How to Safely Move Your Lightroom Photos to a New Hard Drive
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- čas přidán 21. 03. 2019
- Laura Shoe (laurashoe.com) shows you how to safely move your photos to another hard drive. Please subscribe to my CZcams channel! Video applicable to Lightroom 6, earlier versions, CC 2015, Classic CC.
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So glad to find someone who gives examples in Windows
This has been incredibly helpful Laura !
Thanks Laura! Very informative!
Laura, you videos are extremely helpful, thank you!
Thank you, Steve - and you're welcome!
What I needed to know started around the 11 minute mark of this video, thank you Laura. I purchased a 1TB NVMe drive for my Windows 10 pc and copied my Lightroom photos folder to that in Windows Explorer. I didn't want to delete the files from the original drive I had been using. This worked great!
Good to hear, Adrian!
So, short version…right click top folder, click ‘find missing folder’, navigate to said folder in new location, click. Right?
Ms. Shore, your video is among the best on this topic, maybe the best. My only criticism is that yours---and it seems everyone else's!---are done in a Mac environment. My guess is that PC users working with Lightroom outnumber Mac users by a multiple, possibly a large multiple. Part of that is the often ridiculous price differential. But another key aspect is how unfriendly Macs are in a support environment. Most of my work is for a unit of the Smithsonian, and our 2D design team indeed use Macs, and we have legacy Macs in the greater department, including AV. But our 3D design team, seasoned pros, eschew Macs, and Smithsonian support dislikes them and find them very hard to deal with.
Very thorough explanation, Laura. Thank you. I do have a question, however. Assuming the external drive to which you want to move files is showing in the Lightroom files/photo panel, couldn't you simply drag the folder you want to move into the external drive? I recently started doing that in my copy of Lightroom. I store my catalog on my computer's internal hard drive, but I store my photo files on an external drive. I purchased a new external drive that is faster than the drive on which I currently store my photo files. When I import photos, I import them to the new drive, where I can process them more quickly than if I had imported the photos into the old external hard drive. When I have finished processing the photos on the new drive, I drag the file from the new faster drive in the Lightroom photos panel into the old slower drive. That seems to work fine. Do you think this method works as well as yours, which seems to be more complicated? Or perhaps I missed something in your explanation.
You may be wondering why I don't move all my photos files to the new faster external drive. It's because I am fearful that I may mess something up. Perhaps you can help me with that matter -- or perhaps you can cover that in another video: How to move all photos to another external hard drive.
You're welcome, Ira! You can, but there are advantages to doing it outside of LR. I address this topic from 0:50-3:00.
Note that in this segment I indicate that I reserve my method for very large numbers of files - such as when moving all your photos to a new drive. For smaller numbers I do it using the Folders panel - so I would do the same as you as I finish processing a folder of images.
*OS X won't allow you to MOVE data (copy only) -- & lack required space to **_duplicate_** it?*
When you're moving data from the Root folder (highest level of hard drive) or your Home folder to another user account ... but, say the folder is 200GB and you have only 150GB available .. and still want to relocate it: Just press and hold the CMD button while dragging + dropping. It'll move it instantly (as long as it's the same partition).
Note: The same drive isn't adequate if you have multiple partitions and you're moving between them.
*Special Folders:*
ROOT 'directory' (it's not really a directory, it's the top, above all directories, logically).
Home // User Folder: MacOS Folder located in /Users/*...*/ ...where *...* is the name of the account & folder.
User account and Home folder-name can differ, but not usually...
Both of these are 'special folders' ... and any data that goes in or out may require a password and likely will [copy] instead of moving. Within your Home folder however, you'll only be asked if you're moving items in to your Library folder (hidden in MacOS, but within your Home folder, as well).
There's really no such thing as "moving" data. The system shows it to you as though it's moved -- but it's not moved. The exception is when you're "moving" data from one device to another; to do so you need to hold the COMMAND key down while you drag and drop (MacOS) -- which will essentially copy the data to the other target and delete the source upon completion (theoretically). Even once it's deleted, it's still technically on the drive until it's overwritten.
Hi Laura, several days ago I replaced my external hard drive with a new one. I use the external drive for images only. The only reason for switching is because of the age of the drive. I copied all of the images, about 62,000, onto the new drive. I had trouble getting LR to see the new drive until I moved a single image to it. However, i don't see any of the image folders that are on the new drive. I disconnected the old drive but still see the drive (not highlighted) and all of the folders with question marks. Do I have to go through this process folder by folder to get LR to see each folder? Unfortunately I don't have them in a master folder. Thank you in advance for the help! I'm really stuck! Been trying to figure this out for days......
Hi Tom, LR still thinks they are on the old drive, so you'll have to do the Find Missing Folder process on each folder (since they are not in a master folder - if they were you'd just need to do it on that one.) I don't recall if I cover Find Missing Folder in this video - if not, watch my Missing Files and Folders (or Missing Folders and Files) video: czcams.com/video/BsIOBGYiCk4/video.html
@@LauraShoe1 Thanks Laura, I was afraid of that. I have a lot of folders.... Ugh
One more question. What would the process be to put them all in a master folder so that next time it's not so difficult? Would I do it before or after I go through the process of locating them in the new drive? I'm assuming before?
@@tomacquilano1304 You're welcome, Do the highest level folders that are missing and it will automatically find subfolders - e.g. if you have year folders with shoot folders within them, do the year folders.
@@tomacquilano1304 Do it first - Use Mac Finder or Windows File Explorer to create a new master folder and put all the others in it. Don't change folder structure of the folders within it though - in my prior example, if you have year folders with shoot folders within them, don't change that - just move all the years into the master folder.
PS -- remember, just because data is _on an external drive_ ... doesn't remotely suggest that the data is BACKED UP. A 'backup copy' is data which is on two discrete pieces of hardware, in which the failure of one piece of hardware is 100% independent from what would cause the OTHER drive to fail. As well, both should have 'conservative precautions' against being ignorant that the drive is degraded, becoming less reliable, etc.
Lastly, knowing data is TRULY duplicated:
There are applications which use a HASH (SHA, MD5, etc.) which are algorithms which verify that a file is truly identical. Errors otherwise, can occur while being copied. This will provide the assurance that the replica is truly just that.