p.1 #1 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
Well my Mac Studio internal 2 TB drive is full. I am sure there is some clutter to dump but the majority of storage is images in Lightroom Classic.
Just picked up an OWC enclosure 1M2 40GB/s enclosure with a Samsung Pro 4TB NVMe SSD.
So do I move catalogs and images or just images? I could use some pointers on best way to do this and even a few good reference videos so I don’t corrupt things!
Your input is appreciated, this is not something yet I am familiar with doing properly.
p.1 #2 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
The catalog does not need to be in the same place as the image files. There are good reasons to keep the catalog local as that will yield the best performance. Your catalog is accessed continuously while working. I/O on the images themselves is more sporadic so disk performance is less critical.
If 2TB wasn't enough space, 4TB probably isn't either. You'll already be over 50% capacity from day one. Consider at least a 4x increase to 8TB. Especially if you're using RAID as I hope you are. If not, now is the time to do that.
Procedure doesn't need to be complicated. You can use LR to move the files but that can be really slow. It's faster to use your local file system manager like explorer in windows to move them. If you maintain same overall folder structure, you can just move the images to the new location. LR will complain that it can't find your files (scary "!" shows next to everything). From LR, right click on the parent folder and use "find missing folder" to browse to the new location and re-link the entire dataset.
I suggest trying this on a small test set first so you're comfortable with the procedure.
p.1 #3 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
Jeff nailed it, Karl. Be sure to back up your entire system; at least back up your catalogs.
One warning: when you move your files, do not do like I did. I *Moved* the files, made a finger slip, so my files went into the bit bucket. One year's worth of files, lost.
*Copy* to the external drive.
Verify copy.
Only then delete the files off the hard drive. But don't hurry.
p.1 #4 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
Yes, keep the catalog on the Studio. Where you move the files to is a concern. Definitely agree that moving 2TB of photos to a 4TB external does not buy you much. Stop gap, maybe, but you'll ending up spending money again for something larger and much sooner than you think. This sounds like a good time to do some serious long term thinking about photograph storage which needs to include a bonafide backup plan as well before making the next step.
p.1 #5 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
LRC can be incredibly slow. It can be incredibly main memory hungry. I have a 16” MacBook Pro M3 Max with 64GB main memory and 1TB system drive. When I do this again, if I can foot the bill, I will get 128GB and 4TB system drive. I’ve run out of main memory and had LRC crash. My Thunderbolt 4 drives, supposedly 40GB/sec still can take forever and one drive is actually Thunderbolt 5, but the interface is 4. I had a partial, but large import that after four days showed only one image imported. I abandoned the process and found over 100K files imported but not yet registered with LRC. You can speed up large imports by using an external program to eliminate duplicates prior to import and then not selecting the box that insures that duplicates aren’t imported. On a large database this selection alone adds a great deal of time to the import. None of this is important with small catalogs, but become increasingly important with more files. I went with an 8TB external 80GB/sec drive since my 4TB, which superceded my 2TB proved inadequate.
p.1 #6 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
bwcolor wrote:
LRC can be incredibly slow. It can be incredibly main memory hungry. I have a 16” MacBook Pro M3 Max with 64GB main memory and 1TB system drive. When I do this again, if I can foot the bill, I will get 128GB and 4TB system drive. I’ve run out of main memory and had LRC crash. My Thunderbolt 4 drives, supposedly 40GB/sec still can take forever and one drive is actually Thunderbolt 5, but the interface is 4. I had a partial, but large import that after four days showed only one image imported. I abandoned the process and found over 100K files imported but not yet registered with LRC. You can speed up large imports by using an external program to eliminate duplicates prior to import and then not selecting the box that insures that duplicates aren’t imported. On a large database this selection alone adds a great deal of time to the import. None of this is important with small catalogs, but become increasingly important with more files. I went with an 8TB external 80GB/sec drive since my 4TB, which superceded my 2TB proved inadequate....Show more →
There is no excuse for LRC to be slow with your specs, outside of your drives. Sounds like it's time for a fresh catalog perhaps.
p.1 #9 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
RoamingScott wrote:
Something else is up, then, because I have an M2 Studio that is otherwise similarly spec'd with no speed issues.
