Deleting Photos From Lightroom - Originals On Network Drive?

[Speez]

Currently in the process of migrating my catalog and originals from a PC laptop to a MacBook and from:

• Catalog on fast external 1tb SSD drive
• Originals on USB 3.0 4tb drive
• Both drives periodically backed up to my Synology
• Synology backed up to idrive

Going to:

• Catalog on MacBook internal SSD
• Originals on Synology network share
• Synology backs up to idrive
• MacBook internal SSD backs up to Synology
• Synology periodically backed up to 4tb USB 3.0 drive

My question is with regards to culling/deleting photos and purging some old stuff I never reviewed before. Currently I've always had the drive the originals are on connected when working in LR, but with the network drive it is possible I am somewhere else while wanting to review and delete, including originals, permanently.

Will Lightroom allow me to delete originals if the drive they are on is not connected? If it will, does it then go through and delete those original files once I'm connected to that drive again and Lightroom is open? Will it screw something up where Lightroom thinks the file is gone but the original never actually gets deleted? Or will it straight up not allow me to delete the originals?

My thought is I might want to do some of this when not at home and connected to my home network, but not sure if it will work. The goal is both to clean up the catalog AND clear hard drive space, so I do want those originals gone.

Thoughts? Experience? Good idea/bad idea?

[dj_paige]

Will Lightroom allow me to delete originals if the drive they are on is not connected? If it will, does it then go through and delete those original files once I'm connected to that drive again and Lightroom is open?

I don't know as I never tried, but I doubt the deletion from the disk can happen if the disk is not connected. But you don't need to ask about this here in the forum. Do a small test ... take some photos of something that you don't care about, like that bottle of ketchup in your fridge, and perform this operation and see if the photos get screwed up. Then see what happens when you try this.