How to get your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Hard Drive
I posted an article recently about my photo storage system. In my article, I talk about the tremendous advantages you get from storing all of your digital images, and your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files, on an external hard drive. Today’s tutorial video is on how I get those Lightroom Catalog files over to my external disk.
This process of moving an existing Catalog, or creating a brand new Catalog, on an external drive is one of the very first things that we do in my Lightroom workshops. I know that this process is not one of the most interesting part of digital photography, but I truly believe that the long-term benefits are worth the extra hassle.
The very first time that you launch Lightroom, it creates a folder for your catalog files inside of your “Pictures” or “My Pictures” folder.
Windows:
[User]/My Documents/My Pictures (except in Vista where they just call it Pictures)
Mac
[User]/Pictures
By default, the program names this folder “Lightroom” and automatically creates its own file for your image previews and a separate file for your catalog information. Think of this entire “Lightroom” folder as the card catalog, or as the central index, for your image library. This is great but I want this folder and all of its components over on my external hard drive. Hopefully, this tutorial video will show you just how easy it is to move your Lightroom Catalog folder from one drive to another. There is even a bonus trick in this video for folks who have never launched the program. (Hint: hold down the ALT key when launching the application for the very first time to change its default folder.)
Putting the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog onto an External Hard Drive from David Marx on Vimeo.
Update: The article, and video, on how to move your images from one drive to another is finally up. Its really the second part of this tutorial.
Filed Under: FAQ • Getting Started • Tips • Tutorials • Workflow
About the Author: David Marx has an extensive knowledge of digital photography and is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop and in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. David is a talented instructor and his entertaining teaching style works for students of all skill levels. He has been teaching digital photography and image enhancement with Adobe Photoshop since 2002. In addition, David’s sports and landscape images are often featured on the web and in outdoor sports publications.
In 2009, David Marx led digital photography programs for the 
No need to thank me Scott, you’re the one sharing a lot of information for a newbie like me.
Pascal
David,
Just re-installed LR and set up w/external drive for catalog and photos as you showed above using the alt key method. Reimported pics from cd and all is well. I need to know if the following is normal. I have noticed that there is a LR folder on my mac drive too, with a lrcat folder and a settings folder inside it. Should these be deleted? What brought me to the question is, if I launch LR without the external attached I get the LR catalog not found message. If I close and relaunch with the external attached I get a blank LR screen everytime with no folders showing, just like it was launched for the 1st time. Then I close and relaunch using the alt click method to get the select catalog box. Go out and choose the external catalog at which time I am asked if I want to relaunch with this catalog(the external one) I do and all is fine. Is this normal? Is having the LRcat folder on my mac causing this indecision with LR? Sorry for the long question.
David,
I have taken your advice and moved all my images to one portable external drive so now I can be “synchronous” with both my imac and macbook pro. But it occurred to me–if you are traveling and have your external portable drive along with your macbook pro, what happens if your external drive fails? You would have no access to your images to work with.
Thanks,
Dave
Dave,
That’s right. It’s vital that you never have an image on only one drive. To be truly protected, those images must be on at least two separate physical disks (in two separate physical locations).
Review this article on a two-drive storage system.
-Scott
Scott,
Just to followup my question and your response. I understand the need for backup in at least 2 different physical locations. But if you are away from home and your external drive fails, should you have all your images on your macbook pro also just in case? Or on yet another separate portable hard drive with you? This would eat up lots of laptop space and would be awkward having yet a second external portable drive to take. What to do?
Dave
All great questions, Dave. There’s no right answer…just whatever works best for you.
The problem with keeping images on the laptop’s hard drive as well is that many folks don’t have room on those internal drives for all of their images.
I typically have a drive at home with everything and a drive at a different safe location with everything. For my trips, I carry my favorite portable drives: LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 500 GB FireWire 800/FireWire 400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
They’re relatively lightweight, heavy-duty, bus-powered (no power cord needed), and fast. I have a number of these.
-Scott
Hi, one more newbie
Scott, I’m running Windows 7 ultimate, LR2.5. All of my images are on my external hd. LR see the images after I imported the drive.
Here were the fun starts, clicking on the + (folders) I can make a new folder but its grayed out and when I try to move files to it, by dragging them to the new or any folder in LR. I get a warning “encounter an unknown error” and the files will not move.
On the internal drive no problem. Any ideas.
