Getting Started: Where Should I Keep My Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog?
Author’s Note: You will find a more recent, and more detailed, version of this article within our extended Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Creation and Image Storage Fundamentals tutorial. I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the new and improved post instead!
Both your digital images and your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files can be moved from one drive to another drive. Think of these files as if they were separate “puzzle pieces” that you can store almost anywhere.* Moving your photos, or your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog, from one disk to another is not a hard process. The big question though is what arrangement of these puzzle pieces best suits your needs?
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom users should ask themselves “where should I store my images” and “where should I store my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog” because data storage is not a “one-size fits all” problem. There is no universal solution. Every professional photographer has different needs and different equipment. I get so many questions on where to store the Lightroom Catalog and where to store my images that I have made three video tutorials: each video explains the strengths and weaknesses of each arrangement.
Option 1: Internal Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage + Internal Image Storage
Option 2: Internal Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage + External Image Storage
Option 3: External Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage + External Image Storage
I have chosen Option 3: External Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage and External Image Storage With my current needs and hardware, it makes sense to store my Photoshop Lightroom Catalog, and all of my digital images, on an external hard drive. Keeping all of my photographic files, and my Lightroom index, on an external disk is the best use of my current hardware and the most appropriate match for my current needs. Keeping everything on the right external disk is the best choice for me right now but thanks to Adobe’s wonderful engineers I am not stuck with this decision for life.
These puzzle pieces–meaning your Lightroom Catalog and your digital image files–remain malleable. Your data storage decisions are never set in stone because Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a professional-grade workflow tool. The Adobe engineers deserve a lot of credit for keeping your file storage options open. Thus, you can move these pieces from disk to disk an unlimited number of times and you can reconfigure your storage system again and again as your needs change. The only rule is to back everything up before you go messing around!
Keeping my Photoshop Lightroom Catalog, and all of my images, on an external disk makes maintaining my large image library easier. I need to emphasize again that external storage may not be the best solution for you right now. This is a question that you need to ponder and again your decisions are not set in stone. If you decide that external storage suits your needs right now then these tutorials will help. Please, please remember though to back everything up before you undertake any part of this process.
To move your Lightroom Catalog, or your images, from one drive to another see:
- Getting Started: Where Should I Store My Images?
- How to Move Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog to an External Hard Drive
- How to Move Folders from Drive to Drive Without Upsetting Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
- Getting Started Right: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Catalog Creation
- Reader Question: How to Move Lightroom from One Computer to Another
Two more suggestion: I recommend renaming your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files before you move them around. I find that renaming my Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files makes it much easier for me to understand what I am doing before I move things around my computer. I also suggest creating an alias that leads directly to your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog if you decide to move these files over to an external disk Thanks to the direct alias trick, I can instantly tell when I have forgotten to plug in my RAID 0 storage drive.
Read our article on “Getting Started: What Does ‘Import’ Mean in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?” once you are have decided where to store your images and your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog.
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*Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files cannot be stored on a network device or a network attached drive. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not a network ready application. This limitation was intentionally designed into the software to protect your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files from simultaneous input request. There are awkward ways to work around this limitation though using server synchronization software like Dropbox to maintain up-to-date local copies on non-network drives.
Filed Under: (01) Getting Started • (04) Organizing Your Photography • (12) FAQ • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
About the Author: David Marx is a digital photography instructor whose engaging teaching style inspires photographers of all skill levels. David is an Adobe Certified Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom Expert. David has led Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Lightroom seminars and digital photography field workshops for The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, FirstLight Workshops, The American Society of Media Photographers, and the world-renowned Blackberry Farm Resort. To learn more about David's software seminars and field photography workshops, please visit 
Hey David,
An odd little situation. I presently store my photos on a partitioned second drive in my MacPro. The drive has three partitions: HD2, HD3 and Swap; the latter is space set aside for when I’m using Photoshop. LR3 is installed along with other apps on my main harddrive under Apps. The catalogs are on HD2 in a folder called LightroomCatalogs with a subfolder with the catalog name. Also on this drive is a folder called Photodownloads where I download all my photoshoots. The physical drive is 2TB. HD2 partition is 750GB. Swap is 500GB. HD3 is 750GB. I’m running out of room on my HD2 (32GB left). I want to copy HD2 over to my 2TB boot drive and repartition my three-partition drive to two: 250GB swap and 1.75TB HD2 using the same nomenclature that LR3 recognizes in the catalog. What problems will I create? Will I have to recatalog the drive when I copy everything back from bootdrive to newly repartitioned second drive. Or will LR see this as the previously-named HD2/Photodownloads and HD2/LightroomCatalogs?
