Today’s Question: I am looking at an iMac or a Mac Mini, and the models I’m considering only come with 2 TB of hard drive space. I currently have 3 TB, which gets me by. Is it preferable to move all my photos and Lightroom Catalog to an external drive and work off that? If so, how would I do that? Or is there a better alternative?
Tim’s Quick Answer: I suggest keeping the Lightroom Classic catalog on the internal drive, unless you need to be able to move the catalog between computers. However, I do recommend storing your photos on an external hard drive.
More Detail: While it is possible to get more than 2TB of storage on most computers, that may involve opting for a more powerful (and expensive) configuration in order to be able to add more storage capacity. I don’t consider it worth paying a premium for internal storage when you can use external storage at a considerably lower cost.
For example, with an Apple Mac Mini the cost to go from 4TB to 8TB of storage is $1,200, while you can get a great external SSD for a little over $300. I use and recommend the SanDisk Extreme line of SSDs, and you can find the 4TB model here:
To migrate to external storage, you can create a new folder on the new hard drive within Lightroom Classic. Start by clicking the plus (+) button to the right of the Folders heading on the left panel in the Library module and choosing “Add Folder” from the popup menu. Then navigate to the new hard drive and click the New Folder button to create a new folder, using a general name such as “My Photos” for the folder. Then click the Choose button to finalize the change. You’ll then see that new empty folder in the Folders section of the left panel in Lightroom Classic, under a heading for the new hard drive.
Before proceeding, make sure you have a good backup (or two or three) of your photos, just to be sure you have an easy way to recover in case anything goes wrong during the process of moving your photos to the new drive.
At that point you can select folders from your internal drive and drag them to the new folder on the new drive. I recommend working in small batches of folders, so it is easier to recover from any issues that may arise during the process. You can select a small number of folders at a time by clicking the first folder, holding the Shift key, and clicking the last folder. You can repeat this process until all folders and photos have been moved to the new hard drive.
