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Mar 15, 2021 18:17:29   #
supercub
 
i have a windows 10 PC with a C drive (500 GB) A D drive (2Terrabyte) and two external 1 & @ TB drives. My C drive is almost full and I have pictures music and system files on it. I use light room cc. How do I get light room to access the D drive instead of the C drive for my files?

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Mar 15, 2021 18:33:11   #
John Hicks Loc: Sible Hedinham North Essex England
 
Transfer your picture files to you d drive using copy and paste then delete the picture files, and do the same with the music files.
When saving a pictures using save as denote a drive and it will save them in d drive.
The only thing that should be on c drive should be Microsoft files.
Copy light room across to another drive.

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Mar 15, 2021 19:26:45   #
WDCash Loc: Milford, Delaware, USA
 
supercub wrote:
i have a windows 10 PC with a C drive (500 GB) A D drive (2Terrabyte) and two external 1 & @ TB drives. My C drive is almost full and I have pictures music and system files on it. I use light room cc. How do I get light room to access the D drive instead of the C drive for my files?


Access D drive during import, as in move files from a SD card into "pictures" file?
I have LR on my C drive and my working files in F. F is a ss m drive on the mother board. I'm import from my SD card into my lr catalog and a picture file on F. After a month or 2, depending on usage, I send a months worth of files to the "picture" file on C drive to sorta pre-archive.

So if you have images on D that you want to access simply Import and tell LR to look in D + where the pictures are. If your importing from the SD card tell LR to store the images (copied, moved) on D + the appropriate file name.

I hope that helps and does not confuse matters more.

By the way. You can always contact Adobe Customer support by phone and their techies will help you out. They are very helpful! And its a service you are paying for.

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Mar 16, 2021 14:38:57   #
supercub
 
WDCash wrote:
Access D drive during import, as in move files from a SD card into "pictures" file?
I have LR on my C drive and my working files in F. F is a ss m drive on the mother board. I'm import from my SD card into my lr catalog and a picture file on F. After a month or 2, depending on usage, I send a months worth of files to the "picture" file on C drive to sorta pre-archive.

So if you have images on D that you want to access simply Import and tell LR to look in D + where the pictures are. If your importing from the SD card tell LR to store the images (copied, moved) on D + the appropriate file name.

I hope that helps and does not confuse matters more.

By the way. You can always contact Adobe Customer support by phone and their techies will help you out. They are very helpful! And its a service you are paying for.
Access D drive during import, as in move files fro... (show quote)


Thanks for the help. Did not realize Adobe would help.

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Mar 16, 2021 15:50:39   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
John Hicks wrote:
Transfer your picture files to you d drive using copy and paste then delete the picture files, and do the same with the music files.
When saving a pictures using save as denote a drive and it will save them in d drive.
The only thing that should be on c drive should be Microsoft files.
Copy light room across to another drive.


DO NOT do this as described in the first sentence.

If you just copy and paste your files to the D: drive Lightroom will lose track of them and you will have to start your catalog over. That will lose all your edits.

Yes, you want to move your photos from C: to D:. However, (1) you can do that within Lightroom and if you do it that way Lightroom will know where your files are; (2) you should back everything up before doing anything.

I agree that C: should contain only system files and program files. Not data.

I agree that you should copy all your Lightroom catalogs onto the disk that holds your photo files. It does not need to be on C: It can be anywhere.

Back up everything first. Move using Lightroom second. Move the LR catalog to D: third. Test Lightroom to see that everything got transferred successfully. (If you rename the root folder of your photo folder structure, that will hide the photos from your old Lightroom catalog. You can then use Library => Find All Missing Photos to see if there is anything you didn't get yet. If there is a problem you can find things in your old folder structure). Once you have everything backed up and working properly you can delete the root folder in your C: photo folder structure.

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Mar 17, 2021 14:32:01   #
amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA
 
A full C: drive will make your computer run slow. You should try to keep it to 90% or less.

Lightroom will "look" wherever you tell it to look. How you tell it where varies depending upon what you're trying to have Lightroom do... If you are using LR to "download" images, there's one process. If you are importing images that are already on your computer, that's another procedure. If images are already on represented in LR, but it's "lost" contact with them (the file or folder name is grayed out and followed by a question mark), there's a third procedure.


