How can I change where Lightroom stores draft edits?

Question

I installed Lightroom with default settings. Apparently one default is to store Draft Edits onto a C: folder. But my C: drive is a relatively small SSD drive and LR fills it up within a few months. Currently I'm using manual functions within LR to move my catalogs/draft edits every time. But I've been looking everywhere within Lightroom menus to change the default from C: to my external drive - No luck so far.

How can I stop LR from saving to the c: default and make it automatically save draft edits and admin photos directly to my selected external drive destination ?

Answer 1

Lightroom always stores the catalog and preview images in the same location. The simplest solution is to move your catalog file and the previews folder to your external drive. Moving the files is done by using your OS file copying mechanism (make sure you copy both the .lrcat file and Preview.lrdata folder) and then opening the catalog in the new location within Lightroom.

The downside of moving these to an external drive is the delay you can potentially experience when viewing the next/previous image, which could be particularly noticeable if your external drive is not an SSD. If this becomes a problem you could try reducing the size of the rendered previews (in Catalog Settings > File Handling) and setting 'Discard 1:1 previews' to 'after 1 day' or setting up multiple catalogs, one for new/editing required photos which is stored on your SSD, and another for all other images that is stored on your external drive.