Known Participant

Question

Need help moving Lightroom Classic Catalog from Computer to External Drive!

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 29, 2023
2 replies
1061 views

I have successfully moved my photos to an external drive via the folders panel within Lightroom Classic. Yay! I'd like to move my catalog to the same external drive too, but I’m confused as to what file my catalog actually is. I see two folders on my computer's hard drive, where my catalog is supposed to be-
“Lightroom” & “Lightroom Library.lrlibrary”.

Do I move both folders to the external drive, or just certain files within the folders?

Also, once I move the catalog to the external drive, how do I point Lightroom to its new location?

THanks!

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

dj_paige

Legend

To utilize the Lightroom Classic catalog file after you move it to an external drive, you double-click on it.

NOTE: You care clearly talking about Lightroom Classic. Please do not refer to Lightroom Classic as Lightroom (which is a different software). Adobe has made the names of these two softwares similar, and this causes lots of confusion.

L

LosFelizGirlAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for the reminder, yes- LIghtroom Classic. I will update my post.

F. McLion

Community Expert

Open the catalog settings, and you will see the name of your catalog and where it is stored.

The easiest way is to copy the entire folder. However, inside the folder you may also find older version you may not wish to move (i.e. all with V12 below):

After moving and opening the catalog from its new location, make sure the folders in the folder panel have no '?' on it.

If they do, right-click the topmost folder and select to update its location.

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C.Cella

Inspiring

@LosFelizGirl

I do not recommend you to move Catalog to an external HDD.

Best keep the Catalog, Previews and Helper on a fast drive, the internal SSD, for best performance.

LrC is writing into XMP quite slowly so it doens't make much difference if the files are on an external HDD or SSD.

.

ManiacJoe

Inspiring

Do you suggest I just put a copy of my "backup" folder on my external drive then? Right now the "backup" folder lives in the same default location folder as the catalog. Thanks for your help, I am new.

Yes, the backups should be on a different drive from the originals. Otherwise, one drive failure takes the backups and originals all at once.

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