I'm looking at the possibility of changing our photo management software. Thinking about Aperture or Lightroom. And want to know if either supports:

1. Having folders/libraries on separate harddrives/Volumes.
2. Tolerates having network folders occasionally connected
3. Snappy interface
4. A solid enough piece of software as not to crash or behave weirdly. [ so the wife doesn't get stuck and have to call me ;) ]

Background

The wife is photographer and I'm the computer programmer.

Our current setup is Picasa, with a "Recent/Working" folder on the local iMac harddrive, and "Archive" folders on NFS mounted Linux Server, Raid 5, for redundant and extra storage capacity. (the Linux server also syncs with Amazon's EC2)

Picasa is doing OK, but I get annoyed when it doesn't do behave properly. Usually around issues when the Linux disk isn't mounted. And overall, I wish Picasa seemed a little more polished and snappier.

Thanks, Lance