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I'm running out of space on my desktop computer's hard drive, mostly due to my photos and Lightroom catalog. I would like to move the photos and catalog to an external drive, but would still like it to look like a folder in Windows 10 so that it will still be backed up to OneDrive. But I would also like to be able to use the external drive on my laptop to edit photos. If I mount it on the desktop can I still use it as a portable drive (unplug from desktop and plug into laptop)?

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  • Thanks so much for the help. But just to make sure I understand, if the drive is showing up as a folder, what is the process to dismount it?
    – Holly
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 16:14
  • "If the drive is showing up as a folder, what is the process to dismount it? - Where is it showing up as a folder? Lightroom? OneDrive?
    – Anaksunaman
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 15:17
  • It would be showing up in OneDrive and would contain my photos and my lightroom catalog. So I would like to be able to use it on my desktop and laptop, but I don't know how to safely dismount a drive that looks like a folder to ensure it doesn't get out of sync.
    – Holly
    Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 1:31

3 Answers 3

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Unplugging the drive requires for it to be dismounted first.

If you use it on another computer without dismounting first, you risk the meta-data on the disk getting out of sync with the version stored in the computer memory.

Mount the disk again after plugging it in.

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    small clarification: "unmount" = windows' "safely remove hardware" or "right-click external drive> eject"
    – Yorik
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 14:53
  • Thanks so much for the help. But just to make sure I understand, if the drive is showing up as a folder, what is the process to dismount it?
    – Holly
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 15:29
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Yes. Mount settings are stored by the OS, not in the filesystem that's being mounted.

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If I mount it on the desktop can I still use it as a portable drive (unplug from desktop and plug into laptop)?

Generally yes. Just do not use My Documents for the folder on the laptop and it should work fine.

Just properly disconnect the drive before using it on different computers. Do this each time.

I use C:\temp or like folder to share USB drives between computers and they share fine.

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