Can I store smart previews of Lr Desktop on an external drive different from the catalog drive?

[hao_atlarge]

There is an option for storing smart previews locally in Lightroom Desktop, but only on the same drive as where the catalog is stored. This is not convenient as I want to store the catalog locally on my computer while storing smart previews on an external drive. Is it technically possible to do so?

Some random thoughts...

I've been a heavy user of Lr softwares in the past few years. A conventional idea was that local software runs faster than cloud solutions; however, in recent times I find the Lr Desktop runs smoother than LrC, including loading previews, searching for photos, and even editing newly-imported photos etc. This is good news for Lr Cloud but unfortunate for LrC. So somehow while maintaining the LrC catalog, which is still essential for my photo archive with over 200k photos, Lr Desktop is what I use more and more for daily purposes.

[Jim Wilde]

AFAIK, the locally stored Smart Previews must always be stored within the Lightroom Library (which contains Lr Desktop's local "catalog"), and cannot be stored separately. The Lightroom Library is, by default, always stored on the local system drive and that location cannot be changed within Lightroom. Some users, however, have reported that it is possible to move the complete Library to an external drive using symbolic links, but I have no details on how to do that. 

[JohanElzenga]

Doing this using a single symbolic link should be possible and easy, because the Lightroom library is a package (meaning it is treated as a single file). Move the Library to the external drive, create a symbolic link of the Library in the new location (please note that a symbolic link is not the same as an alias!) and move that link to the original location of the Library (your Pictures folder in your Home folder). Rename it so it is called 'Lightroom Library.lrlibrary'.