Some Lightroom storage help?

[Luke_Y]

Hello all. I have been using Lightroom for a couple of years, and for the last year or so I was trying out David Marx's (The Lightroom Lab) sugested system (HERE) of two external hard drives and Lightroom.

It hasn't been the best solution for me and I posed a question to David to see if he had any ideas. Well he didn't have a solution so I thought I would see if the combined wisdom has any ideas. Here is how I put it to David:

I have followed and used the 2 external HDD/catalog on the external HDD for about a year now. I find it an excellent methodology, but it isn’t really fitting with how I work with photos.

I work primarily with a laptop (mac) I use the laptop for other things. I find that often when the time/mood suits me, or that when the need to briefly access a photo arises it is inconvenient for me to go get the external drives and set up to access Lightroom. I have a vision for what my ideal setup would be but have a hard time wrapping my mind around how to work it out.

I would like to have the catalog and one rolling year of photos local on the laptop. Back up the laptop to Time Capsule, and have the remainder of my photos stored and backed up on the 2 external HDD either in a separate catalog, or more ideally referenced in the same local catalog but stored “off line”.

Other details- It would be nice If I could also keep a selection of photos that I designate through ratings or another method local as well regardless of time. It would be ideal if when I plug in one or both of the external HDD I could automate a process of rolling off the laptop photos older than a year, backing up the catalog/settings, and mirroring to the 2nd external if present. If it also backed up the current year that would be nice as well but that year should be backed up via time capsule and the cloud.

Sort of rambling and not quite clearly thought out, but…

Thoughts, suggestions?

Thank You.

Also, could “Publish Services” and “Smart Collections” somehow help me at all with accomplishing some of the above goals?

Thanks again.