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ptr22
Known Participant
March 5, 2025
Answered

Collections and catalogue to external SSD and partially back?

  • March 5, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 1032 views

Hi,

First time scenario for me. I'm looking for suggestions to how I can safely move my entire photos/catalogue and collections to an external SSD, however, still being able to work on some of them (work in progress projects), when the external SSD is not connected. 

I've already searched the forum and, it seems, that there are several options to move all my photos from the laptop's internal harddrive to an external SSD: either by copying, deleting source files and updating folder locations, or by 'Exporting this folder as collection...'. Or is there another better way? 

What I'm still not sure about, would either option keep the collections I created on my internal drive work once it's either reconnected to the new location or exported as new catalogues? In the worst case, they could also be exported as separate catalogues before I move the whole thing?
And once everything is exported onto the external SSD, how can I safely remove the original internal laptop photos and collections to not have duplicates and confusion of what's what? 

Here's another tricky bit! I have quite a few images within those hundreds of folders that will need editing over time. I would love to keep them on the internal drive, or have a copy there. Smart Previews seem like a great idea for basic things but won't give me enough options for what I need to do (I'll also have large PS documents to edit). Would it then be the best way, to simple move those images into an editing folder on the internal laptop drive from within LRC and, once finished, move them back from there (using LRC as well), onto the external SSD? Will collections automatically be updated with the new locations? 

Not sure if it's important, my current folder structure is something like this: a big folder for all photos, with subfolders per year within that, with four quarterly subfolders within those, and inside those four season folders are many folders named by date (with the RAWs inside and, possibly, subfolders for edits).

Long explanation but I hope it's clear and someone can answer, or point me into a direction for answers. 
Thanks!

Correct answer dj_paige

Thanks for your replies, much appreciated! 

quote

Would a copy of a small collection of photos, or a new catalogue from that small collection (e.g. my top 10 landscape images) to my internal drive be a better way to have those always with me?

 

If you want a small number of images with you even when your external drive in not plugged in, just don't move them to the external drive. That way, you don't have to move them to the external drive and then move them back to the internal drive.


That makes sense, I was thinking about the external SSD as a master drive that hold everything and have a copy for the long time edits on my internal drive. But, of course, I can just generally keep those on the internal drive and make normal backups onto whatever drive.

quote

 

 

First time scenario for me. I'm looking for suggestions to how I can safely move my entire photos/catalogue and collections to an external SSD, however, still being able to work on some of them (work in progress projects), when the external SSD is not connected.

 

Why? What is the reason you want to do all of this work?

 


The main reason is that, slowly but surely, I'm running out of internal harddrive space and cannot keep my entire photos on the internal drive of my laptop. So I have to start looking into options of how to put the whole thing on a bigger external drive, whilst still being able to work on current projects, also when I'm away and don't have that external drive with me.


quote

Smart Previews seem like a great idea for basic things but won't give me enough options for what I need to do (I'll also have large PS documents to edit).

 

Explain this further ... why are Smart Previews not a good option?

 

 Smart preview are probably perfect for edits of single raw files etc. However, I have huge 30GB+ Photoshop Milky Way panorama files that I sometimes also export into other programs and back into Photoshop for detailed edits. I don't think Smart Previews will help me there, or am I wrong?

Thanks again!


The main reason is that, slowly but surely, I'm running out of internal harddrive space and cannot keep my entire photos on the internal drive of my laptop. So I have to start looking into options of how to put the whole thing on a bigger external drive, whilst still being able to work on current projects, also when I'm away and don't have that external drive with me.

 

Ok, so the general solution is to move the photos to an external drive, as we discussed. Photos that you need to have on the internal drive for when the external drive is not connected don't get moved. One LrC catalog references all of the photos on both drives.

 

Moving photos back and forth is not part of the solution ... unless you decide at some point in the future you need that photo on the external drive to be on the internal drive, in which case you have no choice but to move it back to the internal drive.

3 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 6, 2025
quote

Here's another tricky bit! I have quite a few images within those hundreds of folders that will need editing over time. I would love to keep them on the internal drive, or have a copy there. Smart Previews seem like a great idea for basic things but won't give me enough options for what I need to do (I'll also have large PS documents to edit). Would it then be the best way, to simple move those images into an editing folder on the internal laptop drive from within LRC and, once finished, move them back from there (using LRC as well), onto the external SSD?

By @ptr22

 

I have limited space on my MacBook Pro, so I have had to deal with this too. Managing any kind of back-and-forth between drives (exporting a subset and re-importing it later) seemed like too much trouble and too prone to error, since it has to be a manual process that makes you pay strict attention to what you do with which files in what specific order. 

