No Room on C: drive

[muelgrub2003]

I have a 120GB HDD that I once thought would provide lots of room.  I was wrong, now it's almost full.  I've seen lots about moving LR catalogues to other drives, but I'm still confused.  My C: drive looks like this in my Users folder:

There are lots of files in each of those folders.  My LR preferences has that as my catalog location.  How can I move ALL of it  (except the Nikon)?

[JP Hess]

I would leave all of what you have shown there on the main hard drive. I would copy your entire image collection in the folder structure that it is in to an external hard drive. Then I would open Lightroom and update the folder location and point Lightroom to the images on the external hard drive. After you have done that you can then delete the images on the main hard drive.  I would also suggest that you have another hard drive for your catalog backups. If your main hard drive crashes you lose your catalog as well as your backups, and all of your work is lost.

[muelgrub2003]

I like that idea and I'm sure it will work.  Ok, but now, how do I do that?  Might there be a video or a more detailed step-by-step I can follow b/c there's no way I know how to do that.

[JP Hess]

Ideally, you have one master folder for your images with numerous subfolders.

1. With Lightroom closed, COPY that master folder to an external hard drive.

2. Then open Lightroom, it will still be pointing at the images where they have been located.

3. Go to the library module and right-click on that master folder in the left hand panel. Choose the option to update the folder location.

In the window that displays, point Lightroom to the master folder on the external hard drive.

4. Lightroom will now see the same images, but in their new location.

5. Now you can delete that master folder in its original location.

If you don't have your images organized within one master folder, then you will have to copy individual folders and update the location of each folder as described above.

[muelgrub2003]

Ok, so here is my set  up.  I have 3 HDs in my PC.  The "C" drive is on the now full 12 GB SSD along with the LR catalog (under "users") while the photos are on the 2 internal HDs, "D" and "E" lets say.  The same photos are on each drive.  They are also copied on to 2 external HDs as further backups (without any editing).

Those drives have 2 folders called: Photos I & Photos II each with about 30 or so sub-folders, each with different photos.

Can I still do that and does the same method work?

Sometimes, and I think this might have been a mistake, I have worked on photos on the "D" drive and then on other occasions I have worked on photos on the "E" drive.  I bet that messes things up, no?

Much thanks

[JP Hess]

The same method will work. But if you have backups of your images on external hard drives why do you have the same images on both drive D and  E? Seems to be a little overkill, in my opinion. As far as having images on different hard drives is concerned, that is no problem at all. I work with some images on my internal SSD drive, and have others on two other  internal hard drives. And most of them are in the same catalog. While it isn't really necessary, I have decided to keep all of my scanned family photos in a separate catalog. Lightroom doesn't really care where the images are located as along as  it can find them.

[muelgrub2003]

You're right, it probably is overkill.  My objective here is to free about 8+GB of space on my "c" drive by deleting that LR folder with the catalog and all it's sub-folders as seen in the first post.  I want to put that on one of the other 2 drives. If I follow your method, won't I have to put the catalog someplace else?

As you can see, I am clueless when it comes to understanding the catalog structure in LR, and I've watched lots of videos and webcasts on how to organize it.

[JP Hess]

You can organize your set up however you feel is best. Personally, I would leave the catalog and the previews and all of that stuff on your C Drive. I would put all of your images on other drives. But that is your choice.

[muelgrub2003]

Yes, I suppose I can keep things where they are, however, that does not help my problem.  I have ZERO space on my "C:" drive and stuff must be deleted.  8 mb here and 8mb there will make a difference.  So, if my LR catalog can move to a secondary drive, more space will be freed up. 

Why can't I simply copy and then move the entire folder structure as seen up in the 1st post to my "D" drive and then open LR and pick the new location as the place for the catalog?

[JP Hess]

You can do that. The catalog can function properly from an external hard drive. I assumed that maybe you had a lot of your images on your C drive. But if you don't, and you have that many applications installed or your drive is that small then the logical thing would be to move everything to an external hard drive. But I wouldn't have the backups on the same drive with your working catalog and images. If that drive crashes then you lose all your work and you don't have a backup to turn to.  And, hopefully, you are backing up your images  to yet another hard drive.

[muelgrub2003]

Thank you, and yes, I am backing original images up to an external drive.  I don't consider that the work I've done on any image is of such great quality or creativity that I need to preserve it (I'm not that good).  As long as I have the untouched originals then I feel that I can duplicate any work if I need to.  My workflow is to work on something and print it.  If that work was ruined due to a HD crash, I'll have to deal with that.

I'll try my idea to see if I free any space.

[JP Hess]

Just keep at it. You will figure it out. I assume you are aware that the images you are editing in Lightroom are completely unmodified as far as the image file is concerned. All of your changes and adjustments are stored in the catalog. Your master images are always in their original pristine state when they were downloaded from the camera.

[muelgrub2003]

Now that you mention it, I did know that.  

[Theresa J]

I wrote a simple tutorial for this. I'm assuming your Nikon transfer folder contains all your photos. If so follow this tutorial, only treat the Nikon transfer folder like my 'My Pictures' folder.

Can I move my Lightroom photos to a new hard drive. | Orchard View Color

[Theresa J]

First thing you can do is open that Backups folder. If you have been saving backups on a regular basis this might be full of old backups that can be deleted. Each back up folder is dated, so it's pretty easy to tell. Just keep the most recent 2-3.