Also, as I’m backing up the LR catalogs folder onto bootdrive I see the folder is humongous (53GB) with a file count of close to 250 items even though the catalogs show about 3GB themselves. Is this the catalogename Previews.lrdata?
Thanks,
Carl
Dear Carl Socolow,
If I were you I would first back everything up and then use a utility like Drive Genius 3 to resize your partitions. With the right utility you might be able to resize or merge HD2 and HD3 partitions without having to move everything off it and then moving everything back. If you have to move the files off and back then it will be easy to reconnect everything using the Find Missing Folder command. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/11/using-the-find-missing-folders-command-in-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/ if needed.
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David Marx
Hi, Great videos. I think I want to have everything (photos AND catalog) live off of my machine on externals, which will then duplicated on a separate drive. (thinking of a Raid system) but was wondering if I can have a mirror copy of my catalog on my laptop disc as well?? – This way I can work on the road. But, the source of the images the catalog points to would be different…I’d probably bring the files for the project with me on the laptops internal drive. How do I get the catalog to point to the new location? Do i need to create a separate catalog? If not, how point it to the different source, then change it back to the externals when I return? Thanks!
Dear Ken,
Changing the path that your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog knows for your source files is easy using the Update Folder Location Command. You will find this option when you right-click on a folder’s name in the Library Module Folders Panel. Likewise, the “Find Missing Folders Command can be used to re-connect your Catalog Reference Points with your image files after the source files have been moved from drive to drive.
That part of your question is easy. Working with multiple Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog is the tricky part. Unfortunately, Photoshop Lightroom is not a network ready application with an auto-synchronization feature. Each Catalog that you create is a separate entity. If you truly want two mirrored copies of the dame database then you need to use additional software to keep them in sync. Modern cloud synchronization tools like Dropbox can make this easier but there are limits and hurdles. See Gene McCullagh’s excellent “A Catalog in the Cloud” tutorial for more on working with Dropbox.
My advice- keep it simple. Keep your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog and all of your images on a single high-speed high-quality external hard drive. If you want to work with Lightroom then travel with the drive. If you need to travel lighter then leave the drive at home and hold off on using Lightroom until you are done travelling. If you need to see your images while you are on the road, or do light edits, then work with non-Catalog based tools like the Adobe Bridge. Save the index stuff until you are working in your one and only complete Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog.
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David Marx
Great, Thanks! I like the idea of working off externals. I was considering getting the Seagate
FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB SuperSpeed USB 3.0 External Portable Hard Drive. It has an array of connection options. I would like eSATA and USB3 so I have high sped connections on both Macbook Pro’s (w/eSATA connector)and my Thinkpad. (my Thinkpad has both eSATA and USB3..and I hope the NEW MBP’s i hope to buy when they come out later this year will have that as well) But this drive only spins at about 5000 rpm. Am I negating the speed of the connections by having a slow spinning drive? Any updated thoughts on good bus powered portable primary drives with these connections or on that drive mentioned above?? Thanks!
Dear Ken,
I think that slower rpm disks will degrade your performance when connected to an eSATA, Thunderbolt, or FireWire 800 port. My favorite high-speed high-quality external hard drives are the OWC Mercury Elite products. See OWC Mercury Elite Pro Performance 7200rpm RAID external hard drive and my personal favorite the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini.
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David Marx
Hi David
I am using your method external catalogue and external storage.
i have used your tip to rename my external with the catalogue as drive z.
MY problem
Both of my external hard drives are the same (My Book Western Digital 2tb) They are both coming up as Z drive. I can’t seem to get them to open as separate drives. I changed the new one for back up to drive W and the original catalogue storeage changed itself to drive W.
It seems that I can’t be working in one and save my back up to the other because when they are both plugged in only one is showing up under MY Computer on my PC?
Do you have some suggestions??
Thanks Nikki
Dear Nikki,
I suspect that both of your hard drives have the same exact name. Try giving them different names and then assigning them to drive letter Z and drive letter Y. Right now I think that you and the computer are having a hard time telling them apart.
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David Marx
Thanks David re the reply about the two external hard drives. I think it is a windows 7 problem. I have both drives a different name and tried to re name the drive of the second one to drive W . Well when I put the first one back it that had been changed to Z drive my computer automatically changed it to drive W as well. So it is still seeing the two as one drive and I can not see both at one time to back up. Is it the scrip or signature of the drive. Would I be safe at getting a different brand of drive for my back up one or do u think they would still clash. Nikki
Dear Nikki,
Ah, the endless mysteries of the Windows operating system. This link will take you to an article that explains alternative methods for controlling the Windows Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment system. Perhaps one of the alternative methods like the USBDLM utility will solve this problem for you.
