I am running out of space on my internal hard drive, so I need to move some or all of my photographs to an external hard drive. I know I am not the only one facing this issue, as I get questions from readers at least once a week on how to do this.
In this short video, I will show you how to move your photographs to another hard drive, working completely in Lightroom with the Folders panel. NOTE: Once you start a move of files in Lightroom, don’t cancel it while it’s in process! (If you make a mistake, let the move complete, then move the files again.)
Once you hit the Play button, click on the sprocket wheel in the bottom right of the video screen to increase the quality to 720p. It’s still not up to my the quality of my videos for sale, but it is better, at least.
Thanks for the tutorial. I have a question. LR3 no longer shows any folders from my external hard drive in the Folders panel but it knows the folders are there. I can find the photos doing a metadata search but can no longer move things in and out of folders without using Windows Explorer which breaks all of the LR links. Is there anything I can do?
Hi Ashleigh, a few questions, to rule things out:
(1) Is the Folders panel blank? (If so, is it just collapsed – click on the triangle to the left of Folders). If it is truly blank, try restarting Lightroom.
(2) Do the photos have question marks on them?
(3) If you right-click on a photo that you believe is on the external drive and choose Go to Folder in Library, does it highlight a folder in the Folders panel? Is it in fact on the external drive?
Hi Laura, sorry it took so long to get back to you.
The Folders panel shows my internal hard drive. It will show my external hard drive if I import new photos into LR but the existing folders do not show up. If I try to add them again, I get a message saying the folder is already there.
There are no question marks on my photos in the grid view.
If I click on a photo on the external hard drive and choose Go to Folder in Library, the grid view changes to that folder but nothing changes in the Folders panel.
It’s very strange.
Hi Ashleigh, it sounds like you have a copy of these photos on the internal drive, and that these copies are the ones in LR. Just so I’m clear, when you right click on a photo and choose Go to Folder in Library, does a folder on your internal drive become highlighted?
No, the Folders panel doesn’t show anything when I choose a photo that’s on the external drive. However, if I choose a photo that’s on my internal drive and I choose “Go To Library” then the folder is highlighted in the Folders panel.
Can you confirm this will also move the sidecar XMP files as well? I have LR set to create a separate XMP file and want to make sure those will stay together.
Yes, it will, Erik.
[…] while in LR and thought I would post it here as her methods are always simple and to the point. Running Out of Space? How to Move Photos to Another Hard Drive | Laura Shoe's Lightroom and Photosho… http://www.robertmulliganphotography.com Reply With […]
I have successfully moved my photos to an external hard drive from within LR because my computer was getting too full. Now when I want to further edit those photos that are on my external hard drive I understand that need to import them using Add so I don’t actually move them back. I understand I am just importing the meta data and not the original picture itself. When I unplug my external hard drive it grays out and the resulting question marks are there indicating that it will again recognize them when my external hard drive is plugged in again. I’m trying to get free up more space on my internal hard drive. When I Added them (without moving them) it took a long time–how much space does the meta take up? I also have a second external hard drive as a duplicate back up to my first backs up. Do I have to Add them also? I seem to be defeating my purpose of freeing up space.
Hi Valerie, if you have moved your photos to an external drive from within LR, it isn’t clear to me why you would need to reimport them — they should already be in LR.
Regarding your backup drive, don’t add those to LR — simply use a backup program (not Lightroom) to backup your internal drive and main external drive to it.
So let’s assume I correctly moved my folders to an external hard drive. Now what should I have to do to open them up again in LR? My external drive does not show automatically show up in LR Folders panel. If I go to Finder, I see them there on my external. If I click on a folder and then an individual pic it automatically opens it up in PS6 (default). So to override that I click Open With instead and select LR which automatically opens the import window. I don’t want to import them, I just want to edit them in Develop. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks Laura, you helped me answer my question and you did it in a very elegant way. Thanks for the nice examples. I’m actually wanting to convert my internal drive to the new SSD drives and cannot afford the same size as I have today. So I know I need to be able to offline some of these photos onto an external drive. Can you also show what happens when you start Lightroom and the external drive is NOT connected to the laptop? I think your viewers would like to see that as well.
Hi John, I agree that that would be a good addition to the article or video. In the meantime, if that drive is not connected, your folders will have question marks on them and your photos will have exclamation marks (Lightroom 5) or question marks (pre-Lightroom 5). If you regularly need to work with the photos offline and have Lightroom 5, consider building smart previews.
Good video. Process was pretty intuitive. I’m new to Lightroom and this may be an odd question. My initial setup I imported all my pictures that I store on an external protable hard drive. How do I use LR on both my laptop and desktop using just this portable harddrive, or can I? Better yet, copy (backup) the hard drive to the desktop drives and work off the files there but have them snyc with the files on the portable hard drive…. is that possible?
