moving lightroom catalogue

[arjen van de merwe]

<p>I am going on the road and I need more space on my internal hard drive. The lightroom catalogue takes up quite a bit of space. Can I move it to an external hard drive without creating problems? Can I, while I am on the road, use a temporary catalogue on my internal drive?</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Yes you can, but make sure you also move all the associated files (presets, etc). There's a "store preset's with catalog" setting in preferences you want to examine. I'd put <strong>everything</strong> (images, the catalog etc) on this drive. Dedicate the entire drive to just that data, then you can take it to <strong>any</strong> machine with a current copy of LR and have access to your data! Easy to clone that drive for backup too. </p>

[arjen van de merwe]

<p>Thank you.<br>

I set "store presets with catalog". How do I move the catalog so that LR will recognize it? The images are already on the external drive.</p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>How do I move the catalog so that LR will recognize it?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Copy the entire folder from area A to the drive. The important files are the lrCat file (that's the catalog) and to a lesser degree, the lrdata (the previews which could be rebuilt but time consuming). </p>

[phule]

<p>[[i am going on the road and I need more space on my internal hard drive.]]</p>

<p>Do you allow Lightroom to backup copies of the catalog? Have you tried removing some of the old backups? They can take up a ton of space if you don't clear them out every once in a while? </p>

[arjen van de merwe]

<p>Thank you all.<br>

@ Andrew: can I simply move the catalog with windows from my C drive to the external drive? I thought there was more to it than that. Do I need to have LR running while I move it?<br>

@Rob: there is a folder "backups" Can I simply remove that with no influence on the way LR runs? It is the biggest folder there.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>LR will simply continue making backup after backup endlessly. You can get rid of almost all of them except maybe the last few (for safety). No sense in holding on to many many old backups.</p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>Can I simply move the catalog with windows from my C drive to the external drive?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Sure! Move everything LR needs including your images and you can take that drive to any machine (Mac or Windows) with LR and you could plug it in and have access to all your data/images. <br>

The LR backup is a waste. It only backs up the catalog. Once you have a dedicated external drive you can 'clone' it to any other drive and have an exact copy of all that data. I have one drive in a fire proof safe, one I take on location and the RAID array on the big machine and if I work on one, the backup/cloning software can copy all <strong>new</strong> data to any other drive. <strong>EVERYTHING</strong> gets backed up and cloned from these series of external drives. Then turn off that silly LR backup preference. </p>