Lightroom and Ext drive

Hyster

Hyster

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Name
Gary
Edit My Images
Yes
This is probably a stupid question but I'm getting good at asking them :D

Using lightroom, can I have my pics on an external drive and not on my c/ drive?

Wife is going nuts at me thinking about fitting another drive and going through the hassle of backing up her stuff to move it all over to another drive.

Can I set it up to run either off the ext drive with the pics there or even just have the pics on the new drive and point lightroom at them?

Just bought a 1tb drive and thought I'd better ask before I make an @r5e of it.

I use a desktop and a laptop so an ext drive would be great as a common place between the two.
 
Yes, just create a new catalog and locate it on the drive. Then import files onto the drive. You can safely move the drive between machines and open the catalog on either (y)
 
pxl8 said:
Yes, just create a new catalog and locate it on the drive. Then import files onto the drive. You can safely move the drive between machines and open the catalog on either (y)
Click to expand...

Thanks pxl8, are the pics actually in there then? or is it just a snapshot of them?

Just want to be sure of what I'm moving.
 
Hyster
I have my images on several external drives and run Lightroom no problem. The images stay on the external drives, but the catalogue is on my computers hard drive, The catalogue contains previews, made from the original image.

If you have multiple drives,as I do, LR shows the list of images segregated by drives, external or internal.

One point to bear in mind is that you can access the previews in the catalogue with the external drive disconnected, This can be useful if you are using a laptop, but don't forget to connect the drive if you want to work on the images. ( Note with the drive disconnected you'll get ? marks on the folders and images)
 
Hyster said:
Thanks pxl8, are the pics actually in there then? or is it just a snapshot of them?

Just want to be sure of what I'm moving.
Click to expand...

The catalog is the database LR uses to keep track of all the images. If you're going to be swapping between machines a lot I would advise putting it on the external drive otherwise you'll need to manually sync it between the two machines - if you don't changes on one machine won't be reflected on the other.

Then there's the actual raw files. By telling LR to import them into a folder on the ext drive you can keep the catalog and the files together in one place and easily use it on any machine with LR installed without any worry about sync, etc.

So to answer your question it's the actual files, not a snapshot of them.
 
Many thanks to both of you for taking the time to answer that for me.

Cheers.
 
Keeping your catalogue on the external drive is a very good idea, if you want to switch between 2 computers. However, depending on the size of you catalogue and the number of entries you have, you may find Lightroom is a bit slow if you are using a USB connection
 
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