Can I move my Lr Catalog and Backups from Dropbox to Google Drive without issue?

[harrybarnettw]

As of now, I store my Lr Catalog and previews () on my computer's hard drive (physical images are on external hard drive), which is backed up automatically to Dropbox. I am considering making the move from Dropbox to Google Drive and wondering if I can simply drag and drop the catalog and other Lr files from my Hard Drive to Google Drive without issue. Will this work with Lr? If not, could I still make the move to Drive and store my Catalog and previews elsewhere?

[JP Hess]

If I understand you correctly, you are using Dropbox to back up your catalog and previews, and you want to change and have the backups on Google Drive. Is that what you are wanting to do?

[harrybarnettw]

To my understanding, Dropbox files primarily live on my hard drive (unless "cloud only" is defined) and backed up in cloud. With Google Drive, they fully live in the cloud and not on my computer's drive. So with Google Drive, my catalog and previews would live in cloud. 

[Conrad C]

The main question is (I haven't tried it):

Can a Mac application directly open a file stored on Google Drive fully in the cloud?

With Dropbox, the files are in a local folder that any Mac program would see as accessible via a normal macOS file path, no problem. As long as Google Drive maintains something like that, maybe you'll be OK. But if for any reason the "all in the cloud" nature of Google Drive means there is no resolvable file path in the local Mac file system for the catalog, photos, and other required files, you could see warnings for missing photos and other files when you open a Lightroom Classic catalog. Or the catalog itself might not open from the cloud, I'm not sure.

If it was me I'd test it with a small catalog first.

[JohanElzenga]

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@harrybarnettw wrote:

To my understanding, Dropbox files primarily live on my hard drive (unless "cloud only" is defined) and backed up in cloud. With Google Drive, they fully live in the cloud and not on my computer's drive. So with Google Drive, my catalog and previews would live in cloud. 

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I'm pretty sure Lightroom Classic cannot work like that, and if it could, it would become painfully slow.

[JP Hess]

So apparently you are not looking at Google Drive for a backup of those files, but for the working copies of those files. I have never tried working that way. I would suggest leaving the catalog and previews on the computer hard drive and moving your images to Google Drive. I have worked that way before, and it seems to work flawlessly. But I don't know about having your catalog and previews function that way. My gut feeling is that it might not be a good idea, but I don't have any real world experience to back that up.

[SeanMcCormack]

My gut reaction to this is that it would make for a painfully slow experience of waiting on things to go up and down online as you work. Even having the catalog on an exernal drive can make for lower performance than on the start up drive. 

If you truly want things to live in the cloud, you may be better off looking at Lightroom for Desktop.