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Barry24531390zu0s
Participating Frequently
March 18, 2023
Question

Moving Lightroom and images off old iMac to new Apple M1

  • March 18, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 783 views

Can I please get some step by step help with this process. 

 

My old iMac (late 2013 running OS Catalina Version 10.15.7) can no longer handle Apple and Adobe software updates. It has all my images, 30,000 or so totalling 320gb, managed by Lightroom Classic ( Lightroom catalog-2-2 -v10 - v11.lrcat) and I now want to move all Lightroom files and all images to my new computer a 1Tb Apple M1. I have purchased and mounted on the old iMac and in Lightroom a 1Tb external SSD drive ready to receive all images and Lightroom files.

I have successfully moved a single image to the SSD as a trial, however I am not sure if it is possible to move (drag and drop) 320Gb of images as simply as one image and I don't want to risk stuffing it up. 

Can I please get some advice on this, hopefully in basic terms.

 

The next step is importing all images into my M1 from the SSD external drive and, presumably?, whatever Lightroom files are required from the old iMac.  

The M1 already has Lightroom installed (Lightroom catalog-v12.lrcat - no images loaded yet.

 

Question: as the new M1 has a more recent version of Lightroom Classic, will all Lightroom files from the old iMac be required? Or just the most recent files?

 

Question: Give that my images total 320Gb and will take up a third of the space on the M1, would it be better to use the SSD as the dedicated home for all images and Lightroom files for Lightroom Classic to access? If so, some instructions to set this up would be appreciated.

 

I am not a total newcomer to Lightroom and in fact have had a Adobe account for many years, however I have had a few years of limited use of the Lightroom Classic program due to medical reasons so I am more than a bit rusty. Any help to achieve a smooth move is gratefully appreciated.

 

Many thanks in advance,

Regards,

Barry Cross

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 18, 2023

You can just copy everything in one fell swoop. Works just fine. Make sure to first reformat the external SSD in a mac compatible format before you copy anything onto it! Most of these drives come preformatted as NTFS or FAT32 which is not ideal for a Mac. You want to repartition them using GUID scheme (use Disk Utility which is installed on all Macs to do this) and use APFS as the partition format. Mac OS X extended is also good as format but a bit outdated. The preferred (and most reliable) format for SSD drives in Mac OS X is APFS. A quick google found these surprisingly good instructions: https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/how-to-format-your-drive-apfs-on-macos-big-sur-and-later/

 

B
Barry24531390zu0sAuthor
Participating Frequently
March 19, 2023

Thanks for your advice. I have attempted to reformat SSD to APFS via Disk Utility but the dropdown Format option menu only gives these options (see screenshot). Confirming, I am running Big Sur on iMac. Seagate info is useful but cannot resolve issue.

Thoughts?

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 19, 2023

You need to follow the instructions in the link step by step. First make sure disk utility shows all items (there is a small almost hidden pop-up) . Then select the top level item which has 'media' and T7 in its name. Then hit erase. You should now be able to choose GUID partition scheme and APFS.

GoldingD
GoldingD
Legend
March 18, 2023
Question: as the new M1 has a more recent version of Lightroom Classic, will all Lightroom files from the old iMac be required?

If you have third party or self created presets, those will need to be dealt with (this is mentioned in at least one of the links in previous reply)

 

If you have third party plug-ins, those will need to be dealt with (perhaps by reinstalling them)

 

 

B
Barry24531390zu0sAuthor
Participating Frequently
March 18, 2023

Thank you for your speedy replys. Will look into tomorrow (am in Australia) Late Saturday evening here, family beckons. 🙂

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