Lightroom storage - what is the best way to store photos?

[sarahbed]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering what is the best way to store your Lightroom catalogue with all your photos? I have +20k photos that I've been storing in a 1TB SSD and have now run out of space. I've tried multiple times to move everyhting to my Dropbox but it's too heavy for the space I have in my Macbook Pro. 

I can't open my Lightroom now because there is no more space in my SSD... I am looking for a solution that will allow me to work easily and that will be sustainable through time. 

Does anyone have any suggestions, ideas?

Thank you! 

🙂

[TheDigitalDog]

Get the biggest, fastest HD you can afford; put all your images and all associated Lightroom Classic data on that HD and nothing more. Then you can back up (clone) that drive to as many others as you need; you can take a cloned drive on location and plug it in, all your data is there. You can make changes on location and clone back to the other drives. 

Something like SuperDuper on Mac is a great and inexpensive utility to do this kind of back-and-forth backup (cloning). 

[dj_paige]

I was wondering what is the best way to store your Lightroom catalogue with all your photos?

There is no global "best". But in general, put the photos anywhere you want (that your operating system will allow) on a local or network disk (but not cloud storage) and in any arrangement you want. Lightroom Classic is flexible enough to handle any arrangement you want on any disk(s) you want.

Your catalog file (not the photos) should go on your fastest disk, or at least a very fast disk.

If you are running out of space on one disk, get a new disk that has more space for you to work with, and import new photos to that new disk.