Catalog saved on laptop & external hard drive. Is it OK to delete from laptop?

[amyj6072284]

Hi everyone,

I really need some advice. My laptop has completely run out of space and I need to delete my Lightroom catalog.

All of the photos are saved on my external harddrive and Lightroom automatically saved a copy of my catalog on the drive as well. However, it also saves the catalog directly to my laptop. 

If I delete this, will I risk potentially deleting my catalog entirely?

Thanks for your help!

[dj_paige]

Lightroom automatically saved a copy of my catalog on the drive as well

Lightroom Classic does not do this. Perhaps you meant it made a backup of your catalog file on the external drive?

If you really want to put the catalog on the external drive, use your operating system to copy the entire folder containing your catalog file to the new drive, and then open LrC from there. And then, you can delete the catalog from the laptop hard drive. However, then your backups must go to yet a different disk. (Why? because backups on the same disk as the working catalog are not backups; if the disk crashes, you now have zero copies of your catalog file and I'm guessing you won't be happy about that)

[amyj6072284]

hey, thanks for your response!

i've just looked and the catalog is saved to the pictures on the laptop. but there is also a lightroom backup on my external harddrive (where all of the photos are stored and where lightroom pulls my photos from). It seems to do this automatically? 

what would you recommend doing? saving my catalog on two separate drives?

this is what it looks like on my laptop:

[dj_paige]

Backups are saved to the external drive automatically if you turn that option on (which you appear to have done).

I don't really know what you are getting at with this question: what would you recommend doing? saving my catalog on two separate drives?

I previously recommended copying the entire folder that contains your catalog from the laptop to the external drive, and that remains my recommendation. Then you can delete this entire folder from the laptop.

Do not send screen shots as attachments. I cannot open them. Use the "Insert Photos" icon to include screen captures in your reply.

[amyj6072284]

Ah that makes sense - thanks. So I'll drag and drop my entire catalog to my external drive to copy it there. Then, will it automatically save there each time or do I need to change something in my Lightoom settings?

And, as for my questions, I mean - in your experience, is it best to also save a copy of the catalog to another drive for extra backup?

Attaching my current catalog image so that you can see what it looks like. Do all of these files need to be saved?

Thanks for your help, I'm entirely self-taught with Lightroom so every bit of advice is appreciated.

[dj_paige]

Ah that makes sense - thanks. So I'll drag and drop my entire catalog (clarification: the entire folder that contains your catalog file) to my external drive to copy it there. Then, will it automatically save there each time or do I need to change something in my Lightoom settings?

Yes, if you open that catalog on the external drive.

And, as for my questions, I mean - in your experience, is it best to also save a copy of the catalog to another drive for extra backup?

I consider backups on a different drive to be mandatory.

As I don't know what is in those catalogs in your screen capture, I would recommend you copy them all to the external HD. After you are sure everything is working properly, you can determine if the older catalog file is still needed.