Comments on: How To Move Your Lightroom Catalog To An External Hard Drive (or vice versa) https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/ The Latest Lightroom Tips, Tricks & Techniques Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:30:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 By: Joe https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-776894 Sat, 04 Mar 2023 17:13:30 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-776894 If I have an iMac and a Macbook, can I work from one catalog on an external drive that I move between the desktop and notebook?

]]> By: Rob Sylvan https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-775805 Sun, 29 Jan 2023 17:14:50 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-775805 In reply to Chuck St John.

The catalog does not need to be on the same drive as the photos. Leave the catalog where it is and just move the photos.

]]> By: Chuck St John https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-775706 Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:45:57 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-775706 You mention you would not move the catalog to the external drive. So, what would you do? I have a 1Tb iMac and am fast running out of space. I want to transfer all the images to the external drive to free up space on the iMac but I want to be able to edit anything that ends up on the 6 Tb external drive. What is the best thing to do so that I can free up space yet edit images on the external drive

]]> By: Rob Sylvan https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-766638 Tue, 26 Jul 2022 20:22:55 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-766638 In reply to James Clark.

The backup process in LrC can only write to a single location, so you’d need some other software tool to copy that backup to another location. I get around this by saving my catalog backups to a folder within my Dropbox folder, which then syncs to the cloud and my other computers.

]]> By: James Clark https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-766507 Sun, 24 Jul 2022 21:10:18 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-766507 I have my LR Catalog on my Computer HD. Can I back up my LR Catalog to both my computer HD and an external HD? If so, how do you back up to 2 different hard drives?

]]> By: Rob Sylvan https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-757476 Sun, 17 Apr 2022 17:52:26 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-757476 In reply to Ivan.

Hi Ivan, You can delete the preview cache, but know that it will rebuild itself automatically over time. The only way to move the preview cache is to move the entire folder containing the catalog to an external drive. The tradeoff may be performance, but it would free up space on your internal drive.

]]> By: Ivan https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-757094 Fri, 15 Apr 2022 16:19:55 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-757094 Hi Rob,

I have LrC on my iMac (24-inch, M1, 2021) with 500Gb drive.
In the catalog I have 124000 photos and I have a problem with preview data
It take over 210 Gb, which is almost half of drive.
Is there any solution to reduce this preview or even move to external drive, where my photos are stored.
But I don’t want to move catalog on external drive (performance reason)

Thanks for any advice or suggestion.

Ivan

P.S.
Could you please answer me via email.

]]> By: Chip https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-755563 Fri, 18 Mar 2022 13:22:38 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-755563 Curious how you avoid the date-time stamp being updated when moving files on a PC? I’ve checked into this and the only way I’ve found to do this is to use the robocopy file replication command in Windows 10.

]]> By: Rob Sylvan https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-755514 Thu, 17 Mar 2022 14:22:59 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-755514 In reply to Mel.

Keep the drive containing the photos connected when you want to edit them in LrC.

]]> By: Mel https://lightroomkillertips.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog-to-an-external-hard-drive/#comment-755479 Wed, 16 Mar 2022 22:37:05 +0000 https://lightroomkillertips.com/?p=15486#comment-755479 I just came across this article. I was able to follow the directions (in reverse) and move the LR catalog from my external hard drive to my computer. However, once I disconnect my hard drive, LR says every image is missing and needs to be found. If I reconnect my hard drive, LR finds the images and there is no longer a problem. How do I get around this issue? Thanks.

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