Consolidating Lightroom photo library

[shapiro tim]

Okay, here's a self-caused problem.

I use Lightroom - Classic.

I have 5,000 photos.

These photos are divided between two external hard drives and Mac Hard Drive.

What is the best way to consolidate these photos, moving them from the two hard drives

1) all to Mac Hard Drive

2) Use Creative Cloud

3) Dropbox

4) A fourth option

Now, I'm getting greedy. Once a single place is chosen, how do I actually make the "migration?"

Then, how do I back up these files?

There you go.

Tim

https://timshapiro.zenfolio.com/

{Moved from Lightroom Cloud to Lightroom Classic Forum by Moderator}

[cmgap]

Why do you want to move the photos from an external hard drive to your local drive? If you want all of your images stored in your creative cloud account you should use Lightroom rather than Lightroom Classic. Use Lightroom (cloud) version to accomplish your list. 5000 images is a relatively small catalog. Why not try Lightroom cloud?

[Todd Shaner]

This should be helpful concerning your options for moving files and folders.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/how-to/lightroom-move-folder-files.html

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

Okay, here's a self-caused problem.

I use Lightroom - Classic.

I have 5,000 photos.

These photos are divided between two external hard drives and Mac Hard Drive.

What is the best way to consolidate these photos, moving them from the two hard drives

1) all to Mac Hard Drive

2) Use Creative Cloud

3) Dropbox

4) A fourth option

Now, I'm getting greedy. Once a single place is chosen, how do I actually make the "migration?"

Then, how do I back up these files?

By @shapiro tim

1) The best solution: Consolidate on an external drive, where you likely have much more space than on the internal drive

2) Can't be done

3) Don't bother, Dropbox has its own set of complications

4) See #1

How? See "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location" in this document: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

Backups: you need to find third party software that will make regular and automated backups of all of your photos to a different disk than the originals are stored on. Backing up to the same disk is not really a backup, and if that disk crashes, you now have zero copies of your photos. Catalog must be backed up regularly as well, using the built-in Lightroom Classic catalog backup feature.