Participant

Question

Process for migration of LR Classic images from main drive to a new SSD (Mac OS)?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
March 13, 2025
3 replies
464 views

It's time to upgrade my late 2014 iMac Retina a mac mini pro. On the 2014 iMac, everything is stored on the internal 6TB drive (using about 4.5 TB currently). I plan on getting the Mac mini 4 Pro with a 1TB internal drive and an 8TB external SSD drive. I'm trying to understand the process of migration so that I don't run into any problems. For example, using the Apple migration tool, it appears that it's a one for one migration; that is it migrates everything from old system drive to new system drive. In my case, this wouldn't work. So when I unbox the new iMac, any advice on the migration process? I'd like to bring up the new iMac and migrate everything but LR Classic/Photoshop and then put the LR cataloge on the 1TB drive and the images on the 8TB drive. Thanks.

macOS

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SF_TangueroAuthor

Participant

This has been a helpful discussion to me, so thanks. I'm thinking to first purchase the 8TB drive and move my images off the iMac main drive to the 8TB. Then make sure all the directories/images and so on have been correctly moved. Then when I purchase the Mac M4 mini, the 8TB drive can be connected to that machine for a more seamless transfer experience. It will at least take that aspect of migration off the table and allow me to focus on all the other things that may (or will) come up.

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SF_TangueroAuthor

Participant

Arg. Scratch that last idea. The 8TB drives are USB 4 and my iMac Retina 5K does not support that hardware.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

A 2014 Mac has USB 3.0 ports that can transfer at 5 gigabits per second, and many USB 4 drives are backwards compatible and also work with USB 3 (and sometimes USB 2 or 1.1). Definitely double-check the specs for that specific 8TB drive; if they say it also supports USB 3, then the iMac can use that drive at USB 3 speed…go ahead and plug it in. Although USB 3 at 5 Gbps won’t transfer as quickly as the ports on a new Mac*, it will get the job done. At least it won’t be as slow as USB 2!

*Current Macs support the later USB 3.2 standard at 10 Gbps, USB 4 at up to 30 Gbps (for data), and Thunderbolt 5 for up to 60 Gbps (for data). USB 2 was 0.5 Gbps.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

One consideration is that you’ll be migrating from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac. Applications installed for Intel won’t fun at full speed on Apple Silicon Macs and there might be other incompatibilies, so you’ll probably want to not migrate applications. Instead, start over on the new Mac, installing applications from scratch to get the latest versions that are optimized for Apple Silicon. All Adobe Creative Cloud applications can be installed using the Creative Cloud desktop app.

…and then put the LR cataloge on the 1TB drive and the images on the 8TB drive.
By @SF_Tanguero

That is very similar to my setup. My catalog is on my 1TB internal volume, and the photos that the catalog links to are on a larger external volume.

A Lightroom Classic catalog links to images the same way as a web page, page layout document, or video editing project: It tracks the files by remembering the path to each file’s volume and folder. If you move the photos to an external volume, that’s fine, but because the Lightroom Classic catalog will be looking for the images at their former location, you’ll have to go into the catalog and update their storage location so that the catalog can find them again. For more details and steps for doing that kind of a move, see this web page:

How do I move only my photos to another hard drive, leaving the catalog where it is?
– by The Lightroom Queen

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SF_TangueroAuthor

Participant

Conrad, thanks for that insight on app/processor differences. That aspect of the migration hadn't occurred to me. It tells me to budget a bit more time for the migration as I examine each app. So, should I use Apple's migration tool at all or do you recommend a different process? Cheers.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

You might be able to use the Apple Migration Assistant, because it isn't an all-or-nothing process. There is a screen where it lets you exclude items from the migration. In your case it looks like you could migrate if you exclude these two things:

1. Applications, because you’ll want to freshly install the latest Apple Silicon-optimized versions of them on the new Mac.

2. The folder containing the photos that your Lightroom Catalog links to, because you’re moving those to an external volume yourself.

One more thing about your photos: The migration will be simpler if all of the photos that your catalog links to are stored under a single parent folder. If so, then when you need to re-link them, there will be only one folder to re-link. Take care of that one folder and you’re done, because Lightroom Classic will automatically re-link all sub-folders as long as none of the sub-folders has been moved or renamed since they were copied. But if you have for example 10 top level folders of photos to migrate, then you’ll have to link each of those 10 folders individually.

I am not sure if the Migration Assistant lets you exclude individual folders because I haven’t used it in a while, but if it does, then again having all of your photos within a single parent folder will mean you only have to select one folder to exclude. If you want to read more about Migration Assistant, here is the Apple help article:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102613

A

Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @SF_Tanguero!

Before anything, please make sure to back up your catalog and preview files.

You can follow this handy guide to move your catalog to a different location: https://adobe.ly/3FEwUDH

If you'd prefer a video tutorial, here's a wonderful guide by Julieanne Kost: https://adobe.ly/3XOTFLw

After you move your catalog, you might get an error saying Lightroom Classic can't find your catalog. If that happens, follow the steps here: https://adobe.ly/4kOKMvd

Hope this helps! 😊

Alek

*(If you mention me with an @, like @Aleke, I’ll get a notification and can respond faster.)*

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