Lightroom Import - configuring drives to ignore

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
May 1, 2025
2 replies
382 views

I'm using LrC on Windows. have a couple of internal SSD drives and a couple of external USB HDDs. The external drives are only there for backups. The backups run automatically each night. The HDDs are normally in "sleep" mode. They'll wake up when accessed, but that initital access is very slow as they come to life. That's no problem at all for the backup.

The issue is with LrC import. When I click on the Import button, LR wants to show me every possible drive and have me select the one from which I want to import. That means it pings the external drives, and I have to wait about 30 seconds for the list of drives to show up. But I will NEVER want to select one of the external drives. What I'd love to do is to configure LR, essentially tell it this: I'll only ever want to import from my F: drive (CFexpress reader) or my C: drive, so only show me those. Ignore any other drive letter and don't even try to scan it. I have a very fast system, and it's frustrating to have such a long wait just to BEGIN the import process. Any way to do that?

Windows

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

AFAIK there is no way to exclude drives from the import dialog.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

V

vinyl haircutAuthor

Participant

Thanks. I agree, and it seems odd. LR is configurable in so many ways. It would be so helpful to be able to tell LR: "I'm never going to import from those drives so remove them from consideration." Waiting for those HDDs means a 30-second unneccesary delay with every import.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

If you wish, submit a feature request in the 'Ideas' forum

GoldingD

Legend

In your catalog, in the Folders panel, do any of this hard drives show up as if you may have at some point imported from them?
If the above is the case, are their actually any images in the catalog, in those drives?
If not, consider removing them from the Folders panel.
Not at a computer, so I cannot look as to remind me, but, in the import screen, in the files, for any drives showing up you do not want appearing in import, I forget if you can right click, and remove.

V

vinyl haircutAuthor

Participant

Thanks for the reply. No, none of the drives show up in the Folders panel. There are no photos or anything associated with LR on any of those drives. I don't see any way to remove them from the import screen.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded