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joshuap85237823
joshuap85237823
Participant
January 7, 2024
Question

External Hard Drives with iMAC and Lightroom Classic

  • January 7, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 195 views

Hi all - I have a question regarding my iMAC and the usage of external hard drives where I store all my photos for Lightroom Classic.

 

Background - I currently have a two bay GRAID Thunderbolt 3 RAID 1 storage unit with 80k pictures on it.  I have these pictures backed up to another storage device as well outside of my GRAID.  Recently my GRAID unit no longer functions properly in a RAID 1 setup but the data is still on each external hard drive within the bays as I'm still able to see all my pictures, no matter which hard drive I have within the case.  I've tried with Western Digital support for days to rectify and potentially rebuild the RAID seup but nothing works.

 

Due to that, I'm starting to look at other RAID 1 setups.  My question is if I have the ability to attach both external drives via Thunderbolt 3 cords to my iMAC which has two separate ports.  One will be used for new photos in a RAID 1 setup for Lightroom classic, the other would be my old drive for my photos prior to 2024 for visual purposes in Lightroom Classic.  I will take the secondary hard drive from my old 2 bay GRAID and store in a safe place in case the first hard drive in the old GRAID setup dies since they currently mimic each other.

 

I was told I can't daisy chain my GRAID to a new GRAID because it isn't functioning properly with a red "G" on the front but I'm thinking I could still have a new RAID 1 setup via a separate port and access the older photos through my existing port.

 

Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.

 

thanks

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    1 reply

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 8, 2024

    Although I don’t use a RAID, it probably will not be a problem. Lightroom Classic is able to catalog any number of volumes, internal or external. For example, if you had a desktop computer with two internal volumes, plus three external hard drives and SSDs, and you add images from each of those volumes to the same catalog, each of those five separate internal and external volumes will be listed as a separate volume at the top level of the Folders panel in Lightroom Classic. You will be able to expand each volume’s folder tree.

     

    The basic rule is, if it shows up as a separate volume on your macOS desktop, then it’s going to show up as a separate volume in the Folders panel in Lightroom Classic.

     

    In other words, you probably don’t have to think about it, it will just work.

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