Had a question from a sweet reader this week that reminded me of one of those word problems I struggled with in math growing up:  

 "I have all my digiscrap supplies and photos in separate folders on my EHD (that is backed up on yet another EHD).   The original zipped files, in turn, have been burned onto dvd's, so they're not cluttering up my EHD's.    I'm on a vista PC with 2 local disks, both 75G in size. I only have about 20% free disc space on my drive C, but 87% on my drive D. I was planning to use the D drive for my LR catalog."

"My 1st question is this: will this 69G space be enough to hold the almost 90G supplies I have in the EHD? Im still culling my supplies as I continue organizing them into designer folders.  I remember you saying in one of the videos that I'd need about 3x the space for the keywords and processing that LR will be doing to the files. Did I get that right?" 

"Like you, I would like to keep track of all the supplies that I have already imported into LR (especially since there are still so many goodies arriving into my download folder each day, lol). Im afraid this is the part I don't get. From my main supplies (EHD), I need to make another folder separate from it? Do I copy the folders I want to import (from my EHD) into LR through this 2nd folder? or is that where LR dumps the stuff it can't import? Sorry, the process is hazy for me at this point. where should this folder be at? will it still be in drive D for me?"

 This reader brings up a great question – how can you be sure with so many different drives and photos and digital supplies that you will have enough space?    I then asked the reader how much space she had on her external hard drives.

"My EHD is 250G, and my digiscrap supplies come up to 90G, and my photos and scanned photos comprise another 50G…so I still have a little over 100G free space on it.  The same supplies and photos sit in another EHD as another back-up. "

Once I knew all the information I actually took out a pen and paper and created the scenario so I could come up with a solution – it reminded me of my days in school – a Lightroom math problem if you will…

Now the crazy thing about Lightroom math is that you really could do this several different ways – there is no set in stone RIGHT answer.  So I will endeavor to share what I would do and invite readers to share their input in the comments.  The first step is taking stock of what you have:  

• C Drive on Vista PC with 15GB of space (20% free) - I wouldn't add anything to this – especially if your computer is running the OS on this drive.
• D Drive on Vista PC with 69 GB of space (87% free) – some room to work there.
• External Hard Drive 100GB space (40% free) – room to work here as well.

Next look at what is going to change when you get to Lightroom and begin converting your files: 

• You will have a Lightroom Catalog file folder – your catalog is just the database file that keeps track of all your photos and digital supplies.  In my catalog I have over 60,000 photos and digital scrapbooking supply items – together the items in my catalog (photos and supplies) add up to around 320GB.  Just to give you an idea, the folder that holds my Lightroom catalog and a month of catalog backups is around 41GB – around 22GB of that 41GB are my catalog backups.  So after a month of daily backups of your catalog, I'd plan on around 25-30GB for your catalog.
• Your Photos will stay the same after you go to Lightroom – the only thing that will change is file size as you edit and add metadata.  However, you will need to plan on your photo collection growing over time – so be thinking of that as you look to the future.
• Your Digital Supplies.  In this post you can see an idea of how things change after conversion.  To be on the safe side, I would plan on your supplies doubling in size – they most likely won't, but giving yourself the room can't hurt.

Here's how I would do this if I had this setup:

• Store the Lightroom Catalog on your D Drive where you have 69GB free – this gives you room to grow with your catalog and also leaves you enough free space to process things using both the remaining free space on your C and D disk drives on the Vista PC.

• Leave your supplies and photos on your EHD.  Create a NEW Scrapbooking Supply Folder on the free space of the EHD and just move your files from their current location on the EHD to the new folder location on the same EHD.  This is the only drive that has the room for you to do this and as you move them from one side of the drive to the other, free space won't be a problem.

Now if this were my setup, I would be a little concerned about the free space left on both my PC and external hard drive.  I would seriously consider investing in a new 1TB internal hard drive or another external hard drive  (LACIE is an awesome and rugged brand) to give myself the room to grow.

Just to give you an idea – if you added a new 500GB external USB drive to the mix, you could store your Lightroom Catalog, photos and supplies all in one place.  I would buy a portable hard drive rather than a desktop external hard drive because they are more resilient.  

Last but not least, you would want to make sure that you have both an EHD backup of everything (which you already do but would need to be bigger with a larger EHD) AND offsite backup – another hard drive, online backup service, etc.

 I really hope this helps some of you who are planning and getting ready to convert and move files.  Have a wonderful weekend!