best way to move stored photos from iMac HD to external SSD & keep Lightroom Classic catalog mappings

[theseahawk]

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Since starting to shoot Leica last year the volume of my digital photo archive, and my "media library" in Lightroom Classic, has grown to where it will push against the storage/processing limits of my iMac with its 2TB solid state drive (SSD). I've kept my digital photo archive in the pictures folder of Finder organized by year and thereunder by quarter since 2004, with analog-to-digital scans in folders by year going back to the 1950s. The total size of the pictures folder is about 1.45TB. I will continue to keep shooting with the Leicas, in addition to a new scanning setup for my analog archive this year. 

Of the photos stored I have about 5000 photos loaded into Lightroom Classic, with a lot edits, keywords, etc. in the catalog/s. 

I'm thinking of moving the whole digital photo archive to a 4TB SSD while keeping the LR catalog and its internal backups on the iMac. This will give the iMac plenty of headroom and also allow its Time Machine backups to remain at a reasonable volume. Since the organization of the digital photo archive is fairly static and simple, adding to it should be straightforward. I will backup its 4TB drive to a second 4TB SSD and periodically cycle off a copy to a physically separate location.

I've checked the Adobe forums, YouTube, blogs, etc. for how to migrate the LR media library to external storage but the guidance is mixed on the topic of how to do so and keep the existing LR catalog mapped to the photos in their new location. Some say that using the Folders window to the left side of LR's Library is the best way to do this but also warned that with large libraries and catalogs it's better to move the photo files in Finder and then map the LR catalog.

What in your experience is the most straightforward and safe way to do the above type of migration? I don't think my media library in LR is especially big, so would it be safe to point LR to the new photo location after adding it to the Folders pane? should I "break" the LR catalog link to the old location first, say by using Finder to add a new parent folder to their path so that LR thinks the photos are "lost," then map the folders one by one or from a parent folder, using LR's "find photo" method?

I'd like to be able to simply repoint the LR catalog to the new location at the parent folder level, either by the year folder or even at the Pictures level above that, but not sure if that will work.

For now I'm not technically up for setting up a NAS, but I may establish a Backblaze backup for everything once I'm set up with the new configuration.

Any thoughts or experiences in how you photographers with large digital photo archives do this would be greatly appreciated!

TIA,
Ken 

 

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[Smudgerer]

1 hour ago, theseahawk said:

Since starting to shoot Leica last year the volume of my digital photo archive, and my "media library" in Lightroom Classic, has grown to where it will push against the storage/processing limits of my iMac with its 2TB solid state drive (SSD). I've kept my digital photo archive in the pictures folder of Finder organized by year and thereunder by quarter since 2004, with analog-to-digital scans in folders by year going back to the 1950s. The total size of the pictures folder is about 1.45TB. I will continue to keep shooting with the Leicas, in addition to a new scanning setup for my analog archive this year. 

Of the photos stored I have about 5000 photos loaded into Lightroom Classic, with a lot edits, keywords, etc. in the catalog/s. 

I'm thinking of moving the whole digital photo archive to a 4TB SSD while keeping the LR catalog and its internal backups on the iMac. This will give the iMac plenty of headroom and also allow its Time Machine backups to remain at a reasonable volume. Since the organization of the digital photo archive is fairly static and simple, adding to it should be straightforward. I will backup its 4TB drive to a second 4TB SSD and periodically cycle off a copy to a physically separate location.

I've checked the Adobe forums, YouTube, blogs, etc. for how to migrate the LR media library to external storage but the guidance is mixed on the topic of how to do so and keep the existing LR catalog mapped to the photos in their new location. Some say that using the Folders window to the left side of LR's Library is the best way to do this but also warned that with large libraries and catalogs it's better to move the photo files in Finder and then map the LR catalog.

What in your experience is the most straightforward and safe way to do the above type of migration? I don't think my media library in LR is especially big, so would it be safe to point LR to the new photo location after adding it to the Folders pane? should I "break" the LR catalog link to the old location first, say by using Finder to add a new parent folder to their path so that LR thinks the photos are "lost," then map the folders one by one or from a parent folder, using LR's "find photo" method?

I'd like to be able to simply repoint the LR catalog to the new location at the parent folder level, either by the year folder or even at the Pictures level above that, but not sure if that will work.

For now I'm not technically up for setting up a NAS, but I may establish a Backblaze backup for everything once I'm set up with the new configuration.

Any thoughts or experiences in how you photographers with large digital photo archives do this would be greatly appreciated!

TIA,
Ken 

 

First of all Ken I am by no means an expert on this, but just to get the ball rolling this is what I have found in my usage of LR Classic......over the years.

I had all my files on one external drive up to a year ago, with a separate back-up of the files on that drive made at regular scheduled intervals using Carbon Copy Cloner to another smaller external drive.......but when that main external drive started to make some odd noises I quickly straight-copied all my LRC images over to a new and larger external drive without using CCC, and just in time as it happens before the original drive just gave up the ghost.........But this meant that all the links for my images in LRC' catalogue weren't valid/functional anymore, they were to the dead/binned hard drive.