 

In recent years, tiny bus-powered SSDs have gained capacity while also becoming faster and more compact and pocketable. At some point it became possible to fit all of the photos I’ve ever taken on a fast external NVMe SSD that’s only about 1/4 the size of a smartphone, and just needs a USB-C cable to the MacBook Pro. Once that was available, I decided my solution was to just use that fast little SSD all the time for main photo storage. It's so tiny that it's no problem to take it with my anywhere with my laptop, so there is no need to worry about whether I exported the right photos to the laptop and whether their edits get moved back properly into the main catalog. It can all come with me, anywhere, any time I need it to.

    KR Seals
    Community Expert
    KR SealsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 6, 2025

    Mac or PC?

    Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.
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    ptr22Author
    Known Participant
    March 6, 2025

    Oops, forgot to mention, on a Mac!

    KR Seals
    Community Expert
    KR SealsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 6, 2025

    A while back, I helped a professional photographer friend of mine transfer all of her photos (all in LrC catalog) from a number of small (1-2TB) external drives onto a 14TB drive so they would all be in one place. During that process of copying the files with Mac Finder, we discovered that Finder did NOT copy every file in large folders. 

    When you do your copying, check each folder in LrC to be sure all the files were copied over to the new drive. In our case, we had to manually find the missing files and do the copy operation again several times to get them all.

     

    Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.
    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    March 5, 2025

    I've already searched the forum and, it seems, that there are several options to move all my photos from the laptop's internal harddrive to an external SSD: either by copying, deleting source files and updating folder locations, or by 'Exporting this folder as collection...'. Or is there another better way?

     

    Option 2 here is the way to go. Once you do that (and confirm that it works properly) you can also move the catalog to the external HD using your operating system if you want. However, unless you have a very good reason for putting the catalog on an external HD, don't move it, leave it on the internal drive. Everything works fine with photos on external HD and catalog on internal HD.

     

    What I'm still not sure about, would either option keep the collections I created on my internal drive work once it's either reconnected to the new location or exported as new catalogues?

     

    Collections are in the catalog file, they are not separate entities on one of you hard disks. So moving the photos and catalog as described above moves the c ollections as well. DO NOT export the collections as catalogs, this is unnecessary and doesn't help.

     

    Would it then be the best way, to simple move those images into an editing folder on the internal laptop drive from within LRC

     

    NO, don't design workflows that require photos to be moved here to there and back. The speed difference is so trivial that you will never notice a speed difference, there is no benefit to do this. Decide what disk you want the photos on, and thenb leave the photos where they are, and edit them where they are. The speed benefit of editing from the internal drive is so trivial you will never notice.

    P
    ptr22Author
    Known Participant
    March 5, 2025

    Thanks for your swift reply, much appreciated!! That option 2 seems to be the solution indeed. I don't think I need to have the catalogue on the external drive, that doesn't eat up that much space. However, can I still copy it as a backup somewhere else and, worst case, if something ever goes wrong, get it back from that external catalogue backup + photos (with the same folder structure)?

    quote

    DO NOT export the collections as catalogs, this is unnecessary and doesn't help.


    Ah okay, thanks! Would a copy of a small collection of photos, or a new catalogue from that small collection (e.g. my top 10 landscape images) to my internal drive be a better way to have those always with me?

    quote

     

    Would it then be the best way, to simple move those images into an editing folder on the internal laptop drive from within LRC

     

    NO, don't design workflows that require photos to be moved here to there and back. The speed difference is so trivial that you will never notice a speed difference, there is no benefit to do this. Decide what disk you want the photos on, and thenb leave the photos where they are, and edit them where they are. The speed benefit of editing from the internal drive is so trivial you will never notice.


    Thank you! In this case it's less about the speed but about travelling and not wanting to take my "master" SSD with me. Or I'd have to come up with a solid backup option, basically, an identical copy of that master drive.

    Thanks again!!


    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    March 6, 2025

    Would a copy of a small collection of photos, or a new catalogue from that small collection (e.g. my top 10 landscape images) to my internal drive be a better way to have those always with me?

     

    If you want a small number of images with you even when your external drive in not plugged in, just don't move them to the external drive. That way, you don't have to move them to the external drive and then move them back to the internal drive.

     

    Going back to your first message, in which you said:

     

    First time scenario for me. I'm looking for suggestions to how I can safely move my entire photos/catalogue and collections to an external SSD, however, still being able to work on some of them (work in progress projects), when the external SSD is not connected.

     

    Why? What is the reason you want to do all of this work?


    Going back to your first message, you said:

     

    Smart Previews seem like a great idea for basic things but won't give me enough options for what I need to do (I'll also have large PS documents to edit).

     

    Explain this further ... why are Smart Previews not a good option?

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