Moving Lr/Ps and photos to another drive

DaelpixPhotography

DaelpixPhotography

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David
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I've ordered an external hard drive to put Lightroom and Photoshop and all my photos on.

Would I have any problems in deleting Lightroom and Photoshop on the C drive, and reinstalling them on the external?
I already have the links to know what files I should backup.
 
I don't (ever?) recall of reading about installing those programs on an external drive.

Can you explain why you are wishing to do this???
 
I Don,t think you could move them as far as installing on an external drive your best bet is ask Adobe as they will need access to Windows to work
 
Dael_Pix said:
Maybe I'll just move the photos instead of the software.
Click to expand...
IIRC I think you can have the LR catalogue on an external drive and provided you move image files from within LR all will be okay. Moving them outside of LR will muddy things for you.

FWIW I gave up on LR some years back but one resource I know is exists in The Lightroom Queen.....lots of LR knowledge and tutorials etc.
 
You shouldn't move the LR classic program to an external hard drive, or the LR catalogues, as it will slow things down, however moving all of your photos to an external hard drive is ok. I have recently purchased an external hard drive to get my photos into proper order, as they have been chaotic on various drives, with copies and copies of copies, and I am useless with LR catalogues, however I recently watched a great video from Scott Kelby, which he explains a lot very simply, I like his tutorials, as he does explain things so simply, anyway I will link to it below on youtube, its an hour long, but well worth a watch, and I hope it helps.

View: https://youtu.be/JLX27yyDiIs?si=3jpYBk59Cq0vZfov
 
I have my photos stored in sub folders within a main folder something like this:

Pictures
- 2024
- - 2024_01_05 Liverpool
- - 2024_02_03 Trip to London

So all stored within pictures with a sub folder for the year and sub folders for each day's shooting with some sort of descriptor.

To get these onto an external drive for use with Lightroom, what I've done is:

Using Finder(Mac) or File Manager (Windows),
- COPY the Pictures folder with all sub folders and contents to the external drive retaining the current structure.
- When all has been copied, RENAME just the Pictures folder on the internal drive to something like Old_Pictures
- Rename the Pictures folder on the external drive, to something External Pictures Folder

Fire up Lr
- Even though image previews/thumbnails show up as normal, the library window shows Pictures? and all sub folders have a ? against them too.
- Right-click on the Pictures? folder and select 'Search for missing files'. This will bring up Finder or File Manager
- Navigate to the External Pictures Folder on the external drive and click on that.
- Lr will now update the database to the new file locations, all of the ? will be removed.

When you're happy that all of the files have transferred and Lr is seeing the files on the external drive. Copy them all to a backup drive and when that's done and dusted, delete them from your internal drive.
 
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Dael_Pix said:
Maybe I'll just move the photos instead of the software.
Click to expand...
You can move the folder with the catalogs etc onto the external hard drive, leave LR and PS installed on your computer.

I bought a light laptop for editing on the hoof, so I’ve been using Dropbox to be able to edit on any computer, don’t do that, use your new hard drive instead.
 
harpistic said:
You can move the folder with the catalogs etc onto the external hard drive, leave LR and PS installed on your computer.
Click to expand...
Yes you can do that, but by moving your catalogue onto an external hard drive it will slow things down.
 
harpistic said:
You can move the folder with the catalogs etc onto the external hard drive, leave LR and PS installed on your computer.

I bought a light laptop for editing on the hoof, so I’ve been using Dropbox to be able to edit on any computer, don’t do that, use your new hard drive instead.
Click to expand...
I don't use Dropbox anyway and would never dream about transferring all my files digitally
 
External drive is working well, although I think it's a little slower transferring files from the camera to the drive, but not overly bothered about it.
 
FWIW having LR catalog on a regular external drive works, but it doesn't work on a network drive, like a NAS.
 
Dael_Pix said:
External drive is working well, although I think it's a little slower transferring files from the camera to the drive, but not overly bothered about it.
Click to expand...
Did you keep your catalogue on the internal drive?
 
You don't say if you are using a laptop or a tower pc or mac. But with a tower an internal slave drive would work. Enabling the software on the c drive and the pictures on a d drive. No slowing down of the software
 
Brentor said:
Did you keep your catalogue on the internal drive?
Click to expand...
No they're on the external. Transferring new RAW files was making it harder with limited space on 1TB drive. I should have bought larger drives but didn't.

I'm not bothered about it being a touch slower.

Bigfoot77 said:
You don't say if you are using a laptop or a tower pc or mac.......
Click to expand...
Tower PC.

I'm keeping the catalogue where it is now.
 
Dael_Pix said:
No they're on the external. Transferring new RAW files was making it harder with limited space on 1TB drive. I should have bought larger drives but didn't.

I'm not bothered about it being a touch slower.


Tower PC.

I'm keeping the catalogue where it is now.
Click to expand...
Is there drive space capacity in the PC tower?
I have three HDDs in mine and there space for more.

IIRC internal drives are cheaper per TB than external ones.

Of course external ones are good where backups are concerned.
 
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