Moving files off of laptop (lightroom issue)

Grumpy_one

I'm tired of running out of room on the laptop and have decided to go to external harddrive. Since I went to RAW, no way to keep files on laptop. So my dilemma now is that I have a lot of old photo's cataloged with LR. How do I move these photo's over and keep the metatags with them? I keep thinking I'm going to have to re-import them. Something I really don't want to do. Thanks

Art Scott

I move all of my files around by draggin and dropping.....once you get your external then you can of course just load directly to the external.....I am using currently Seagate 500gb FreeAgent Pro.......I really like Seagate drives...they are nearly silent running I have one that currently sits just inches away from me as I work here and I cannot hear it runing and they have lasted longer than any western digital or maxtor drive I have ever had.

Grumpy_one

Sorry if I didn't ask well enough, moving the files is not the problem. How do I move the files and keep them cataloged with LR? I also want to move the catalog files....I think anyway. The laptop needs to be cleansed. Thanks

urbanaries

Grumpy_one wrote:

Sorry if I didn't ask well enough, moving the files is not the problem. How do I move the files and keep them cataloged with LR? I also want to move the catalog files....I think anyway. The laptop needs to be cleansed. Thanks

Close Lightroom. After you move a folder(s) to the ExHD, open lightroom. The folder you moved should be red, and when you click it the images should have a question mark in the top LH corner. Right click on the (red) folder and click "Locate Missing Folder", then it should do its magic. You may have to do this for individual folders, or if you have large parent folders it can trickle down the linking up.

Either way, for posterity, after doing this I always shut down LR, then reboot to make sure the images are successfully linked up, then I feel safe deleting the folder from my laptop HD.

HTH

Grumpy_one

Ok, I'll give that a shot, what about the red folders I deleted from LR? Are those going to have to be re-imported. I moved the folders and then deleted the red folders. How can I have LR catalog them without moving/importing them?

urbanaries

Grumpy_one wrote:

Ok, I'll give that a shot, what about the red folders I deleted from LR? Are those going to have to be re-imported. I moved the folders and then deleted the red folders. How can I have LR catalog them without moving/importing them?

As long as you haven't deleted the red folders in LR, you don't have to reimport the images you want to move behind the scenes from your laptop to your HD (which was your first question).

If you have in fact deleted red folders in LR, you've deleted their existence from the current LR catalog. If you've backedup recently, you could reimport a backup catalog, as removing/deleting the folders as far as I know does delete those image previews and settings. Someone else may have to step in here as I'm reaching the end of my expertise without fiddling in LR myself.

Grumpy_one

urbanaries wrote:

As long as you haven't deleted the red folders in LR, you don't have to reimport the images you want to move behind the scenes from your laptop to your HD (which was your first question).

If you have in fact deleted red folders in LR, you've deleted their existence from the current LR catalog. If you've backedup recently, you could reimport a backup catalog, as removing/deleting the folders as far as I know does delete those image previews and settings. Someone else may have to step in here as I'm reaching the end of my expertise without fiddling in LR myself.

aahhhh, something to look into, thanks....