Known Participant

Question

Can I move my catalog to an external drive?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
April 10, 2020
2 replies
766 views

When I search this online, every single result comes back for Lightroom Classic so I can't seem to find the answer.

I want to know if it is safe to move the Lightroom CC (cloud based LR) off my internal Mac HD and onto an external SSD? Do I simply drag and drop the catalog file and that's it? I'll just need to possibly relink it in the LR CC app?

It looks like the catalog is taking up ~50 GB of data on my internal Mac drive. I'm not 100% I understand how LR CC works. On my iPad, the only storage it uses is for cached previews which you can delete at anytime to free up space on the iPad. I don't see that option on the Mac to delete the cache. What is in that 50 GB of catalog on the Mac if this application is all cloud based?

If it's just cached previews like on an iPad, is there a way to just delete these previews to free up space? Or am I better off just moving the LR CC catalog onto my external SSD which has like 10x the space of my internal Mac drive?

How to

This topic has been closed for replies.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

The Lightroom library is a package, which means that the changes you make are made inside (a package is a folder in disguise). The fact that the Finder does not show that you have accessed it doesn't mean anything. You access it each time you use Lightroom and you cannot move it to an external drive.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

S

sciulli999Author

Known Participant

so what do you advise?

I don't understand how you cannot move the catalog/library files to an external drive. My Library is already ~50 GB right now and the internal drive on my Mac Mini is 128 GB SSD.

I cannot import my most recent photos as there is not enough space. I also cannot do the latest MacOS update which needs ~22 GB.

What if, for example, my house burned down and I lost the Mac Mini in a fire? I'm assuming as all my photos are in the cloud, I could buy a new computer, install LR CC and then download all my old photos, correct? I'm thinking I may have to reformat my Mac and reinstall everything as I don't see any other solution.

The storage breakdown on the computer shows "Documents" @ 50.88 GB (which is mostly that LR Library file), System and Apps around ~18 GB, and then "Other" as 36.37 GB. I'm not sure what this other folder is as it doesn't not explain and I can't find anything else on my computer.

selondon

Community Expert

You cannot move the main Catalog (Library) to an external drive. You can only select to store a copy of All Originals there, which is bascially a mirror of what is in the Cloud.

The best way to reduce the amount of space the Catalog uses is to reduce to percentage of photo cache in the preferences and restart the application.

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sciulli999Author

Known Participant

so on my computer there is...

Lightroom Library.lrlibrary

"Kind" says "LightroomLibrary"

50.71 GB

and

Managed Catalog.mcat

"Kind" says Lightroom Catalog

1.11 GB

It says I haven't accessed the LightroomLibrary (the 50.71 GB file) since 11/19/18 (I believe this is the day I bought my Mac Mini).

Do I need both of these? I'm not sure what the LightroomLibrary is, why it's 50 GB and why it says I haven't accessed it since 2018. Does it have something to do with Lirghtroom Classic?

I did reduce the photo cache % and restarted, but I think it just reduced the Catalog size (1.11 GB) and did not affect the Library size.

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