# LR Drives vs Volumes? (ext. drive location)



## Stevenmiller3 (Apr 3, 2018)

Does anyone know why my external drives are listed as Volumes in Folders instead of Drives like the HD?   I want to move a ton of images to a new 12TB Lacie 2Bigdock so I can work on anything in my Catalog without plugging drives in constantly.. right now I have 8 little drives I would like to consolidate, but LR doesn't see them and Im wondering if their position on the hierarchy is part of the problem?  (thx in advance!) Steve


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 3, 2018)

Right-click on the ‘/‘ folder and choose 'Hide this parent'.  Then do the same with 'Volumes' and 'Users'. You may have to restart Lightroom after you've done this.


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## Stevenmiller3 (Apr 3, 2018)

wow! that worked!!, I had done it before, but hadn't tried then restarting LR. 
Thank you!  But LR isn't seeing the new 2BigDock ext. drive- what is the preferred way to wake it up? Unplugging it sounds wrong(?) I want to now move a bunch of images onto the new drive, but have read that you may need to do it outside LR.. I have always tried to do everything inside LR, -is it wise to try and simply drag the files in LR first? Thanks!


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 3, 2018)

If the new drive doesn't yet have any cataloged images on it, LR won't see it until it does. You can use the Folders Panel to add a top-level folder on the new drive, then of course it will show in the panel.

The standard advice is indeed  "move images within Lightroom", but in the situation where you're planning to move everything off a bunch of drives to one big new drive, this is where I personally would NOT do it within Lightroom (because of the risk of something going wrong mid-move). Instead I would COPY the data, a drive at a time, to the new drive, outside Lightroom, but maintaining the current folder structure for each drive. After each drive, or at the end when all data has been copied, start Lightroom (everything will be unchanged), then right-click on the top-level folder on drive 1 and select "Update Folder Location". A file browser window opens, use this to navigate to and select the copy of that top-level folder on the new drive. That will update the LR database, the new drive will appear and the old drive should disappear (unless there are more top-level folders on the old drive, in which case repeat until done). Do that for all the other drives, and you should end up with the desired goal.

Any subsequent folder manipulation you want to do, e.g. to consolidate folder structures under one master parent folder, can then be done inside LR, as that won't involve moving any data so should be quick and relatively risk free.


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## Stevenmiller3 (Apr 3, 2018)

Thank you for the sage advice! My catalog is stored on my desktop now, I think because I used LR Mobile briefly. Is this where I want it? I thought it was supposed to be kept in Pictures. Thanks again, Steve

Application folder: /Applications/Adobe Lightroom Classic CC
Library Path: /Users/stevenmiller/iCloud Drive (Archive)/Desktop/LRcat /Lightroom Catalog-2.lrcat
Settings Folder: /Users/stevenmiller/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 3, 2018)

Pictures is the default location for the catalog, i.e. that's where Lightroom puts it if you don't tell it anything different. The only rule about the location is that it can't be on a network volume, other than that you can put it where it bests suits you (but remembering name and location usually helps, you'd be surprised how many users don't know those basic things). I'd normally not put a catalog on the Desktop (I use the Desktop for program/system shortcuts, and temporary files (e.g. screenshots), but I can't think of a technical reason why it would be a bad idea,. Wherever you put it, make sure your system backups include that location.

There are potential performance considerations, however. Again speaking generally, having the catalog on your fastest drive would usually give you the best performance, but you'd maybe not notice much difference if it was on a fast internal hard drive. Moving it to an external hard drive, then performance starts to be dependent on drive spinning speed and the drive connection being used. In an ideal world you'd have the catalog on a dedicated internal non-system SSD, with sufficient space to allow for growth, particularly of the associated previews folders.


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## Stevenmiller3 (Apr 5, 2018)

Is there any reason I couldn’t have all my images in a single folder, using key words etc. to locate them?


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 5, 2018)

Stevenmiller3 said:


> Is there any reason I couldn’t have all my images in a single folder, using key words etc. to locate them?


In theory you could indeed. You don't need folders for organisation reasons. I keep the folder panel collapsed at all times. In practise it may slow down Lightroom if you have really large folders, so that's why it's better to use some kind of folder hierarchy.


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## Stevenmiller3 (Apr 5, 2018)

But if I dont have a particular folder selected, and Im working with Key Words or metadata, are you referring to the folder that would have 135K images in it?  because it is big, but I want it fast of course


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## LouieSherwin (Apr 6, 2018)

Stevenmiller3 said:


> Is there any reason I couldn’t have all my images in a single folder, using key words etc. to locate them?



This is a bad idea because of the ways the OS indexes the file system. With as little as  a 1000 files in one folder can start to be delayed response access ing files. This is why I always recommend one of the date based folder organizations provided by Import. These will evenly spread out the files in an easy to understand folder structure. 

To then best take advantage of the powerful metadata filtering in Lightroom you simply point your Lightroom source to the top level  folder to make global searches. All the additional folders will actually make it faster to access the images.

-louie


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 6, 2018)

My point is that because you can start any filtering from the 'All Photographs' collection, you never have to select any folder to start a search. You can keep your folder panel collapsed at all times, or even hide it completely. But -like Louie confirmed- having a large number of files in a single folder can slow down the system, so that is why it's still better to store your images in a folder hierarchy.


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