Hi Les,
I apologize for overlooking your post. (Unfortunately it got lost amid the spam.) You have most likely figured this out, but if you put both your photos and your catalog on your external drive, then you can use it on either computer. Here’s an article on this topic: https://laurashoe.com/2009/04/03/lightroom-working-on-two-or-more-computers/ (At this point it is not possible to otherwise have work sync between computers — unless you put your catalog in Dropbox along with smart previews — but if you do this, you have to be extremely careful not to have both computers accessing your catalog at the same time, or it will become corrupt.)
Hi Laura
Thanks for the great tips. I have moved my ‘Photo Library’ on to an external hard drive, following your instructions- all done from within LR. ~5000 images were transferred into ‘Photos Go Here’ on a 2TB ext HD, without any problems!!, There were 4 corrupted images, which were duplicates. It was what you call a seamless transition, something that rarely happens, so a big thank you from me.
My only question is about my LR catalogue, which I have left on my Mac’s HD. Would you recommend that it should now be moved onto the ext HD- what are the pros & cons; I suppose that it would be sensible for them to be together and backed up to at least two sources (RAID & NAS )
Kind regards
Martin
Hi Martin,
Most external hard drives read and write more slowly than internal ones, so it could be slower on an external drive (though not necessarily noticeably – it depends on how sensitive you are to small slow downs.) On the other hand, some people like to have all componenents of their photo library in one place – and it makes it much easier if you regularly work on two computers.
I discuss this in depth in the “Organizing and Backing Up Your Photo Library” video in my Lightroom Fundamentals & Beyond video series.
Thank you for your helpful video! It was very easy to understand! I haven’t actually followed the steps before I could ask you a couple questions. My computer is so slow, I got a WD my passport hard drive and did a time machine backup so everything is copied. I have since imported photos on 4 different occasions that I need to get onto the external hard drive. My question is, my external has tons of photos on it already, so when I follow those steps of importing photos into lightroom on the external – is that taking up space on the internal? Is it putting all those photos back on to the internal in lightroom? Or does that all just stay on the external within LR? In your video technically on the folders above were in the internal, and all the photos below int hat external folder were NOT in the internal? But were able to be accessed in lightroom and edited because your external was plugged in?
Sorry for all these questions, I am the farthest from computer savvy. I’m scared to do anything, but need to as my computer crashed last year and even drive savers couldn’t recover a thing. So now I bought 3 backup externals but don’t know how to set them up, as well as use backblaze.com
Thank you for an advice!!!!
You’re welcome, Emily! If your WD My Passport drive is to be used to back up your internal drive, then it is best that you not use it for anything else – that is, none of your master/original photos should be on it. To back up photos and other files from your internal to your external, use Time Machine, as you mentioned. Because you’d only have backup files on the WD Passport, you wouldn’t import any of these into Lightroom.
I may not be understanding correctly, but I think what you need is an external drive that you can move master photos from your full internal drive to (I’ll call this “Photos External”), and then another external drive that can be your backup of both your internal and your Photos External.
On your import question, when you import photos that are on an external drive and choose “Add” in the Import dialog, the photos themselves stay on the external and information about the photos is added to your Lightroom catalog (usually on the internal). This information added takes up very little space.
There’s unfortunately so much to explain that I can’t here. I discuss all of these organizational issues (internal vs. external drives, what needs to be backed up, what work you can do with the external unplugged, how to make a decision on where your Lightroom catalog should reside (and what it is), how to organize your photos and folders, etc., etc., in my Lightroom CC/6 and 5: The Fundamentals & Beyond video series. I would highly recommend this for you, as I believe it will get you on a very solid footing with all of this!
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond! Your answers were so helpful. I need to get another external, then! So I can work off one, and use another one as only a backup to photos. Is that what you’re saying?
So I followed your instructions and it worked beautifully. I moved 4 folders of photos from my internal to my external. AND I imported photos from my camera straight to my extra THROUGH LR. It worked without a hitch. The next day I went to click on the photos to work on them, and it said the file had been lost or corrupted. So I restarted my computer and it worked fine. (my external has been plugged in the entire time) Then it did it again. I haven’t restarted it yet. Any insight on why it is doing this if my external is plugged in, and it’s showing me the photos, just won’t let me edit them and gives me that corrupted message.
Thank you for any help!!!! You’re the best! I wish I could just pay you to come to my house and set me all up, this stuff is so hard for me. :-P
Hi Laura!
Thanks for the video – this is exactly what i needed. I’m running out of space on my internal HD and need to move LR Pics to my EHD. So thanks for the solution.
My question is – I want to back up my LR files (with the edits I have already made) – to a 2nd EHD now. Reason being, what happens if this 1st EHD crashes? so my 2nd EHD can have all the information and I can retrieve it from there. How do I go about doing that?