Lr; moving files to external hard drive and not lose edits

[makeright]

Hello,

In order to free space on my IMac, I moved my catalog from iMacs internal drive to an external hard drive and thought I knew what I was doing....

Instead of moving the files within Lr, I copied the folders from its internal hard drive location and paste on external hard drive.

I quickly realized that was a big mistake. I had all the files on the external but ...ORIGINAL Files, NO edited images.

So overnight, I copied/pasted everything back and imported all images back into Lr.

Now I want to do it the right way and need your approval before I proceed:

1.On my external drive I set up a new folder for my Lr images

2.Within Lr, I would drag the parent folder to the new folder on my external drive. This MOVES the files original files including the edits, correct?

3.Do I have to create a new catalog in Lr for my external?

4.After successful transfer I can delete my files from IMacs internal drive

Please help me out as precise as possible.

Just to be clear: I want to work on my images from the external drive only.

Thanks for your help

[dj_paige]

I quickly realized that was a big mistake. I had all the files on the external but ...ORIGINAL Files, NO edited images.

So overnight, I copied/pasted everything back and imported all images back into Lr.

If you are importing the files into Lightroom, this is the mistake. NEVER re-import photos into Lightroom that have previously been imported. Doing so means that Lightroom considers the newly imported photos to be brand new photos that it has never seen before, and by default this means that there are no edits and no user-provided metadata (there are ways to override the default).

So now that you have done this importing, do you have edits and user-provided metadata?

The proper method of moving the photos to the external HD is given in "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location" in this document: Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders There is no importing in this procedure. There is no new catalog. Future photos should be imported by using the COPY option and placed directly on the external drive. The future photos should not go on the internal drive even temporarily.

[makeright]

After importing, all edits and metadata is available

[dj_paige]

Some metadata will not be imported, such as collections, pick flags, virtual copies and edit history. You need to be aware of this.

Before you do anything else, you ought to make a backup of your catalog file. However, if those issues don't bother you, then follow the instructions I gave. If you need to recover those items, then you need to restore a recent backup of your catalog file.

[makeright]

OK, got it. Yes, I did realize that flags etc. where not imported.

[makeright]

I do a back up of my catalog file each time I exit Lr. Is that Back up version enough to recover the files?

[dj_paige]

It allows you to recover edits and user-provided metadata. It doesn't recover "files".

[makeright]

The files are back at their original location but the metadata is missing. If I recover the last back up, the metadata should be recovered, correct?

[dj_paige]

If you restore the most recent catalog backup BEFORE you made these changes, you have recovered the metadata and edits.

[makeright]

Thank you, it all worked out.

One more question I have. Is there a way to copy files to external drive instead of moving? I tried hold option + drag and CMD C. Nothing worked, it always wants to move

[dj_paige]

In your operating system

Copy: Cut and paste

Move: Copy and paste