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PoppyFromNC
PoppyFromNC
Inspiring
October 18, 2023
Question

Storage for Lightroom Classic

  • October 18, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1273 views

I have a late 2014 27" iMac with a 3TB fusion drive, of which I am using just under 1TB for all my programs/apps.

I currently have about 50,000 photos stored on an external SSD.

I am interested in replacing my old machine with an M2 Macbook Pro, and adding disk space to a new Mac is very expensive and cannot be upgraded.

As my budget is limited, I am wondering if I buy a base M2 Macbook Pro with 16 GB of memory and upgrade to a 1TB SSD if I can run Lightroom Classic off of an external SSD and not worry about running out of space.

I don't do any heavy processing, as I am only an amateur photographer.

Thanks for any help!

 

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    1 reply

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    October 18, 2023

    Yes, you can put photos and catalog on an external drive. I believe the software itself has to be installed on the internal drive (but perhaps someone with more MAC knowledge can confirm)

    PoppyFromNC
    PoppyFromNCAuthor
    Inspiring
    October 18, 2023

    Thanks for the reply.

    I think you're right. I know the space needed for running LR is fairly small, but I want to make sure that 1TB is enough to run everything else plus those files without filling up. 

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 18, 2023

    Good info! Thank you. 


    Just as a rule of thumb, a fairly standard configuration of operating system and applications, including a range of Adobe applications, should not take up much more space than 100-120 GB.

     

    In addition, most apps' preview caches are located in your user account by default (but can be moved). This can amount to perhaps 20 - 40 GB depending.

     

    All your applications tend to dump stuff in the user account, and much of it is never removed again even if you have no more use for it. As a result, free space on the system drive tends to shrink over time, unless you actively clean up. Very little of what's in the user acount is system critical, in contrast to program installation files, which are stored in a different directory. Most of it is of the type that gets rebuilt if needed.

     

    As for external drives, be careful! Loose and worn cables and connectors are always a risk. File corruption can easily happen. A good practical rule is to never move the drive while data transfer is going on. Never save directly to an external drive - save on local internal drive, then copy over. These are just basic precautions - things may work fine for a long time without problems, until the day they don't.

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