Today’s Question: How do you add a new external hard drive for Lightroom Classic when your current drive is almost full?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can either transition to a new and larger hard drive or add an additional hard drive to supplement your existing storage. The key is to make sure you manage this process in the context of the Lightroom Classic catalog.
More Detail: If you want to migrate your photo storage to a larger hard drive, I recommend first copying the entire contents of your existing hard drive to the new drive. Then disconnect the original hard drive, and make sure the new hard drive has the same drive letter (Windows) or volume label (Macintosh) as the original drive. This will ensure that the photo storage has the same location and folder structure as the original drive, so that from the perspective of Lightroom Classic nothing will have changed. In other words, all the photos and folders will be where they are expected, they are just on a drive that has more free space now.
If you want to supplement your existing storage with an additional hard drive, you need to add a folder to that drive within Lightroom Classic to make it visible for access. To do so go to the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module and click the plus (+) button to the right of the Folders heading. Choose “Add Folder from the popup menu that appears and navigate to the new hard drive. Then create a new folder on that drive with a meaningful name such as “Photos”. Click the Choose button to complete the process.
At this point you will see the new folder you just created under a separate heading for the new hard drive. You can then drag folders from the original drive to the top-level folder on the new drive if you need to free up space on the original drive. You can also make a point of importing any new photos to the new drive from that point forward, since you will have more free space available on the new drive.
