Hard Drive Full
Hello!
I'm putting this in the "Beginners" topics because it's something I should have addressed when I started using Capture One. I've been using Capture One for a little over a year now and when I started, I just opened it up and figured I would figure out the backend things "later", ie file storage/ space later. And now I'm at later.
My current practice is upload to C1 from an SD card and editing and exporting the file size I need. I guess I'm storing all these photos I upload on my actual hard drive and now...it's full. I do backup with raw files from my SD card to an external hard drive too.
My questions are:
What are the best practices for storage management? Is it recommended to work off an external drive? Should I have multiple catalogs?
What do I do about this issue I'm in now? I got a cool 14000 photos on Capture One. I need to find a sustainable, long-term solution to mitigating this headache and working effectively. Thank you! I appreciate all help, tips, videos, etc. etc.
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I think this problem goes with the territory, particularly if like me you also need to generate tif files to edit in Silvrreffex Pro. One file can hit 250mb! Anyway, I work in Capture One on files held in a 4 x 1tb NAS drive. I do not notice any hit on performance. My processor is fairly new and the PC has 16gb RAM. That said, I can see the day when I will need to acquire a new NAS drive. The drive is configured RAID 5 meaning that if one disk should fail I can swap it out for a new one and the database will rebuild itself over the following 24 hrs. This has occurred once in the 9 yrs I've had the drive. Prices of NAS drives are quite reasonable I think. Cheers
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You don't say whether you are using a catalog (or catalogs) or sessions. Either way you are likely to need an external drive to your system. Buy a bigger one than you think you need!
Catalog
If you are using a catalog and the images are stored outside the catalog in folders on your computer, you can move folders of images to the external drive.
- Create a folder on the external drive
- Add that folder to the Capture One catalog
- In the Library tool of Capture One, drag folders of images from their current location into the folder you just added. You MUST do this using the Library tool - don't do it outside of Capture One using Finder or File Explorer, or Capture One won't know where the images have gone.
(If the images are stored inside the catalog (in the In Catalog section of the Library tool) you can still move them to the external drive - create a folder as before then drag them from the In Catalog section to the external drive. You may want to create and add some subfolders on the external drive and then add them to the catalog before you move the images.)
Sessions
If you are using sessions just move them to your external drive using Finder or File Explorer. Move the whole session folder with all its subfolders. The first time you open a session after you have moved it, you'll have to do it from the File menu in Capture One because the recent files list won't know where it is. (File>Open... then navigate to the session file.)
Whichever it is you are doing, try this on a small number of images first to be sure that you know what you are doing.
Ian
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ok so it's the Originals that a clogging everything up. I've done a little more reading about sessions vs catalog and will be using more sessions. Will there be any issues if I move "originals" to a 4tb SSD external drive? Will it work slower? or be just fine?
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Size of drive should not affect speed. Type of drive (eg SSD vs HDD) and speed of connection (eg Thunderbolt vs USB-A) affect performance. There are different speeds of SSD so make sure you read the details.
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If it's the "Originals" folder that's filling up your drive space, that implies to me that your images are stored "IN Catalog". That is, they are "managed" images not "referenced" images. The Originals folder is where Capture One stores the raw files that are "In Catalog" and it is part of the internal workings of the catalog. DO NOT MESS WITH IT by trying to move the Originals folder somewhere else. You should regard the catalog as having no user-serviceable parts inside it, and you don't want to break it.
If you want to reduce the size of the Originals folder, the thing to do is to move images out of the "In Catalog" section of the Library into a location somewhere else. So you could
- create a folder on your external 4TB drive
- add that folder to the catalog
- drag and drop images from the In Catalog section to the folder you have just added.
Actually, with a lot of images, you probably need to add several folders in an arrangement that suits how you want to organise your images. Add them all to the catalog, then drag and drop to your hero's content. As you do that, Capture One will look after the process of moving the images out of the Originals folder and onto your external drive. You MUST DO THE MOVING IN THE CAPTURE ONE LIBRARY TOOL not using Finder/File Explorer so that Capture One not only moves the files for you but also keeps track of where they are so that your edits are not lost.
It is perfectly possible to have some images "In Catalog", some on your internal drive, and some on your external drive. The catalog can cope with keeping track of images in several different places. In particular that means that you don't have to move all the images at once, and you can therefore take your time to organise things as you want. Also you can try out the process with just a few images first, to make sure you know what you are doing.
(The alternative to what I have suggested is to move the whole catalog to the external drive, but I don't recommend it. Catalogs run much better with the catalog database itself on the internal drive.)
Ian
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This solved the issue and gave me a better understanding of the program. Thank you SO much for your responses. I appreciate it!
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