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David Marx
Great site… Please help if you can. My catalogue is sitting on an external drive. But… I can only access previews and images when working on one of the computers and not another.
Do you have any thoughts.
Regards
David
Dear David Rogers,
How is the drive formatted? What operating systems are you using and are both computers capable of reading and writing from that particular drive format? What are the file permissions on the drives? Any one of these and more could be answer!
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David Marx
How about using dropbox as storage and auto backup of LR catalogues?
I always import all files into lightroom from my CF card, once its all on my PC, i then export catalogue + RAW files to an external for backup purposes.
Dear Tomothy Wlodarczyk,
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not designed for use in a network environment. You can hack your way around this to some extent using Dropbox but things like the program’s preference files, modules, and some types of plugins must be stored locally. For more on using Dropbox to store your Catalog see http://lightroomsecrets.com/2010/05/a-catalog-in-the-cloud/
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David Marx
David,
I’m new to LR3 and have been a religious follower of your blog. It’s been a great source for me. I’ve been going through this post/comments and haven’t found my exact problem. I’ve been running LR and my catalog off an external on my mac book. The other day, I decided to move it to my home office PC since that is always hooked up to my monitor. I already had LR installed on the PC, plugged in the external and the catalog was available and fired right up. I was amazed at how easy it was. I just updated to LR3.6 and now when I import I get the preview not available message for all images. They’re available to import, but not in preview. I purged the cache already and no luck. I tried opening LR from the external and from the PC hd. Any thoughts?
Dear Tim Fishcer,
This sounds like a file lock, or Windows permissions, issue. I should ask first though what file format are you using for the External drive? Assuming that the drive format is not the trouble then I would poke around in the Windows permissions for that drive, folder, file, etc.
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David Marx
Dave,
I’m wanting to follow your video and move my lightroom catalog to an external drive, but don’t I have to move my Pictures file there also so when I take the LR catalog to another computer I have the picture files also?
Tx,
Sue
Dear Sue Anderson,
If you want to move your work from computer to computer then you do indeed need to move both your images and your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog to the external drive. This is the technique that I demonstrate in the third video in this post! If you decide to go this route I urge you to use a high-quality high-speed external disk that connects to your computers fastest port. See Recommended External Hard Drives for drive suggestions and don’t forget to also backup the external disk.
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David Marx
David,
I made a huge mistake when I purchased Lightroom more than 8 months ago by not obtaining your tutorials particularly in regards to organizing your photos. Instead, I lanuched the program and proceeded to organize my photos into several catalogs. Of course my dilemma now is that I cannot link photos and collections between catalogs.
I would like to reorganize my entire photo collection into one catalog onto an external drive. Is there a way that I can merge my catalogs into a single catalog and folder without losing all of the metadata and previous organization?
Thank you,
Larry
Dear Larry Lyons,
You haven’t done anything wrong or harmful to your images. Some Adobe Photoshop Lightroom users like multiple catalogs. I dislike working with multiple Lightroom Catalogs but that’s just my opinion. Fortunately you can merge catalogs together or you can start over.
Merging Catalogs using the Import From Catalog Command and then moving your Catalog over to another drive is one option. Another way to solve this problem is to outsmart Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and then build a new Catalog. At first glance this is going to look like a lot of steps but it is not very hard and it maybe a better way to get all of your images and your existing Collections combined together into a new Catalog.
1. Open your existing Lightroom Catalog.
2. Turn on the “Automatically Write Changes to XMP” preference switch.
3. Go into your first Collection. Double-click the Collection’s name so that Lightroom will show you only these images on the grid.
4. Select them all. (Click here for help with selection methods.)
5. Add a new keyword to all of these files. Use your current Collection’s name for your new keyword. I sometimes add the letters “T-” before the keyword. “T-” for temporary. This part is not essential but I find it helpful.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for each and every Collection. The goal is to mark every file with the appropriate keywords–keywords that mark the image as part of this or that Collection.
7. Back everything up. See our articles on Backing Up a Mac with Carbon Copy Cloner or Backing Up a PC with Acronis True Image.
8. Create a new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog. This is a great time to think about where to keep your Lightroom Catalog. This is also a good time to give your new Lightroom Catalog a meaningful name and to create a shortcut or alias that leads right to it.
9. Import all of your existing images into the new Catalog. The Import with Add option is a great choice for this step if you are not needing to move or copy your images from place to place. If that is not your goal then use either the Import with Copy or the Import with Move option.
10. Now search through your images using each temporary keyword. Search for keywords contains “T-Your old Collection Name. Our tutorial on searching with metadata might help.
11. Turn each search results back into Collections.
12. Delete your old Lightroom Catalogs.
13. Done!
Hope this helps,
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David Marx