on a network drive to be able to access it from different

computers. What a suprise! Look at the attached sceenshot.

 

Googling for "lightroom network" I found that because of Lightroom's flat-file

database-backend (SQLite), the library can't be stored on a network drive.

 

Adobe's knowledgebase suggests to store the database on an external drive and to

carry it from one PC to the other. Come on Adobe, we're living in the 21th century!

 

What a crap.<div></div>

Isn't that an old (still used) open source code? I'm not up on this type of stuff but wouldn't it be your network IT guys that set the filters and that's how it's blocked? Aren't the network drives just virtual drives anyway?<P>I'm just asking, hoping you or someone will answer. Dave

This fact was fully documented in the Lightroom documentation available on line. You

should have read that before purchasing and then complaining about it.

 

If you bought direct from Adobe, however, you have a 30 day return possibility.

 

Lightroom does a LOT of back and forth to the disk drive and library files as it works. I

suspect that siting the library onto a network drive, no matter how good your network,

would make performance abysmal anyway.

 

G

For those who are interested, here is a solution that someone in a German forum told me (we are talking of Windows here):

 

You have to map the network drive with the "subst" command (that means, not from within Explorer, it won't work). In a command shell type:

 

subst x:\ \\server\networkvolume

 

(substitute "x" with the drive letter you want to map the networkvolume to, "server" with the remote machine's name, and "networkvolume" with the shared volume).

 

You can then create the library in a folder on the shared volume and Lightroom won't notice it's a network volume.

 

Of course it's not a multiuser solution, so you have to take care that you don't use the library simultaniously from two computers.

Thanks for that followup, Christof!