# Moving Images and Catalog to External SSD



## dbvirago (Jan 7, 2019)

I have looked here and elsewhere and have seen a lot of advice on how to do this. I've been using LR since V1 and I'm pretty techy, so I understand the concepts, but what I'm planning is a little different so wanted to get advice and suggestions.
I have a Windows laptop with a traditional 1Tb internal drive (not SSD). At this point, I'm noti going to spend any more on this system and will probably upgrade next year. Meanwhile, I bought a Sandisk Portable 1Tb SSD. Portable because I plan on it being my working drive 90% of the time. This is for several reasons, including, it's getting harder to leave enough free space on my C drive, one more level of backup, and primarily, speed. I've hear differing opinions on how much speed difference you get from the catalog and/or images on an external, but I have to believe that being on an SSD will make a difference. 

I'm in the process of moving my 50K plus images (about 600Gb) to the SSD. The full path will be different, but the internal path will be the same. In other words, the root directory will be images, not user/....../images.  Once that is done, I will copy my catalog file to the SSD as well. I know I can rename the internal directory, and have LR find the missing drives, but I would actually like to maintain 2 catalogs, making it easier if want to work on the internal drive without the external connected. I understand the problems with moving files outside of LR and am prepared to sync directories on the internal as needed. I also plan on having my backup software keep these two drives in sync.

So my first question is, does all this make sense and if not, how should I proceed? If so, do I open the catalog on the external and have it find missing photos? Or should I just build a new catalog. I am copying all XMP files over along with the RAWs, JPGs, and DNGs. 

Anything else I should know or do? I really like LR, but speed issues have been a problem and this is the only short term solution I have come up with.

TIA


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 7, 2019)

Moving images to an external drive and 'reconnecting' them in Lightroom is easy (Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen). Moving the catalog to the external drive as well is also easy. Just start Lightroom once by double clicking on the catalog file and it knows which catalog to use. What doesn't make sense to me is the two catalogs approach. That won't work if you ask me. It makes more sense to leave the catalog on the internal drive and only move the images. If you generate smart previews, then you can work on the images even when the external drive is not connected.


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## dbvirago (Jan 7, 2019)

Thanks. As I think this through, I am considering just using the internal files as another backup and just using the one catalog as you suggest. But I also want to test having the catalog on the external if it is, in fact, faster. One of my main slowdowns is looking through images, either in grid mode or full screen.  Since I am using either smart previews, or prebuilt 1:1 previews, I am assuming that this may be due to reading and writing metadata. My keyword library is very large now. 

I don't have much speed issues with develop module, but I'm willing to make whatever changes I need to get the sort of speed most of its competitors offer and I will adjust my workflow and DAM process to fit that.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 7, 2019)

dbvirago said:


> I've hear differing opinions on how much speed difference you get from the catalog and/or images on an external, but I have to believe that being on an SSD will make a difference.


In principe an internal drive is faster than a similar external drive, because of the interface between the drive and the rest of the computer. In this case the external _might_ be faster because it's SSD.


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## dbvirago (Jan 7, 2019)

Yeah, I'm going to have to play around a bit. Worst case, I have one more backup, albeit an expensive one.


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