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Question

Working off an external drive?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
September 25, 2020
3 replies
867 views

Hello all!

Because of limited space and processing power on my Macbook Air, I would like to work off an external hard drive. In a perfect world, I would have all my LRC photos, edits, albums on an external drive only. After a shoot, I would import from the camera card into my computer, delete pics that are no good, edits ones that are good, then put those on the hard drive and delete them from my computer. Can someone help me out with a video or link that will help me make this happen? I have a 1TB cloud account and I have lightroom 3.4 as well as LRC on my computer. Thanks in advance!

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dj_paige

Legend

"I would import from the camera card into my computer"

If you want photos on the external drive, then don't import them to the internal drive and then later move them to the external drive. Make your life simple. Import them to the external drive right out of the camera. All you have to do is select the external drive in the Import dialog box, under Destination.

If you are traveling and don't have the external drive with you ... well, you didn't say that ... so I won't bother explaining it myself, but here's a tutorial https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/working-with-a-temporary-catalog.37583/

E

Eric Pec

Inspiring

Hi,

I believe the following method will not need any ideo :

1) instead of importing from LRC into you internal hard drive if you are at home.
2) perform all the tasks you mentioned. You're done.

If you are outside, import yo your local drive, perform your tasks of culling and editing. Back home, you have two options, but make sure in LRC that processing information is copied to your images permanently:
A) copy your local files to the external drive using the finder. Then, import them in LRC. Your all set. Destroy the files on the internal drive after a backup of your images.
B) import your images in LRC from the internal drive. Move them, in LRC to the external drive. You're all set.

Hope this will work for you. I convert my raw files to DNG to avoid loosing processing information and it efficiently replaces the xmp file.

Best Regards
Éric Pecquerie
Sent from Eric's IPad Pro

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

Your suggested workflow is making it more difficult than it need be.

Your first BIG decision is if you are going to use Lr-Classic OR Lr on your laptop. Do not try to use both on the laptop unless you understand the full implications.

COMPARE LR & LR-CLASSIC

If you favour Lr-Classic (and you should IMO) then these are my suggestions-

1) Lr-Classic is installed in the laptop and is the 'Master' photographic DAM and editor.

2) Your Catalog is saved (and 'works' ) on the External Drive

3) Your photo files are Imported from the camera DIRECTLY to the External drive (and permanently stored there). (the Internal drive is not used!)

4) You view and cull within and using the Catalog on the External drive.

Info to help with moving a Catalog here-

CATALOG-FIND AND MOVE

https://laurashoe.com/2019/03/23/learn-whether-and-how-to-move-your-lightroom-catalog/

If you encounter 'Missing' folders or photos: info here-

MISSING FILES & FOLDERS (Adobe link)

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .

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