Pictures folder on different drive?

FiestaRed

FiestaRed

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Mike
Edit My Images
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Is it possible to have your Pictures folder on a different drive to your operating programme? I run Windows 10 and use LR and PS, my Pictures folder is on the main C drive. As I'm getting short of space on that drive which is a 225gb SSD drive I wondered if it was possible to have the pictures folder on a different drive? I also have a 500gb which is my E drive, but it's not SSD.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
 
Yes, not only is it possible - it's reccomended! Your OS takes up a lot of bandwidth (as does Lightroom etc) so loading up image transfers etc can cause it to slow down.

I run my Lightroom catalog plus all 'active' RAW files from an external SSD (I move raw files off after a couple of years to a storage drive). This also helps with running my Lightroom catalog on 2 different computers, because they both reference the external drive for the catalog.

Rather than re-hash instructions, here's a link explaining how to do it :)

https://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-move-your-lightroom-library-to-an-external-drive/
 
That was quick Andy. Thanks for the link, I'll read through it and let you know how I get on.
 
I would recommend storing your images on a different drive. It can be an external drive or network drive but I use a second internal drive for all data. There are limitation as to where you can store the LR Catalogue file but not the image files.

Dave
 
Thanks for the reply Dave. I had a read on the link Andy included above but have to admit I got a bit lost.

Initially I copy my images from a XQD card into Lightroom and I guess Lightroom then stores them in Pictures on my main C drive.

As a back up, I store all the folders in Pictures on my E drive and then copy those to two external 1TB drives. So I have the images stored on my C and E drives as well as two back ups which seems a lot of space.
 
Your current set up means you have 3 backups which is probably overkill. The likelyhood of all 4 drives dying at once is tiny, unless you consider fire/flood.

Just to make sure I'm clear what you want to do - do you want to move your entire Lightroom catalog including images to another location i.e. you don't want to work from your C drive at all? Or do you just want to move the images which you longer need to access from Lightoom to a storage drive?
 
You say you copy the images into LR and guess it stores on the C Drive. This might be true but when you import with LR, you tell it where you want the images stored so should know where they are. The catalogue contains the metadata, editing data, thumbnails etc and is a separate database. For the images, I create a series of folders using LR based on year and month. I select the relevant month folder when importing and LR creates a day folder within the month folder. I possibly have overkill in back up. As well as the originals, I back-up to my NAS which itself has redundancy (this happens automatically as part of my original import). I also back up from time to time on a USB disk which I normally keep in a fire resistant safe. Of course if you are very serious about backups you should have a version off-site.

Dave
 
Thanks both for the help and apologies for being a bit slow but I'm not really sure what others do with their images apart from backing them up somewhere.

At the minute I have about 80GB of images stored on my C drive. I also have the same images on my E drive and the two external drives too. When I've imported the images from the XQD card into Lightroom, done all the PP in both LR and PS I need to do. I then copy them to the E drive and the two back ups. Do I really need to leave any of the images on my C drive at all?
 
To answer Dave's reply, after importing the images from the XQD card, I know they go on to my C drive and I save them by first cataloguing them by location and then by date as I visit the same locations more than once. So folders from a days shooting might read Stanage 190816. Hope that makes sense.
 
Andy Into The Wild said:
Your current set up means you have 3 backups which is probably overkill. The likelyhood of all 4 drives dying at once is tiny, unless you consider fire/flood.
Click to expand...

I would recommend a complete set of your data permanently unplugged from your computer is a good idea these days. Ransomware which is unfortunately getting more and more common attacks anything and everything it can get it’s hands on, including USB drives and network locations and renders data unusable. How many backups you have is up to you, but I would say that there’s no such thing as too many backups :)
 
FiestaRed said:
Thanks both for the help and apologies for being a bit slow but I'm not really sure what others do with their images apart from backing them up somewhere.

At the minute I have about 80GB of images stored on my C drive. I also have the same images on my E drive and the two external drives too. When I've imported the images from the XQD card into Lightroom, done all the PP in both LR and PS I need to do. I then copy them to the E drive and the two back ups. Do I really need to leave any of the images on my C drive at all?
Click to expand...

Just so you're aware, the RAW files are never modified when editing in Lightroom. Any edits you make in Lightroom are stored in the Catalog file, not the image itself. This means that if you want a backup of your RAW files, it really doesn't matter whether you back them up before or after you edit them, because they are never changed during the edit process. This is on the understanding that all your edits are stored in the Lightroom catalog file, not the image itself.

Your question "do I really need to leave any of the images on my C drive" has 2 parts to it....the first is whether you need to import images to your C drive at all, and the answer is no. For improved performance, it is reccomended to import all your images, and your Lightroom catalog file on a 2nd drive. As long as you specify this file location to Lightroom, everything will work like clockwork (and that is what my link explains how to do).

The second part is whether you need to keep your RAW files in their original import location, and the answer is that it depends whether you want to continue editing them. If you've made your edits and exported as JPG, and you no longer need the underlying RAW files, you can move them to an archive or wherever you like...just be aware that Lightroom will display a ? for any folders it can't locate.

In terms of backups, no you can't have too many backups but 4 copies of the same files stored on the same machine is overkill IMO....you want to put the backups in different locations to see any additional value.
 
Thanks for all the help Andy. Everything in there makes good sense and over the next few days, I will work to get the changes made.
 
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