Catalog Location - Laptop or External Drive

I recently purchased Lightroom and have a MacBook Pro with 2 External 500 GB drives. My question is whether or not I should locate the catalog (database) on the laptop or the External drive. Can I have it on the laptop and then sych to the external drive for when I am on a shoot? If I do that and the images are initially on the Laptop how do I relocated them to the external drive and have the catalog be up to date? Or should I have the catalog only on the laptop with images actually stored on the external drives?
I guess I would like to know what strategies you are employing?
Thanks in advance.
David

I would say USB2 is the problem. If you had a decent interface (Firewire or eSATA) performance would be reasonable. But USB 2.0 absolutely sucks for data transfer. They say 480 Mb/sec but that's a bald-faced lie. If you can sustain 20 MB/sec off a USB 2.0 drive you're doing well, where Firewire 400 (rated at 400 Mb/sec) very typically sustains more than 35 MB/sec and Firewire 800 can go as fast as the drive can -- typical external 3.5" drives do about 45 MB/sec.
Problem is, in their penny pinching ways, PC vendors refuse to spend the extra $1 and thus won't put on a Firewire port. Same rationale that gets you VGA out (thereby crippling your ability to use an external monitor and have sharp text) instead of including a DVI connector.

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Catalog Location - Laptop or External Drive

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