I need to change my primary photo storage drive for the 2013 season. What's the best way to migrate the old (2012) image files so I don't have to search the back up drives to find the images, as the catalogs will remain in place?
I believe you can just move them to the new drive, then open Lightroom. You'll get the little question mark icon next to the missing folders which you can click and set the new locations.
If you keep the old drive letter the same as the new drive letter, the library won't have any trouble finding them so long as the directory structure doesn't change.
If you are adding a drive, it's easy to change drive letters. If you are simply moving files around on drives you already have, then it could get messier.
johnrg wrote:
I believe you can just move them to the new drive, then open Lightroom. You'll get the little question mark icon next to the missing folders which you can click and set the new locations.
I think this is exactly the thing he's wanting to avoid.
Are the images all under one folder with subfolders? AKA mine is setup roughly like this
2012
- Portraits
- client A
- client b
- Weddings
- client a
- client b
- Commercial
- (you get the point)
I can do what johnrg mentioned, and all I have to do is point LR to the 2012 folder and it finds everything else. Otherwise what deepbluejh mentioned would work fine.
I found the least stressful way for me is to move them from WITHIN LR. Find the folder location in the library, right-click, select "move..." (I'm not at my PC now, so I'm typing this from memory), then point that to the new folder and watch LR flash for a while... I have done it the other ways and they work too, so you have several options.
When I import, everything gets dumped into the year folder ie. "2012", then images are in folders by date. It is then backed up on 2 other drives. I need to pull the 2012 drive and start the 2013. I will then be using one of the backups as the working drive (but only for images from 2012), and the other backup goes into a static proof box for off site storage.
johnrg are has it right. I've moved my pictures and my catalog around due to hard drive failures and building a new PC etc, a lot recently. It was pretty easy for both as LR just asks where either one is, you re-point and presto-magic everything works again. I was a little worried at first but everything was pretty straight forward. It didn't even need to regenerate the previews.
RJKphoto wrote:
When I import, everything gets dumped into the year folder ie. "2012", then images are in folders by date. It is then backed up on 2 other drives. I need to pull the 2012 drive and start the 2013. I will then be using one of the backups as the working drive (but only for images from 2012), and the other backup goes into a static proof box for off site storage.
Is there a better system?
I do the same with my personal images. I think folder structure is highly dependent on the person. What works for one may not work with the other. Good news is to sync up your folders once you've moved the 2012 images to the new drive is just tell LR where the 2012 folder is and it will sync the rest.
