Huge mobile downloads.lrdata file, need help moving

[michaels24014532]

Hello,

I have a massive Mobile Downloads.lrdata (402gb) that I need to move to an external drive as it's killing my desktop. I have seen posts where it says you can do this but I don't see any step by step instructions. I know how, and have been victim, to how finicky LR CC can be when moving files...

can anyone assist with clear instructions and or photos?

it would be greatly appreciated!

thanks

Michael 

[JohanElzenga]

Mobile Downloads.lrdata is a virtual disk that contains the images you shot with your phone and other images that are downloaded from the cloud. In the folder panel it appears as one or more devices, named after the phone(s). In Preferences - Lightroom Sync you can change the download location to any normal folder, so do that and select a folder on an external drive. I believe Lightroom Classic will ask you if you also want to move the existing images to this new location. You can do so (but that will move them all into one single folder), but you don't have to. If you prefer to move them to a hierarchy, then manually move the existing images to other folders by using drag & drop in the folder panel. After you have done this you can remove the now empty folders of the virtual disk(s) from the catalog, which will also remove the disk itself. When that is done, you can delete Mobile Downloads.lrdata because it is no longer used.

[michaels24014532]

So, interestingly I copied and pasted this 402gb file onto my external drive (per adobe support) and the file size pastes at 88gb. Very odd