Lightroom and external drive setup

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
Hi all,

At some point soon I will need to switch from Aperture to Lightroom, and also start storing pictures on an external drive since the internal drive of my iMac is starting to fill up. When I get/subscribe to Lightroom, can I set it up from the start to import and then store all pictures on an external drive? I have read through info on Lightroom and admit to being kind of confused.

As an alternative, could I simply set up a folder on the external drive, load pictures into this folder, and then work on them with Lightroom?

Thanks!

WG
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Yes... you can do all that... I do it that way... I even have a second external drive that I run a backup process on and copy the external Photo drive to the external Backup drive... I use Carbon Copy Cloner to do the backup... Apple's Time Machine won't backup an external drive...
 

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
Thanks for the quick reply, Fred!

Yeah, I'll need both a primary external HD AND a back up.

I didn't ask the question very clearly, what I meant was, is there a way to automatically import to the external drive, or do I have to specify where I want the files each time I import pics?
 

paul04

Senior Member
Thanks for the quick reply, Fred!

Yeah, I'll need both a primary external HD AND a back up.

I didn't ask the question very clearly, what I meant was, is there a way to automatically import to the external drive, or do I have to specify where I want the files each time I import pics?

When I import pictures, lightroom automatically saves the pictures into a pre selected folder for you.. I also make a back up while importing to my network drive.

lightroom back.jpg
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
LR remembers the last Import... so the first time you define the Import targets... it'll automatically defaults to those specs. on subsequent Imports...

I use a Date configuration pointing to my Photo drive... The Import reads the date on the photos as it imports and creates the appropriate folders/subdirectories... and copies the files to those folders/directories...

I import everything that way... and rarely delete anything...

As I work on files I want to keep, I export them (again to the same external Photo drive) that have been further named to be more descriptive than a date construct...

I backup/store my catalogues and other primary files on the system drive... where Adobe defaults to... and can quickly read them...
 

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
Thanks, guys, that wasn't clear to me reading Adobe's guide. I probably looked in the wrong places. Anyway, that eases my mind a bit as I contemplate the changeover to Lightroom. Time to price some big-a$$ hard drives. :)
 

nzswift

Senior Member
Don't know if this helps but when I bought my external drive I made a 1TB partition. Then went to the App Store and installed the latest OS (free). Removed heaps of system apps. Installed LR and copied my catalog to the partition. The purpose of al this was that the LR partition is a bootable drive that I can use on my iMac, Macbook and computers at work. Just plug it in, restart and select it. Export your Aperture files to the exrternal drive and use LR to import them.
 
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