Moving all RAWs and .Lightroom Cat to a new HD but need to continue working on it

Raymond Lin

Raymond Lin

I am Groot
Messages
10,564
Name
Raymond
Edit My Images
No
Following from my other thread.

The External WD drive that my photos RAWs are in has locked up (padlock on the front is lit), the drive can be read, but not written to. I can't fix it at the moment and need to continue working on the photos so I have bought a new Iomega 1.5TB drive. I am going to copy everything across, including the Lightroom Catalogue.

Now, once I have done that, disconnected the WD drive leaving noly the Iomega drive plugged in, how does LR find itself to the Catalogue stored in the Iomega drive and the RAW files?

Can that be done easily?
 
doesnt the catalogue have to be on an internal drive?

i dont have lightroom infront of me but i think you can just open the catalogue file, but you may have to right click each collection and locate if the drive letter/path has changed?
 
Raymond Lin said:
Can that be done easily?
Click to expand...

As you're on a Mac, I'm 98% sure that the quick and dirty solution would be to rename your Iomega drive to match the old Western Digital - call it My Book 2TB.

As long as everything's in the same place as it was relative to each other, then it should just work. You may not even have to rename the drive.
 
Last edited:
Musicman said:
just not on a network volume or a read-only folder. It can be on an external drive.
Click to expand...

It can be on a network volume as well. I download the images at work in Lightroom on a PC (as it has the card reader) and then synchronise the folders in Lightroom on the Mac. I'm using Lightroom 3 and haven't tested this on Lightroom 2.
 
And in response to the original post, just Ctrl-click on the folder in your catalogue, then update folder location, pick the new folder and it automatically remaps all the subfolders. This is assuming you have a main photos folder with all photos contained within, otherwise you would have to remap individual folders.
 
StuD said:
It can be on a network volume as well. I download the images at work in Lightroom on a PC (as it has the card reader) and then synchronise the folders in Lightroom on the Mac. I'm using Lightroom 3 and haven't tested this on Lightroom 2.
Click to expand...

I was going on the notes at the bottom of the Select Catalog window that comes up when you hold down the Option (Alt) key on launching Lightroom 3.
 
You can have your entire LR catalogue and files on a network drive or external drive if you want :)
 
Indeed you can and I do the same.

Means that I have my Lightroom catalogue backed up aswell, and works on either drive when I want it too.
When I press to open the catalogue from the external drive it just finds all the files for me.

If i was to transfer ALL the photos and catalogue to a different drive (say internal drive) all i'd have to do is click on update file location on the master folder.
My Folder Structure (done by lightroom)

Photo Library
Year
Date
Pictures

So all I have to do when using a new drive location is just locate the Photo Library folder and all the subfolders are found automatically
 
ok...just found out that the locked WD drive has somehow deleted/lost 800 Raws from one of my weddings that i haven't delivered yet !

Me thank my lucky stars for having another copy on another External HD............
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top