Dear Dave,
Sorry to jump back into this after Scott, but I wanted to add a few other options into the mix. I think that Scott is completely right when he suggest that there is no single answer to your questions.
In my two external hard drive storage system I have a primary photo storage drive and a backup drive. I bring only my primary storage drive with me when I am traveling to an event where having instant access to all of my images makes sense.
I often take my primary drive with me when I am going to teach a class or lead a workshop. My backup drive always stays at home where it is safe and sound. Again, this is what I do when I need access to all of my images. If I need just a couple of images to show friends or demo a technique, I make a collection in Lightroom and then export these files to my Laptop’s desktop.
I completely agree with Scott about the advantages of “pocket style” external drives, meaning drives that do not require their own power supply, but the truth is that my photo library lives on a LaCie d2 Quadra 1TB External Hard Drive which fits perfectly inside a bombproof Pelican 1120 Case. Trust me, when that drive is in the pelican box it is safe!
Now let’s say that I’m out on the road with my laptop, and my primary storage drive, and I shoot a bunch of new images. At the end of the day, I use Lightroom to copy these new files onto my primary image storage disk. So now the big question is how should I protect my new files?
Solutions.
A: If it is a quick trip, and if I have plenty of spare memory cards, then I just set the ones that I have used aside and I do not reformat them until I get home. This way I still have two copies of every new file– one on my hard drive and one on the memory card. I won’t reformat these cards until I am home and I have made a complete backup of the primary drive. This is my usual routine these days since memory cards are so cheap.
B: Burn a copy of the new images to a DVD. I use this method to protect my new images when I am traveling for extended periods of time or when I am low on memory cards. This option is easy too since Lightroom can burn my files right to CD / DVD (except under Vista 64.)
C: A third option I have not used, but could under the right circumstances, would be to upload a copy of all my new files to a server via the internet. A MobileMe or FTP account and a strong internet connection would make this easier.
D: Like Scott suggests I could bring a second hard drive–preferably a pocket drive–and use it just as a backup.
I hope this helps. Again, there is no single answer to your question but thinking about what could go wrong and taking steps to prevent disaster is so important. Thanks for asking.
David Marx
Dear Larry-
How did you format the external drive and how is it connected to your computer? I suspect the trouble you are having is related to either the drive format or the connectivity.
–
David Marx
Hi David,
Used the format from when I used XP. The connect is usb. I unplug from xp and plug in new computer Win 7 usb. Had LR inport files.
LarryG
this is VERY helpful to know. wondering if you are keeping ALL of your photos on one external, are you backing up this external somewhere? if so where and HOW? thx!
Dear Danastar,
There are lots of articles in the “Getting Started Tutorials” section of our site that might interest you. This one in particular on my two external hard drive storage system is exactly what you are looking for.
Happy Holidays,
David
I have all of my Lightroom stuff (photos and catalogs) on my Macintosh drive. If I use an external hard drive for my Lightroom stuff (photos and catalogs), will this slow down my work in Lightroom?
Also the “Reply” shows a Website. I’m not sure what this is for?
My external hard drive can be used also as a start up disk.
My issue is this: When I start up my MacBook Pro 13″ with the internal drive, Lightroom 2.6 is able to open the library but it says that the files are offline or missing.
But when I start up with the external drive, of course this error doesn’t come up.
How can I avoid this problem? In other words, how can I work with my Lightroom library files no matter which start up drive I’m using?
It goes without saying that my Lightroom library is stored fully in my external hard drive, a LaCie Rugged 320GB FW 400/800 & USB 2.0
Dear Larry,
This is a good questions and the answer is maybe. It all depends on the rotational speed of your external hard drive and the type of connector that you use to tie it into the computer.
I don’t think that you will notice a significant performance difference if you move your catalog and images from an internal disk over to an external Firewire 800 or eSATA disk with a 7600rpm rotational speed. With slower drives, or connectors, there maybe a slightly longer pause when the program launches but after that there shouldn’t be too much difference.
The only way to know for sure how much things will slow down is to try it.
Happy Holidays,
David
Dear Frederico,
I don’t have an answer for you but I am wondering if it is possible that you have two Lightroom catalogs: one internal and one external. The other possibility that springs to mind is that the name of the drive shifts depending upon which one you use on start up. If the drive name (Macintosh Hard Drive, External Drive, Etc.) shifts around then it makes sense that Lightroom would believe that the files are missing.