Here's the thing.... Your images are actually not "in" LR. They are in folders on your computer's various drives. Although you can use it, you actually don't need LR to download images or to move them around. You can do all that simply with your computer operating system. Then all LR does is build a catalog of your images with thumbnails and records of any changes you have chosen to make to the images with LR. It doesn't even actually do those changes until the file is exported. And even then LR doesn't change the original image files. If they're RAW files, it has to create a new file. If they're JPEGs, it will ask you before overwriting an original with the versions you've made changes to (not recommended, instead save a copy with the revisions).

I would recommend you consolidate your images onto the D: drive and backed up to an external drive. It's actually better to have TWO external drives with the same folders and files on them, keeping one safely off-site and swapping it out every week or two, so that the most you'd ever lose in a disaster would be a week or two worth. An alternative to this strategy is to have a "cloud" backup.

Photos take up a lot of space. If that D: drive is getting full, too, then you may need to add another (E:) drive or increase the size of that drive. Be sure to match whatever you do with external drive(s) and/or cloud storage to continue the strategy of backing up the images in two add'l places.

If you still have too full C: drive, maybe it's time to increase it's size. Because that's a "boot" drive, with the operating system on it, it's not as easy to copy the info to a new drive. It cannot be done in the computer itself because at some point there will be two drives fighting to operate the system.

I recently upgraded a too-full C: drive to one that was both bigger and a solid state drive (big boost in performance, if you're not already using an SSD).

I found an easy way to copy everything from one drive to another... an external drive duplicator. I bought a "Startech.com USB 3 SATA HDD/SSD Dock & 1:1 Duplicator, Part #SATDOCK2REU3". This can either be used as a drive dock via USB 3 connection to a computer or to copy one drive to another without being attached to a computer. It has two slots that drives simply drop into... one for standard HDD and the other that can either be used with an 3.5" HDD or a 2.5" SSD. I wanted it for the latter. I was upgrading from a 1TB to a 2TB drive, so it took several hours to make the copy. But it worked perfectly.

I recently had another drive starting to fail and am waiting on a replacement, and will again use the duplicator to copy from the old to new drive.

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Mar 17, 2021 14:42:31   #
pendennis
 
You could also replace your current "C" drive @500gb, with a SSD drive @1tb. I replaced both 500gb spinner drives on my laptop and desktop PC's. The replacement can be done with supplied software and cables. I use a Samsung SSD 850, and switching to the SSD also improved performance.

You're also living on borrowed time if you continue to use only local external drives to back up your files. You haven't mentioned off-site backup, but if you haven't already, invest in one of the cloud services such as iDrive.

All drives, especially spin-up drives, fail. Even SSD's fail, but you're less likely with something that doesn't spin at 5400-7200 RPM.

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Mar 18, 2021 06:15:20   #
Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)
 
John Hicks wrote:
Transfer your picture files to you d drive using copy and paste then delete the picture files, and do the same with the music files.
When saving a pictures using save as denote a drive and it will save them in d drive.
The only thing that should be on c drive should be Microsoft files.
Copy light room across to another drive.


Precisely. But before one moves image files, they turn on "write metadata changes to xmp" which will save the edits in a tiny xmp file that has the same filename as the raw file.

Some people are terrified that if they move files using the Windows Explorer or MacOS Finder Lightroom will no longer be able to find them. This could be the case if you neglect to open Lightroom after the move and open their catalog, which will flash a message that it cannot find the files, but will provide the opportunity to look for them. At this point one just needs to type in the new path to the files and they're done. I routinely move files around, especially when I get a new drive, and I find it far easier and faster to do it in Windows Explorer than in Lightroom.

I would not delete anything until triple checking to make sure that all the files that were copied made it to their new location, and that LR can see them.

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Mar 18, 2021 08:45:23   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
Gene51 wrote:
...Some people are terrified that if they move files using the Windows Explorer or MacOS Finder Lightroom will no longer be able to find them. This could be the case if you neglect to open Lightroom after the move and open their catalog, which will flash a message that it cannot find the files, but will provide the opportunity to look for them. At this point one just needs to type in the new path to the files and they're done. I routinely move files around, especially when I get a new drive, and I find it far easier and faster to do it in Windows Explorer than in Lightroom.

