Topic: Moving Lightroom database to external drive - how? (Read 11496 times)

Autoxave · « **on:** September 16, 2007, 06:19:21 pm »

Not much space left on my internal drive - must move photoes over to an external drive. Moving photoes seems to be easy and straight forward. But what about the Lightroom Catalog.lrcat and Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata files? Especially the preview files can become quite large - is it recommended to move these files as well to the external drive? Is it just to copy and paste? Will there be any speed issues while editing the photoes? I´ll be using and 7200 rpm drive with firewire 800 connection.

francois · « **Reply #1 on:** September 17, 2007, 10:34:33 am »

Quote

Not much space left on my internal drive - must move photoes over to an external drive. Moving photoes seems to be easy and straight forward. But what about the Lightroom Catalog.lrcat and Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata files? Especially the preview files can become quite large - is it recommended to move these files as well to the external drive? Is it just to copy and paste? Will there be any speed issues while editing the photoes? I´ll be using and 7200 rpm drive with firewire 800 connection.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139837\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Use the export catalog command, once it's done (on your new drive), use import catalog and it should work.

Autoxave · « **Reply #2 on:** September 17, 2007, 03:08:32 pm »

Thanks for your answer, francois!

Is it recommended to move the previews and Catalogs file to an external drive?

tomrock · « **Reply #3 on:** September 17, 2007, 05:51:51 pm »

If the catalog and previews are on an external drive, you can plug that drive into any machine and have the whole catalog available. If you have a desktop and laptop that can be handy.

francois · « **Reply #4 on:** September 17, 2007, 09:40:54 pm »

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Thanks for your answer, francois!

Is it recommended to move the previews and Catalogs file to an external drive?
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See Tom's answer above. It's an easy way to work on different computers. Be sure to use a fast external HD.

Edit: a FW800 & 7200 rpm should give you excellent performance.

AdrianL · « **Reply #5 on:** September 18, 2007, 08:16:41 am »

Just curious- - what external HD (7200 rpm and 800 Firewire) are you using?

Autoxave · « **Reply #6 on:** September 18, 2007, 11:38:13 am »

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Just curious- - what external HD (7200 rpm and 800 Firewire) are you using?
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Western Digital MyBook Pro Edition 500 GB, have ordered it, not received it yet though.

Nigelfrommanchester · « **Reply #7 on:** September 25, 2007, 06:21:43 am »

Does anyone use an external drive to share a library between PCs and Macs?

I bought a Macbook recently but still need to use a PC in the office. Still trying to find seamless ways to use both.

Thanks for any suggestions.

nigel

DavidB · « **Reply #8 on:** September 25, 2007, 09:00:19 am »

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Does anyone use an external drive to share a library between PCs and Macs?

I bought a Macbook recently but still need to use a PC in the office. Still trying to find seamless ways to use both.
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We do this all the time. Format the external drive in FAT32 (which OS X's Disk Utility calls "MS-DOS Filesystem") and put the images and the lightroom files (.lrcat and previews database) on the drive.
Then whether you're on a PC or a Mac, navigate to the folder where your .lrcat is, and double-click it. LR will start up, and it will see all your images.

Our students use this to take their LR environments between school (where we have labs of iMacs) and home.

JayS · « **Reply #9 on:** October 08, 2007, 06:14:08 pm »

All,
Can this process be used to move several older images and stored edits to CD or more appropriately DVD for storage? Example would be to archive older images, libraries, collections, etc. off to DVD, then import them back from the DVD? The thumbnails could still be there, and you could then access the source files by putting the DVD in, and export to a media where you could make a change if necessary? Would that work?

Jay S.

DavidB · « **Reply #10 on:** October 08, 2007, 08:01:52 pm »

LR won't open catalogs that are on read-only media: you'd have to copy the catalog (not necessarily the images) back to disk before opening it.

JayS · « **Reply #11 on:** October 09, 2007, 01:56:07 pm »

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LR won't open catalogs that are on read-only media: you'd have to copy the catalog (not necessarily the images) back to disk before opening it.
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David,
So if I understand you correctly, I can't then "import" from something I've stored on a DVD or CD? Too bad... would be a nice ability to store catalogs there just for archival and be able to bring them back to life, so to speak, at a future date..

Jay S.

marcgoldring · « **Reply #12 on:** October 09, 2007, 02:59:21 pm »

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David,
So if I understand you correctly, I can't then "import" from something I've stored on a DVD or CD? Too bad... would be a nice ability to store catalogs there just for archival and be able to bring them back to life, so to speak, at a future date..

Jay S.
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What am I missing here? I just copied 1,000 NEF files from a DVD to an external hard drive and imported them into LR. But I had the option to keep 'em where they were - or so I thought?

Confused,

Marco

JayS · « **Reply #13 on:** October 09, 2007, 06:12:22 pm »

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What am I missing here? I just copied 1,000 NEF files from a DVD to an external hard drive and imported them into LR. But I had the option to keep 'em where they were - or so I thought?

Confused,

Marco
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=144872\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Marco,
I don't think having the RAW files on a CD (or DVD) is the issue, it is having an exported Library out on one. The library would contain all the data, including flags, any settings, etc. you have applied to an image. I was looking for a media that I could just plug back into lightroom and be able to read the data and files. Storing on a DVD would help keep the hard drive clean.

Jay S.

DavidB · « **Reply #14 on:** October 09, 2007, 07:51:59 pm »

Quote

So if I understand you correctly, I can't then "import" from something I've stored on a DVD or CD? Too bad... would be a nice ability to store catalogs there just for archival and be able to bring them back to life, so to speak, at a future date..
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=144862\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Actually, you can Import from Catalog from an .lrcat on read-only media. But the catalog that LR has open (e.g. is importing into) must be on local read-write media.
So you can export a bunch of images to a catalog and put the images and catalog on DVD. But to access the catalog again you have to either:

copy the .lrcat to local disk, or
import from the catalog into a "master" catalog that's located on local disk.

Certainly you can have a catalog refer to image files situated on (multiple) DVDs.

marcgoldring · « **Reply #15 on:** October 10, 2007, 04:07:22 pm »

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Marco,
I don't think having the RAW files on a CD (or DVD) is the issue, it is having an exported Library out on one. The library would contain all the data, including flags, any settings, etc. you have applied to an image. I was looking for a media that I could just plug back into lightroom and be able to read the data and files. Storing on a DVD would help keep the hard drive clean.

Jay S.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=144929\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

OK, thanks. I think I've got it now as long as I don't shake my head too hard.

M

Author Topic: Moving Lightroom database to external drive - how? (Read 11496 times)

marcgoldring

marcgoldring