If I may suggest, don’t do this. My gut feeling is that you are itching for trouble here. I would urge you not to startup your Mac from an external disk unless the internal hard drive fails. I fear that booting from an external unnecessarily can cause all sorts of permissions and internal path problems.
If you find a definitive answer though please share it with us.
–
David Marx
Hi David,
I was able to get my catalog over to my external, but I was wondering what I should do for me photo files. Is that why you created a “Photos Live Here” folder in the external as well? If so, how should I bring my other files over? Just drag and drop?
Thanks.
Dear Joseph,
You could move your files with drag and drop but if you do this outside of Lightroom then all your files will be missing! Save yourself from this needless frustration by watching this tutorial on how to move your images from drive to drive within Lightroom.
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/09/moving-folders-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
You might also want to read this article on my photo storage system so you can see the whole system.
http://www.computersforphotographers.com/2009/11/my-photo-storage-system-two-external.html
best wishes,
David
File numbering on import.
I renumber my images according to the following formula ;
{date (YY)>>}{Image # (00001)>>} {Custom Text}
Which gives me a number like 1000001NZ.jpg. Now the question is how I reset the {Image # (00001) to one at the start of the New Year?
Regards
Ivan
Dear Ivan,
You need to go into your Catalog Settings Menu > File Handling and change the “Import Sequence Numbers” setting.
Happy New Year,
David
hi,
thanks for the tutorial, i’d like to do the same with a network drive (NAS, or nfs share) but it tell me that lightroom can’t use a catalog located on network or removable drive (but it did work on a removable drive)…
is it really impossible? any idea (to make it works)?
Dear FreakDev,
I am not a network storage expert but everything I have read indicates that you cannot put your Lightroom catalog on a NAS disk. My advice would be to use the NAS as a backup system for your images and your catalog rather than trying to use it for your primary image storage. Click here for more on this topic from the lightroomforums.net. If you do find an elegant solution please come back and share it with us!
best of luck,
David
Worked perfect, I’m now operating off an External Drive and using Carbon Clone to back it up to a second external drive. I took the one extra step to back up the RAW photos to my laptop during the LightRoom import process (directing it to a laptop folder in the backup check box). I realize in time this would overflow my laptop HD (as per other post) but this is just temporary until I offload them on a later to another external drive. Memory is so cheap these days, its easy to back up to multiple drives.
As an object lesson I was in the Apple store this week. There was a girl crying hysterically with a Genius Bar guy standing there looking lost. She’d lost everything on her laptop to a complete disk failure, music, pictures, the whole works. No one had ever explained the word back-up to her or that lost data is for the most part unrecoverable.
I’ll shell out the bucks for a few drives.
[...] been releasing tutorials all week on important topics like how to store your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog on an external drive. Important stuff, but not terribly exciting. So today I put together a “behind-the [...]
“C: A third option I have not used, but could under the right circumstances, would be to upload a copy of all my new files to a server via the internet. A MobileMe or FTP account and a strong internet connection would make this easier.”
–Is there any way to have your images and catalog stored on a remote server that can be fetched via FTP? Ideally, I’d like to outsource the HD to a remote network via the internet; both my desktop and my laptop, which have copies of Lightroom, could fetch my images anywhere anytime so long as I had an internet connection. Anytime I wanted to add an image to my library I could upload it from either my laptop or my desktop onto the remote server, at which point either device could retrieve it at a later time. (Also, my images are fairly low-res… I use Lightroom as a database for art historical material; I’m a graduate student in the field).
Is this a pipe dream?
Greg
Greg,
Unfortunately your idea of your Lightroom catalog on a remote server remains a pipe dream. You can, however, store your images on a remote server accessed via FTP or other method. In an attempt to prevent high rates of database corruption, Adobe prevents you from accessing a remotely-stored Lightroom Catalog.
-Scott
Thanks, Scott!
You bet, Greg. Wish I had better news to offer you.
Thanks for reading!
-Scott
Dear David,
I’m still a bit confused. Perhaps it’s because my LR catalogue and photos are not aligned in the way they need to be. Here’s my situation: I currently process my images on a mac and all my photos are on an external hard drive. My catalogue lives in the pictures folder on my mac. In LR my photo files are under the library named ‘My Book’ which is my external hard drive. When I import photos from my camera, LR copies them onto my external hard drive and also creates a folder in my LR library.
My hard drive is slow so I bought a new one. I want to take all my images from ‘My Book’ and transfer them to my new HD so that my LR will read these photos just as it currently does with my old ‘My Book.’ What do I have to do?
