Lightroom and External harddrive. Limited PC memory

[isabeau_o]

Hello everyone,

I have Lightroom, and quite often use it. However, my pc has a pretty limited memory, which gets filled up quickly especially when I shoot RAW images. As such, my normal procedure is to put images on the pc after shooting, edit in Lightroom, and then cut the images from the PC to an external hard drive (to free space on the PC). However, when doing this, there are 2 consequences:

• On one hand, all the development settings from the specific images disappear (e.g if I edit a RAW photo, save a copy of it with a watermark, and remove the file from the PC, I would have to use the RAW file on the hard drive to again completely re-edit the photo, instead of just continuing where I left off and this time save without a watermark).
• On the other hand, the images also dissappear from my library. Can I somehow in my library simultaneously put the folders from my PC and, once removed the images from my PC, the folders from the external harddrive? e.g if I have a folder called "summer 2018" that I first have on my PC, to sync that with the folder on the external hard drive.

I hope someone can help me out, computer things are not my strongest asset so am unsure whether I've managed to explain properly what the issue is. Thanks in advance!

[dj_paige]

Don't put the photos on the internal drive on the PC!! Straight out of the camera, import the photos to the external HD. In the Destination panel of the LR Import dialog box, select a folder on the external drive.

Then you don't have to remove the photo from LR (a bad idea, as you have seen). Actually, even if the photos are on the internal drive (a bad idea), you could move them to the external drive without having to delete/remove them from Lightroom and lose your edits.