John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Maybe I missed it but I searched for a Lightroom group and couldn't find it here. I have been running Lightroom Classic on my iMac with the Cat File on the iMac hard drive, and the photo files on an external drive with a second external drive as a backup. I would now like to move the Cat File over to the external drive. I plan to spend the rest of the summer in the mountains and just want to take the external drive and not the iMac. I can then use a laptop with the external drive. What is the best way to move the .lrcat file to the external drive and will LR be able to find it? Thanks, John

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Follow on question - should I move the entire Lightroom folder that is in my Pictures folder? Will LR Open Catalog allow me to search to the external drive to select the Cat File?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Yes, you can copy the LRCAT to the external drive. When you open LR Classic, under the File menu are options to open specific catalog files. You'd just open the LRCAT now located on a connected HD. Assuming nothing about the absolute paths to the image files changes, LR will resolve the links to all existing images in the catalog and will be happy going forward. You might encounter some 'speed' issues as the connection is via the USB connection rather than the computer's optimized access to the internal harddrive. But, this issue can be minor, if at all, and is offset by the ability to work remotely. Tip: rename the LCRAT to indicate the remote location so you can tell simply from the file name which LRCAT you're using. That is, if both files are 'file a', that's a lot less obvious than 'file a' and 'file a remote'.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Try this: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/find-move-rename-catalog/#:~:text=To%20move%20the%20catalog%3A,lrdata%20file%20if%20it%20exists.