Using Lightroom 3.3 with an external hard drive

So I'll be leaving for London later tonight and I'm going to be working from my laptop for the next little while. My plan is to start a new catalog on the laptop and when I go home, I'll merge the laptop's catalog with my desktop catalog.

My questions here is how should I do I setup the Lightroom 3.3 catalog with my external hard drive? I understand that there is risk involved with using the catalog on an external hard drive as it can become corrupt if I lose connection. What else should I do to mitigate any potential data corruption when using an external hard drive with my laptop?

There are a number of ways to do it...

1. Keep the LR catalog on the laptop and your image files on the external HDD. Back-up the catalog to the ext. HDD on a regular basis.

2. Keep your catalog and images on the laptop and export as a catalog to the ext. HDD when you've imported, sorted and processed.

3. Keep the catalog and images on the ext. HDD.

In all options, I would write the metadata to file, keeping the .xmp files in the same folders as the image files. Then if the catalog does get corrupt you can import your image and .xmp files into your main catalog when you return.

Personally I'd use option 1 and take 2 HDDs and do a back up to the 2nd HDD whenever I finish processing.

One other opotion -- keep your catalog and images on the laptop for thee best speed, with the catalog folder in a logical structural position relative to your images, and then simply back up that file structure to the hard drive. When you get back you can verify that the structure of the catalog is intact (by opening the catalog and ensuring there are no "missing" files/folders. Assuming it is, open your "parent" catalog and do an Import From Catalog operation and move the files into your main structure.

In other words, there are a few possible approaches!