What I did though was open up an image in LRC, which then reported that it could not find the file, then simply used Find and directed LRC to the "missing" file on the new drive and that worked, re-linked to the LRC catalogue. What surprised me was that LRC then "found" many other files by itself, without me having to link them individually, a truly pleasant surprise......A hour or so spent in the of linking other more obstinate images to the files in their new location and I had the complete catalogue safely re-linked and functioning.

Whether there's a quicker way to do this I don't know, but it's worked ok for me.

One thing I would say to you though is never to rely on having your image files, LRC connected or not, in one place, I'd always have my main catalogue of images on one, preferably two, ( one as a cloned "safety" back-up ), external drives and I'd never have the original images stored on the Mac's internal drive.

If you do not have it I would highly recommend Carbon Copy Cloner, it's use has saved my arse more than once.....

[jaapv]

As a side observation: It is wise to keep your Time Machine backups on an external disk, instead of on a partition of the main drive, in case the main drive crashes.

[LocalHero1953]

My experience is solely in Windows. I have dragged Lightroom folders to a new drive without problems. I have also moved folders using Windows Explorer; in this case LR doesn't know where they are, and shows it at all levels in the folder hierarchy. In a similar way to Smudgerer, but picking the top level folder, I point Lightroom at the new location. Lightroom then finds all the other folders and images in the child folders for itself.

So both ways work in Windows.

FWIW!

[dpitt]

One thing that you could try is make use of an alias (shortcut in windows).

1. Quit LR
2. Use a simple copy process to copy your complete picture archive to an external drive. Do not copy the complete pictures folder of your account, just the subfolder with all your original files.
3. Rename the old folder on your internal drive by appending BAK. We keep it just to be safe
4. Move this backup to your desktop
5. Go to the external copy in the Finder and right click/Make alias.
6. Move the alias to the original location of your internal drive.
7. Rename the alias to the exact name of the original folder. LR will see this as if its content is on your internal drive, but in reality it is not. So make sure that you have your external drive mounted whenever LR is running.
8. Open LR. It should now work as if nothing happened. Test out a few pictures to be sure. If everything works then you can delete the BAK folder on your desktop. But maybe it is a good idea to copy it again to a different external drive to keep as a redundant copy. Never rely on 1 copy, certainly not on external drives.

 

[Jeff S]

On 2/24/2024 at 2:56 PM, jaapv said:

As a side observation: It is wise to keep your Time Machine backups on an external disk, instead of on a partition of the main drive, in case the main drive crashes.

And to keep at least one disk offsite, in case your house ‘crashes’.

Jeff

[dpitt]

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3 hours ago, Jeff S said:

And to keep at least one disk offsite, in case your house ‘crashes’.

Jeff

I found out that the easiest way to set this up is to use 2 external disks for a time machine backup. Time Machine will keep a record of when it was last inserted and will give reminders if it takes too long.
I now have one that I use daily and an other one that I use weekly or at maybe 2 times a month.

At some point in time I can replace the second one (every year or so) and store it off site.

[theseahawk]

Thanks for the replies. I ended up combining the approach I had in mind, and suggestions from you all. Before I did anything I made sure I had good backups of the iMac's hard drive on two external ssds, and that my Lightroom catalogs were included. (I always do HD backups to external drives, one stored offsite - saved me from one catastrophe about 10 years ago)...

Since most of the items in my Lightroom catalog mapped to a series of folders (by year) in the Pictures folder and a handful of known folders in my Documents folder, I copied those complete and wrote them to a new Samsung T7 Shield ssd. I used finder to do this and they came over cleanly, but in retrospect I think I'd use Carbon Copy Cloner, since it has better error correction and monitoring, and a user interface that is simpler and less prone to user error.

Then I just used the Folder pane in LR Library module and right-clicked on each folder, selected "Update folder location," and navigated to the new folders in turn on the external ssd. Lightroom found all ~5700 files with their associated metadata, edits, etc. It worked really well, and I've since consolidated several of my smaller LR catalogs that were created on trips, into the main catalog. I have to make sure that the LR-specific backups get written to the external drive separately, in addition to being included in the iMac-wide backup.  

I can only get Time Machine to do backups from the HD to the external drives, not from one external drive to another. So I went ahead and tried Carbon Copy Cloner and that is backing up the external media ssd to a second drive. I will probably add Backblaze to add another layer of offsite protection.

Once I confirmed the migration succeeded and I had new backups, I deleted the old Pictures folders and freed up ~1.5TB from the HD. 

Thanks, again, everyone!

Edited February 28, 2024 by theseahawk

[marchyman]

16 hours ago, theseahawk said:

I can only get Time Machine to do backups from the HD to the external drives, not from one external drive to another.

That is doable.   At least I am doing it.   Did you check the Options to make sure the external drive isn't being excluded?  I believe they are excluded by default.   Open the Time Machine Options with the drive mounted.  If the external drive is excluded select it and hit the '-' button.