Cheers
Allen
Great question, Allen. Just turns out you’re on the wrong article. This article, also by David, should help you out with exactly what you need: Moving Folders with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
-Scott
[...] tutorial on setting up your catalog using an external hard drive: How to get your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Hard Drive [...]
Hey i have done this but when i import images it sends them to my pictures.. help please
Dear Joel,
Changing where the catalog lives does not automatically change the import location for new files. Next time that you import new images slow down and look at the File Handling line at the top of your import dialog. Look close and you will see that the path (where the files will go) is still set to your internal drive. Change the path to the external drive and you will be all set. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/using-lightroom-to-copy-images-off-a-memory-card/ for more details.
–
David
My photos have about entirely eaten my 350GB internal drive. Thanks for this helpful video. I am right now copying my lrcat files to my external hard drive. Hopefully my computer will stop being so sluggish when I move the photos off of the internal drive. I see that I’ll need another external drive to backup my external drive, but for now hopefully everything is backed up on the drive I use as a Time Machine backup. I’m assuming is won’t be helpful as a photo backup since it mirrors my computer, and the photos will no longer be stored there. My brain is spinning, but hopefully I’ll sort this all out and have smooth sailing soon (and then I’ll be figuring out how to merge the LR 2 and 3 catalogs before you know it!).
Dear Dawn Camp,
Freeing up space on your internal drive might help your computer’s performance. After the big move you might want to defragment the internal drive too using a utility like Drive Genius 3.
You are right too that Time Machine will only backup your internal drive which is why I am such a big fan of Carbon Copy Cloner.
–
David
[...] What a lifesaver! Photos have about completely eaten my computer’s 350 GB internal hard drive. Following the instructions in this post and video, I have already freed up over 50 GB, and I’m just getting started. Following the instructions correctly will keep Lightroom from “losing” your photos and keep your Lightroom catalog file properly linked. By default, the program names this folder “Lightroom” and automatically creates its own file for your image previews and a separate file for your catalog information. Think of this entire “Lightroom” folder as the card catalog, or as the central index, for your image library. This is great but I want this folder and all of its components over on my external hard drive. Hopefully, this tutorial video will show you just how easy it is to move your Lightroom Catalog folder from one drive to another via thelightroomlab.com [...]
I’m moving my Lightroom library (image files and catalogs) to an external drive. Could someone offer thoughts about the type of external drive(s) that should be used for a Lightroom 2 Library on an external drive? Specifically, I just purchased two external cases that give me a choice of where I move my library:
1. To a single, 2TB (terabyte) external drive in a OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro case, or alternatively…
2. To a new, 8TB external drive in an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 RAID case (configured as RAID 5 with three 2TB drives and a hot spare, which provides 3.64TB of actual storage space). Of course, the Qx2 enclosure could be set up in other RAID configurations or even as a simple JBOD drive, but from what I’ve read, I think a RAID 5 makes the most sense. This is connected to an eSATA PCI card that has two eSATA ports, so I even could add a second QX2 enclosure down the road to expand the storage or just back up everything yet again. In addition to the hot spare, I also have a cold spare on the shelf, and may order a couple of additional, 2TB spares just to be safe.
My basic question for fellow photographers using RAID 5 is this: would you (or do you typically) store your live Lightroom libraries on the RAID 5 system, or do you keep the library on a single drive and only backup to the RAID 5 enclosure?
Dear George,
These are excellent questions. I recently updated our article on recommended external hard drives but I did not include any RAID 5 systems. I left these out of my article because they are expensive and more complex then JBOD or RAID 0 / 1 systems. Right now I am using an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200 RAID Hard Drive striped drive for my Lightroom Catalog and my images. This gives me blazing fast speed when I am working but I don’t trust it. If either drive fails in the striped pair then all of the files on this drive will be gone! So I back the thing up religiously to a LaCie 301352U 2TB Quadra 2-Disk RAID Hard Drive. Soon though my backup will go to or a Guardian Maximus.
Using a striped disk for speed + a mirrored disk for on-site backup seems like the best of both world’s to me without the expense or complexity of the RAID 5 setup. I would love to hear thoughts and comments though from others out there. It’s dorky but I enjoy this backup / file storage talk. I enjoy it a lot more than talking with photographers who have no backup after their disks crash.
