I was looking for a way to keep track of multiple libraries of photographs using lightroom.  The problem was that I had implemented some not so archival methods of organization prior to now.  Instead of switching to a new system I wanted to save my old catalog, and then start a new one.  This is where the image files come in.  However, before that bit becomes relevant I should explain my setup.  

If I had some money I would have an OS X server.  That said, I have a 798mhz XP machine with 256mb of RAM sitting in a corner, and it acts as way for me to sit in bed and move about my apartment and access my music, movies, tv, and various files.  The first problem was that XP does not play well with HFS.  MacDrive is an excellent application to work around that small issue.  That said, I would rather use linux, however, the machine runs headless, and Microsoft RDC is a nice and easy way to access and administrate the computer from my mac.

So now at this stage in the game I have a samba share that I can access on my mac.  Well that’s great, but for any application that requires correct paths or any semblance of normalcy this won’t do.  Enter the disk image.  While a standard DMG works well, the idea that I had to create the entire image first seemed unnecessary.  So I played about with sparsebundles, and it seems that they are working quite well for my needs.  I have one giant lightroom catalog and it sees the images as drives, ergo mainting paths whether I attach the drive directly or over the network.

The only issue that I have experienced thus far has been the fact that the sparsebundles appear as images when viewed in finder over the samba share, and as folders when mounted locally.  However, after much searching about the web I found no answer to my question.  If an image appears as a folder all one has to do is open up disk utility and then drag the folder to the left sidebar below the other drives.  Then select the image on the sidebar and click on mount on the top toolbar.  The drive will mount on the desktop and function properly from then on.

EDIT:  I am now employing this technique to access an iTunes database file as well as songs over a Samba share with success!