How To Move Photos To An External Hard Drive In Lightroom

Gerard Murphy - December 22, 2011 | Digital Asset Management, Hard Drive, Lightroom, Uncategorized

At some point most serious photographers make so many pictures that they will run out of space on their local hard drive. They will then want to put their images on an external hard drive. One of the most common questions we get from photographers is “how do I move my images to an external hard drive within Lightroom?”

This process is actually pretty straight forward in Lightroom but not terribly intuitive.

For many Lightroom users, they know better than to just move their images to their external hard drive. Lightroom is a catalog software. Basically this means that Lightroom references the file location. If you move that file behind without Lightroom knowing, Lightroom will have no idea where the image is. The image will then appear “offline or missing.”

This is the same process in Lightroom 4 as described here in Lightroom 3.

If you have an image in Lightroom, that image should only be moved from within Lightroom.

Move Images to External Hard Drive Lightroom

To Move an image to an external drive, from within the Library module, press the “plus” button on the left navigation next to the Folders menu. Making sure your external hard drive is plugged in, select the drive. If you want to add a folder you can also do this.

Then within Lightroom, select the images and drag them into the new folder you have created. Lightroom will give you a warning that you are moving the files. Lightroom will then move the images from their present location to your external hard drive.

This will free up space on your local hard drive. Using Mosaic you can backup and connect to the contents of that external hard drive, even when you are not plugged in. This gives you anywhere access to you photos.

Most photographers will keep some of their photos on their local computer (depending on how many you take this could be the last year or the last week). Eventually when they are ready they will then move the files to an external hard drive.

Here is a quick video on how to move your files to an external hard drive using Lightroom.

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  • Locatethis

    And after that, do I move the catalogue over to the external drive too?

    • Anonymous

      You can move your Lightroom catalog to an external drive but you do not have to. If you move your catalog to an external drive you can plug that external hard drive into any machine with Lightroom installed (second laptop, desktop etc.) and you will have full access to your images. (Within the same operating system) 

      The downside to moving your catalog to the external hard drive is that you will not have access to that catalog when that external drive is not plugged in. If you leave the catalog on the primary computer, than you can still access all of your images in the Library Module when the external drive is not plugged in. With the catalog on the primary machine and the external drive not plugged in, you can still view the previews of the images and change any of the metadata (stars, flags, keywords, etc.). You cannot use the Develop module. 

      A lot of photographers will keep their master catalog on their primary computer and move older photos to an external hard drive as they need more space on their machine. It obviously depends on what you are looking to achieve with your workflow. Hope this helps! 

      • DS

        Thanks for this. I am running out of space and need to do something. I at first considered the external drive route and am now thinking about going with a second internal drive in my laptop. If install a second internal drive, I would use it for just storing my images and I would work in Lightroom from the second internal drive only.

        I’m wondering though if the external drive method would be more efficient? I’v heard people talk about LR slowing down once it gets so many images in the catalog (I can see some slowdown but not enough to make me mad yet). So, if I have a second internal drive to work from, I may start experiencing this. If I have an external drive where I’m simply archiving older photos I’m no longer currently processing, then in theory I would have less photos on my internal drive which would make LR run smoother.

        Thoughts?

      • http://www.facebook.com/catherineoharaphotography Catherine O’Hara

        How do I move the actual catalogue to the external HD once the files are moved? Is it just a simple mac move action? Thanks

        • MosaicArchive

          Hi Catherine, To move the actual catalog file (not the photos), first quit Lightroom and then copy and paste the Catalog Files onto the external drive.

          Once you know the catalog is safely on the drive, then delete the original catalog file on the internal drive. 

          Then reopen Lightroom. When this happens Lightroom will not know where you catalog is. Point it to the pasted catalog file by selecting “Choose a Different Catalog” when promoted. Then you are all set! 

          This blog post has a more detailed description. 

          http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/how-to-get-your-lightroom-catalog-onto-an-external-hard-drive/

          Hope that helps! 

  • Lisa

    I am having trouble with file name duplication.  what am I doing wrong?

    • MosaicArchive

      Hi Lisa. Happy to help. Can you give me a little more info and I can help figure out what is going on. It is not immediately obvious. Thanks! 

  • George F Felton

    Great Help. Does this work the same for LR 4.1? And how do I make the external drive my main working drive so I can free up my PC hard drive?

    • MosaicArchive

      This works exactly the same as LR3! If you move all of your images to your external hard drive it will save a lot of space. Keep your Lightroom catalog local and you will still have “offline” access. 

  • Pat

    But this only moves the jpg files? I’d like to back up my original dngs some how.

    • MosaicArchive

      The same process moves RAW, DNGs, Videos or JPGS.

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  • Tsaisaenz

    When I try to import photos and add folder it says no pictures were found and I can never see my external harddrive that I am trying to add

    • MosaicArchive

      You should add the Drive in the Library module before importing new photos. The drive needs to be plugged in when adding the drive and also when trying to import photos to that drive. Hope that helps! 

    • Tsaisaenz

      my hardrive does not have its own category but a subset folder under my mac hd folder? Is it ok to use it like this

      • MosaicArchive

        It is fine to use a subset folder!

    • Tsaisaenz

      can i move the location so it has its own location instead of inside my mac hd drive?

      • MosaicArchive

        Yes. You can add a new folder using the “plus” button and then drag and drop the photos to that location. 

  • Yuluminati

    i moved all pics from my All Photographs to the ext HD but photos still remain on LR

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/64B7EKX6TS6XJVVANKI5AALZ3Q Ian

    If I add

  • Ajhaun

    I followed your instructions, but to save time i selected an entire parent folder that contained many subfolders. The result is that Lightroom moved all the photos, but they were copied into one single folder, and the subfolders with dates, places, etc. were not moved. For this to work properly, does one have to select each subfolder and move it one at a time?

About:

Mosaic was founded by prosumer photographers Andy and Gerard in 2010 because they were frustrated with the existing options for managing their photos. Andy and Gerard are on a mission to make digital asset management easier for photographers, while enabling the anywhere access that we have come to expect. Mosaic is located in the beautiful state of New Hampshire where Andy and Gerard met over 20 years ago.

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