• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Procedure for moving the catalog to the external drive with photos

Status
Not open for further replies.

Denis Pagé

Lightroom Guru
Lightroom Guru
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
Messages
3,116
Location
Boucherville, Québec, CANADA
Lightroom Experience
Power User
Lightroom Version
Classic
Procedure for moving the Catalog to the external drive
and then making sure Lightroom is pointed at that location
for the Catalog

Goal: Working simply from different computers (or... simply working from...)

Potential problem: If you also want your presets to follow you may "Store Presets With Catalog" in Preferences. If you do so then READ THIS first!

Start conditions: Photos already on external or not yet on external.

Valid for: Two or more computers with similar Operating Systems (Mac OS or but not and Windows)

Reference thread: Loading LR on more than one computer

If your images are not on the external yet: [list type=decimal]
[li]Make sure that the external drive will appear having the same drive letter on both computers. You can assign one in "Desktop, Management, Disk Management" and giving a volume name is nice to have too and this a must for Mac users as they use it rather than a drive letter.
[/li]
[li]Import a dummy image from the external to make it visible to Lightroom if needed then delete that image from both Lightroom and the disk.[/li]
[li]Open Lightroom and move you existing folder structure to the external drive.[/li]
[li]Close Lightroom and move your CatalogName.lrcat file to the external drive.
[/li]
[li]In Windows Explorer, double click CatalogName.lrcat and this will open Lightroom with the Catalog at its new location. You can opt to always open that one when LR start...[/li]
[/list]If your images are already on the external: [list type=decimal]
[li]In Lightroom, make sure you have a single top level folder with all folders and subfolders containing images beneath. If this is not the case, you can right click on a top level folder and choose "Add Parent Folder". This wont create one in the file system but add the one already there.[/li]
[li]Close Lightroom.[/li]
[li]Make sure that the external drive will appear having the same drive letter on both computers. You can assign one in "Desktop, Management, Disk Management" and giving a volume name is nice to have too and this a must for Mac users as they use it rather than a drive letter.
[/li]
[li]If the drive letter had to change: Open Lightroom, go to the top level folder wich now show a question mark, right click and choose "Locate missing folder". Close Lightroom.[/li]
[li]Move your CatalogName.lrcat file to the external drive.
[/li]
[li]In Windows Explorer, double click CatalogName.lrcat and this will open Lightroom with the Catalog at its new location. You can opt to always open that one when LR start...[/li]
[/list]Wise thing to do: When Lightroom ask to backup your Catalog, opt to put it on another drive like the one on the local computer. Also think about a way to backup your originals...

Optional: If security is not a problem and you have access to a Mac OS system, format the external as a FAT32 file system. This will give you the option to work from both a Mac OS and a Windows OS with some caveats tough.

Conclusion: From now on, just plug the external drive on the computer you want to work with! :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top