Likely, but I have no idea what. I am importing hundreds of thousands of images and using very fast external drives and one 32GB RAID 0 enterprise drive as final storage for video and JPEG. Source drive is 40GB/sec 4TB drive and TIFF/RAW/DNG stored on a 40GB/sec 8TB drive. I don’t expect this to be slow for everyday work…just the transition. I do have a number of smart collection relevant to year recorded and file type. I also generate sidecar files upon import and I’m sure this slows things a bit. My catalog is on the 4TB drive, so that may be a bottleneck, but my system drive is only 1TB.
p.1 #10 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
Thanks for all the input, I am reading, digesting and planning. Not in a hurry to do it wrong!
I am not a high volume shooter so having 2TB at least free is significant. It took me 8 years to fill 2TB
Keep the info flowing, it is most helpful at this point, BIG thanks for taking time to explain and comment
Karl
p.1 #11 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
If the images are on the same internal 2TB drive as the OS and applications, I doubt you are even that close to 2 TB of images. The OS and apps would take up a good percentage of that full disk. In that case, 4 TB should be fine.
p.1 #12 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
Read post 2 here for an explanation of how I use externals and share a catalog across multiple computers (the main best reason to have the catalog on an external in the first place): https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1830719/
p.1 #13 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
I would move the catalog and images all to the external for a couple reasons:
1) when you back up the external drive, it will also back up the catalog.
2) when you get a new computer, or add a second one, you just have to plug in the external, launch the LR catalog from the external, everything will be up to date and you'll be good to go.
As for your original question about *how* to move the catalog and images to the external...
First step IMO should be to make a back up of your Studio's drive. You should be doing this regularly anyway... Then copy the LR catalog and all images, however they're organized, onto the external. Once that is done, change the name of the root folder containing all of your images that LR accesses on the Studio. On the external drive, find the catalog file and double click to launch it in LR. Once open, all of your image folders will be shown as missing. Just go through the steps to reconnect them to LR. That should be it.
If everything is good, you can eventually remove from the Studio's drive. If it's not working, you can revert to using the LR catalog and all your files on the Studio by changing the name of the root image folder back to what it originally was. For this purpose, I would suggest when you rename it to just append something to the original name, even if only one character. The point of renaming the root folder is so that when you launch the LR catalog from the external drive, it doesn't just link to the original files on the Studio. You want to force it to link to the files on the external instead, which you will have to do via the folder re-linking process.
p.1 #14 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
jwpstl wrote:
If the images are on the same internal 2TB drive as the OS and applications, I doubt you are even that close to 2 TB of images. The OS and apps would take up a good percentage of that full disk. In that case, 4 TB should be fine.
Yes they are all on internal Mac Studio drive. Looks like about 1.14TB total in LRc of my 2020-2025 photo folders.
p.1 #15 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
RoamingScott wrote:
Read post 2 here for an explanation of how I use externals and share a catalog across multiple computers (the main best reason to have the catalog on an external in the first place): https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1830719/
p.1 #16 · Moving Lightroom Classic photos and catalogs to ext drive
jeffbuzz wrote:
The catalog does not need to be in the same place as the image files. There are good reasons to keep the catalog local as that will yield the best performance. Your catalog is accessed continuously while working. I/O on the images themselves is more sporadic so disk performance is less critical.
If 2TB wasn't enough space, 4TB probably isn't either. You'll already be over 50% capacity from day one. Consider at least a 4x increase to 8TB. Especially if you're using RAID as I hope you are. If not, now is the time to do that....
You can also split your storage into working storage for files lets say you shot in the last 2,3,4 years and then a storage oriented HDD for long term file storage that you rarely access any longer.
