Huge photo album - what is best way forward?

buglawton

Using Adobe Photoalbum, have a huge photo album e.g. 50 GB with tagged items in it.

I have experimented with having a hard drive permanently online via a laptop but it takes ages for the thumbnails to load into view on another computer that accesses the Catalogue via the WiFi.

There must be lot of people facing this issue, looking for a way to access their large photo and video collections on different devices.

Here I am looking for:

- Storage for the image files which can be backed up from time to time
- Album-style access via other Windows machines or smartphones on the same WiFi. This access does not need to be to the highest resolution version though.
- Convenient transfer from cameras etc, of new images into the main storage location, then other devices get an updated catalogue view.

Is the above too much to expect?

LincolnshireYokel

Get another PC(doesnt have to be spectacular, and doesnt need decent graphics) but with a bloody great SATA hard drive inside and network it with a CAT 6 ethernet card and cable directly to the router, and then share the drive.

buglawton

I more or less tried this already, using a netbook connected directly to router via Ethernet, and the performance was awful. Crux of the matter is, using Adobe Photo Album on another machine to open the catalogue across the WiFi, it wants to load 1000s of thumbnails and this takes minutes before the photos can even be browsed.

debitcardmayhem

Split the files into different sub directories oh and view details rather than thumbs

buglawton

Yes I am thinking of splitting the photos into multiple catalogues, only the procedure in Adobe Photo Album for moving photos between catalogues is really cumbersome.

JApplewhite

It would be worth keeping a backup in a location other than where your main machine is such as at work or a friends place.