–
David
Hello Dave, I attended SI and AI in 2009. Thanks for everything you taught me. I am having an issue with my hard drives and catalogs. One of my hard drives crashed on me so I bought two more, formatted them according to this sites suggestions and wanted to then transfer my catalog from my backup drive to the new ones. However, in the catalog of my backup I am getting all of the question marks next to the files and it says that my files are either offline or missing. I checked in my Photos go here file and the photos are there. This happened to me before but Eileen helped me resolve it but now I can’t remember how to fix it. What do I do? Thanks
Andy Swan
Dave-
An update from my previously posted question. So I was fiddling around trying to figure out how to solve my issue when I realized that despite not being connected, lightroom still had my main hard drive on file and that was the catalog I was looking at, and so all of the files that were missing or offline, obviously were. So I clicked on the backup drive catalog and there was no catalog. It was empty. But the photos were on the hard drive. So I imported from disk and added to catalog without moving. So now I have a catalog, I think. I’m going to watch some of your other tutorials on setting up catalogs and copying to new hard drives and hopefully I can figure it out. If not I may ask for some help. If you have any tips or suggestions that are not on your tutorials, I would love to hear them. I guess I retained something from your class. Ha!
Andy Swan
Dear Andy Swan,
Wow. Has it been a year already? Ah, another year… another Summer Intensive program! I am glad to hear that you made some headway on your catalog troubles. My advice would have been to right click on your top level photo storage folder in the Lightroom Folder’s Panel and select the “Locate Missing Folder” option. Connect this with the folder on the new drive and you might have been all set. By now though I bet you built a whole new catalog…. If you still need the help please write us back.
Best wishes,
David
I just got Lightroom 3 having not used other versions except in beta or other trial versions and I’m moving from Elements 7. I have all my photos on one external drive with two backup external drives that I access from my Dell laptop. I just got an i7 Windows 7 desktop with a 1TB IHD and I bought a second 1TB IHD thinking I could put my photos there for faster access. But after reading your article I’m rethinking that and could use simply use my existing EHDs (which will also allow me to access them from my laptop but that’s another question). But my question is this. When I start up LR initially (using ALT) can I point it to one of my EHDs and will LR automatically create a catalog. Or should I start with a fresh EHD and bring my photos onto it from the old ones. And can I then reorganize my current folders within LR. Sorry about the long post but I really want to do this right.
Thanks
Frank,
If you already have a working Lightroom Catalog which is working for you, you’ll probably not want to create a new one. Just follow the steps in this article to move the existing catalog onto the hard drive on which you’d like it to reside.
If you need help moving images, this post may help with that: Moving Folders with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
If you’re starting from scratch with a new Catalog, create that blank Catalog on whichever drive you’d like, then read Using Add to Import Files into Your Lightroom Index Without Moving or Copying.
If you need to move some files around as you import, Importing and Moving Files From Your Internal Hard Drive to an External Disk with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 may be quite helpful.
-Scott
Great. So I don’t need to get a new EHD.
No I don’t have a catalog in Lightroom. I do have one in Elements and I’m not sure if Lightroom can import that. I assume it will take some time to catalog all of my 25,000+ images. And then once cataloged I can move them into different folders via Lightroom.
Thanks. Huge help!
Frank,
Lightroom can import your Photoshop Elements catalog. Check out this link for more information on Importing Photos from Photoshop Elements into Lightroom. (That feature is not available on the Mac.)
-Scott
Even better. Thanks
Hi David! Thanks in advance for your help. Several months ago I backed up all of my older photos onto an external hard drive to save space on my internal HD. It worked great, and I could access my old photos whenever I wanted by plugging my external HD into my computer. I had all my older photos in a separate folder that would show a question mark by all the folders until I plugged in my external hard drive, at which time the number of photos in each subfolder would show up. Everything was great. It’s now been a couple weeks since I last plugged in my external hard drive, but now even though the status of the folder on my external drive is “online,” none of the photos are accessible. It lists the subfolders by date, but says that there are zero photos in each of the subfolders.
What can I do to get them to show up again?
When I go straight into the external HD, the photos are all there, it’s just that lightroom isn’t recognizing them.
Thanks, Ryan
Thank you for posting this video..it was very very helpful. I wonder how I would get by without people like you , thanking so much time to help someone new like me. It is very much appreciated and I keep learning from your teaching aides. Please keep up the great work,
Rhys (Australia)
Rhys,
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you found it helpful.
-Scott