I would not delete anything until triple checking to make sure that all the files that were copied made it to their new location, and that LR can see them.
...Some people are terrified that if they move fil... (show quote)


I would not be terrified, since I know how to re-find the files in LR, but it can be a lot of work to do it that way. Better to do the move from within LR. Not really a quick operation, but it's something that you can walk away and let the computer take care of it. Finding them manually is WAY more work.

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Mar 18, 2021 13:48:32   #
Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
I would not be terrified, since I know how to re-find the files in LR, but it can be a lot of work to do it that way. Better to do the move from within LR. Not really a quick operation, but it's something that you can walk away and let the computer take care of it. Finding them manually is WAY more work.


What I do is make sure that everything is already organized on the source drive. Then I move a group of folders (usually one year at a time), to their new location. Open LR, Library Mode, current catalog. For each folder with a question mark, I right click on the folder name and select "update folder location". Takes about 5 secs. What are you doing differently that is so much more work?

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Mar 18, 2021 16:32:08   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
Gene51 wrote:
...What are you doing differently that is so much more work?


I just have a LOT of folders.

A few years ago I decided to move my images off the hard drive to an external disk. I just moved them and then went into LR to find them again. In theory, you should be able to find a folder that has a lot of subfolders below it and tell LR where it is now and LR will go ahead and find all the subfolders also. That did not work for me. It would go about 3 deep into the subfolders and stop there. So I was constantly having to "Find Missing Photos" to see what I had left to sync.

I should note that I haven't tried it that way in the last couple years.

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Mar 18, 2021 17:53:26   #
Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
I just have a LOT of folders.

A few years ago I decided to move my images off the hard drive to an external disk. I just moved them and then went into LR to find them again. In theory, you should be able to find a folder that has a lot of subfolders below it and tell LR where it is now and LR will go ahead and find all the subfolders also. That did not work for me. It would go about 3 deep into the subfolders and stop there. So I was constantly having to "Find Missing Photos" to see what I had left to sync.

I should note that I haven't tried it that way in the last couple years.
I just have a LOT of folders. br br A few years a... (show quote)


I recently moved my data from a desktop to a laptop. I had 2.5 TB of images in a gazillion folders, all organized under a master parent folder called pictures, I used the process I described above and it was flawless - and took no time at all. The other approach is you can open the lrcat file with a text editor and change the drive designation if your source drive and target drive have the same folder structure - in my case the pictures folder is in the root directory in both cases. Easy-peasy.

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Mar 18, 2021 18:43:03   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
Gene51 wrote:
... The other approach is you can open the lrcat file with a text editor and change the drive designation if your source drive and target drive have the same folder structure - in my case the pictures folder is in the root directory in both cases. Easy-peasy.


Nice to learn something new.

Just tried to stick an old catalog file into Notepad++ (using Win10). I see a lot of binary stuff in the file but there is some stuff in the clear. So a search and replace should do the job quickly. In order to do the search I found that a search for D: came up with some other stuff but searching for D:\ appeared to do the job. Will have to try it out later.

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Apr 8, 2021 11:58:52   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
So my photo drive (3 TBytes) was pretty full so it was time to replace it. B&H had a deal on a 12 TByte drive so I got 2. Copied my photo drive to the first one. My old photo drive letter was H: (on Win10) so I decided the new one should be P: (for Photos).

Made a copy of my catalog (LR Master Catalog-2020.lrcat) and called it LR Master Catalog-2020P.lrcat. A bit over 31K images in it. Opened the new catalog file in Notepad++. Searched for 'H:' and replaced all occurrences with 'P:'. Saved the file.

Went to open that catalog and LR reported that it was corrupted. (Maybe because I replaced 'H:' instead of 'H:\'). It offered to repair the catalog, so I accepted. Took a couple minutes but after it finished repairing I opened the catalog in LR again. Unplugged the H: drive and checked LR for missing photos (Library => Find All Missing Photos). None found.

I could have just unplugged H: and set the new drive letter to H: but this process was almost as easy. And now my OCD is satisfied that my photos are on drive P: (:P)

Now it's time to copy all the other files in my computer to the new drive and the second one as backup.

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Apr 8, 2021 12:26:54   #
Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)
 
John Hicks wrote:
Transfer your picture files to you d drive using copy and paste then delete the picture files, and do the same with the music files.
When saving a pictures using save as denote a drive and it will save them in d drive.
The only thing that should be on c drive should be Microsoft files.
Copy light room across to another drive.


[deleted]

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