[jennverr]

So I bought an external HD because my laptop is filling up and running low on space! How will this work in LR exactly? all my stuff is saved in subfolders under "my pictures". So if I drag all those folders to an external HD to get them off my laptop will I need to have the external HD plugged in to work on these photos in LR because "the location has changed" or whatever? Also, should I move these files to the HD and always have future imports directly saved on the external HD or should I move those files, and continute using the laptop HD once it's freed up and then periodically move things over to the external? FWIW I also use Live drive as a cloud back up, but not to work directly from...


I hope this makes sense!

[Anvh]

Move the maps inside lightroom instead of using the explorer.

[robgo2]

It is generally advisable not to keep photos on the local drive containing your photo editing programs. Keep them on a separate drive where the software will be able to access them. Yes, this means that you will have to have the external HD connected to your laptop in order to work on your images. In order to maintain speed, use an eSATA drive, if possible. Obviously, if you are traveling or do not have access to the external drive, you can put image files on the laptop's drive temporarily. If you do not want to go down this road, then move the bulk of your images to an external drive and create space on the local drive for new images.

BTW, you should be backing up your images to another drive on a regular basis. I find that the best way to do this is with a dedicated backup program. The one that I use is Data Backup, but there are other good ones.

Rob

[jatrax]

Attach the external drive, start Lightroom. It should show in the left hand panel. Drag your image folders from the existing location to the External drive. This will do the same thing as dragging them in explorer except it will also update the Lightroom mapping at the same time. You can do it the other way, but then you have to go into Lightroom and tell it where you put the images.

The external drive must be connected in order to work on your images. I would import future images to the external drive, keeping all images in the same file structure makes it makes it simpler to find, backup and move them in the future.

As noted above having the images on a separate drive from the program tends to speed things up. The Lightroom catalog will still most likely be on your internal drive so remember where it is in case you ever move to a new computer. You can have Lightroom backup the catalog to the external drive which would be a good thing.

[jennverr]

thanks everyone. very helpful!