CHANGING BOOT DRIVE TO EXTERNAL SSD

[mr d bm40978394]

Hi, 

I'm running a mid 2011 27 inch imac with normal spinning internal hard drive.

I'm planning on running my entire system off an External Thunderbolt connected SSD drive.

I don't want to clone my entire internal drive across to the ssd (there wouldn't be room anyway)

I'm doing a fresh install (High Sierra OS)

Do I have to do a fresh install of Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CC  onto the new SSD Boot drive?

Thanks for your help.

Darren

[nikunj.m]

Hi Darren,

If you plan to use the internal hard drive as an alternate drive for the computer then you can have the applications installed on the internal drive as well however, it is recommended to have the application installed on the same drive as the OS for better stability of the application. Plus with the SSD being faster than the internal hard drive, may give you better performance.

Also, if you plan to remove the OS completely from the internal drive, you would need to re-install the application anyway.

Regards,

Nikunj

[mr d bm40978394]

Thanks Nikunj, I'm planning on leaving the Sierra OS on the internal drive. Do I just download Lightroom again to put it on the new external drive ? Is it possible to leave the lightroom with all my photos on my internal drive and do a fresh install of Lightroom with no photos on the new external SSD drive ?

[nikunj.m]

Just to understand, you would have a dual boot setup with one OS on the internal drive and another on the external? Or do you plan to have a single drive for the boot process?

[mr d bm40978394]

I was planning to use the external SSD as the main boot drive and not the internal Mac drive. What do you think would be best ?

[JP Hess]

"I don't think" the application manager will allow you to install Lightroom twice on the same computer. I believe you had better rethink your approach. I don't know anything about the Mac, but I do believe you are heading in the wrong direction. Better seek more advice, in my opinion.

[mr d bm40978394]

Thanks. That won't really be a problem. I'll just have it on the new external SSD Boot drive. I'll leave all the photos on the internal Mac drive. It's being backed up using Time machine.

[Conrad_C]

This should be very easy.

On a Mac, you can install an application one time per system, because every macOS boot drive has its own Applications folder. You can install a system on any mounted volume that qualifies (drives, partitions, etc), so if you have 10 volumes connected to your Mac, you could theoretically install 10 macOS systems with a copy of Lightroom on every one. For this situation, just do what you normally would on a new Mac:

1. Keep your current Lightroom catalog (It doesn't matter where you store it). Do not create a new catalog to reimport everything, you'll lose edits and other metadata.
2. After you install macOS on your external drive, start up from it, download and start the Creative Cloud app and install Lightroom Classic. It should default to the Applications folder that will automatically be created on the macOS system you install on the external drive. This will not interfere with, or interact in any way with, the applications still installed on the internal drive. It won't even see them.
3. It doesn't matter where you store your photos, just put them on the drive with more room. If you start Lightroom Classic on the external drive and it can't find the photos, just right-click/Ctrl-click a top level folder and choose Update Folder Location.
4. If you no longer want to use the Creative Cloud applications on the internal drive, you must restart your Mac from the internal drive, run the Creative Cloud desktop app there, and uninstall the applications. Then sign out of the Creative Cloud desktop app, so that you can free up one of your two Creative Cloud activations.

[mr d bm40978394]

This is great news. Thanks. If I leave my Sierra OS on the internal drive and then install High Sierra on the new External SSD Boot drive, can I browse the internet on both drives ? Thanks again. Darren