Moving Images to External Drive.

[antoeknee]

OK, as image collection is rapidly out growing my existing storage I'm going to move it to an external drive and just wondering if there are any LR experts here who could help with some questions.

I know how to move the image folders from one drive to another within LR but not sure about couple of things..


Is it OK to leave the catalogue and my pre-sets on the existing drive? Or will there be issues/problems with doing this. There will be plenty of space on existing drive.


If I need to move the catalogue/presets how easy is it to do this?

[Norman]

Re: Moving Images to External Drive.

You cannot put your catalogue file on a network drive and shouldn't put it on any removable drive either. You need to keep your catalogue (database) on the fastest drive available.

[antoeknee]

Re: Moving Images to External Drive.

OK, was kind of guessing there would be a good reason not to move catalogue as I've not found any info n how to do this.

[Norman]

Re: Moving Images to External Drive.

You could move the catalogue to an external disk but I wouldn't advise it on performance grounds. Your images can be on any drive, even CD or DVD.

If you do want to move your catalogue (database) then move it to the fastest drive you have. Just make sure you have enough room as the preview files also need to be with the catalogue.

The file/folders you need to move are .lrcat (the main database) and the folders in the same directory i.e. ????.lrdata (previews) and the settings folder. When you next open LR you will have to point it to where the catalogue is now located. It will open from that location in the future.

[Norman]

Re: Moving Images to External Drive.

One other thing that's worth noting.

Your catalogue and previews data will be quite large. In my case, with 24,000 images (177 GB in 44,000 files and 813 folders) on the system, the database and previews are over 8 GB in size. This will depend on how frequently you have set your system to delete unused 1:1 previews (I have mine set to 30 days), and the size and quality of the standard previews.

[antoeknee]

Re: Moving Images to External Drive.

Easiest way to move images is once you have the drive visible in LR you can drag folders to new drive in library view and it updates all the refs for the catalogue.