Using an external hard drive

[alanl60373815]

I have been using Lightroom CC on a laptop but now find the drive nearly full and I want to transfer my files to a much bigger external drive. Is there any problem in doing this? What do I need to do to ensure that Lightroom will still work and not tell nme I have "lost" my files.

[dj_paige]

Please follow the instructions in this document (specifically the section entitled "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location")

Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

I would suggest leaving your catalog on the internal hard drive. If you have your images organized so that they are all within one master folder the process is very simple. All that is necessary is to COPY that master image folder to the new external hard drive. Then start Lightroom as you normally would. Go to the library module and right-click on that master folder and choose to update the folder location. In the dialog that appears, browse to the new external hard drive and choose that master folder. Click OK and you're done. After you have  verified that all of the images are being found on the new external hard drive you can delete the folder on the internal hard drive. If the images are not all organized within a single folder then you will have to repeat this process for each folder. But it's just a simple process for each of those folders. I would suggest that you also store your catalog backups on the external hard drive, or get an additional external hard drive for storing backup files.

[alanl60373815]

Thanks, that works fine.