External Portable SSD, Catalog & Other Files

[sallynewcomb]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic version: 11.4

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

My MBP (MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)) has to go back to Apple to have the keyboard replaced so I've spent the last 2 days preparing it to go and plan to use my old MBP (Late 2013) whilst it's away. I currently have my LR Classic catalog in Pictures - Lightroom - Catalog but am considering moving it to a Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD . First question - is that an 'ok' and safe place for a catalog, is it any more risky than having the catalog on my mbp hard drive? Also, question 2 - when I look at the folders I'm a bit unsure what I should move and is there anything there I can delete? I have read a lot of the other posts on this fantastic resource but am a bit confused so sorry for being dim.

 

[clee01l]

If you use a system backup app like TimeMachine you would not be asking these questions. If your image files are inside thePictures folder in a folder alongside the Lightroom folder that contains your catalog "Lightroom Catalog-2-2-v10-v11.lrcat. You can move or copy these to an External disk and run Lightroom from there on any Mac computer with that EHD mounted. This answers the question that you are asking. Lightroom Classic can run on any locally mounted disk drive. The only performance problem is is the EHD is mounter on a slow USB2 or USB3 port. If your EHD is connected via a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port you won't see and performance lag.
You have lost od redundant and no longer used Lightroom file and folders. Your master catalog is "Lightroom Catalog-2-2-v10-v11.lrcat. and any helper files and folders with "Lightroom Catalog-2-2-v10-v11...." in the name need to be retained All of the older similarly named files and folders can be deleted as older catalogs that have now been replaced by your catalog "Lightroom Catalog-2-2-v10-v11.lrcat.

 

[stephenkeep]

I moved LRC from an old IMAC 2013 with my catalog and files stored on the desktop to a 2021 MBP last year and did move both my files and catalog to the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD you reference (i have the 4T) - so far no problems and Im now happy to be portable versus my old IMAC. I backup the SSD and the MBP to another external desk top hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner to give me some protection. Im not an expert in identifying all the various other parts of LRC you need to bring over but there are lots of comments on here about that good luck

 

[sallynewcomb]

If you use a system backup app like TimeMachine you would not be asking these questions. If your image files are inside thePictures folder in a folder alongside the Lightroom folder that contains your catalog "Lightroom Catalog-2-2-v10-v11.lrcat. You can move or copy these to an External disk and run Lightroom from there on any Mac computer with that EHD mounted.

Thanks so much for your helpful reply. I had a catastrophic time machine failure some years ago and would never trust it again, but I do back up to another portable hard drive. My image files are mostly on a different hard drive too. I'll give it a try because presumably I can always move it back to the mbp when it is returned.

 

[sallynewcomb]

I moved LRC from an old IMAC 2013 with my catalog and files stored on the desktop to a 2021 MBP last year and did move both my files and catalog to the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD you reference (i have the 4T) - so far no problems and Im now happy to be portable versus my old IMAC. I backup the SSD and the MBP to another external desk top hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner to give me some protection. Im not an expert in identifying all the various other parts of LRC you need to bring over but there are lots of comments on here about that good luck

Fantastic! Great to hear someone else has done exactly the same and it's worked well. I shall go ahead! Thanks so much for taking the time to reply

 

[clee01l]

Thanks so much for your helpful reply. I had a catastrophic time machine failure some years ago and would never trust it again, but I do back up to another portable hard drive. My image files are mostly on a different hard drive too. I'll give it a try because presumably I can always move it back to the mbp when it is returned.

Note that I said “like” Time Machine. Time Machine provides version control as well as simply Making a copy of one volume to another You can recover any file to the exact state it was in at the time that version was saves. An example being a word processing file gets changed may times during it life. With a system backup app you can recover the file as it existed 6 months ago and not just the last edit save. There are other backup apps that do system backup and version control too. I Also use Acronis.

I backup 3 several volumes to one Time Machine Back up volume and in 30 minutes, Time machine creates another backup to a different volume. I’m a “belt and suspenders” kind of guy and I us Acronis to backup my critical files to a third volume.


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