Moving 20,000 images in Lightroom to external drive?

[Ernie1953]

Please advise: I have a late 2012 desktop mac with 1 TB storage, of which I have 200 GB free. I would like to move at least half of my 40,000 images to a new external drive in Lightroom. I have thunderbolt and I think just USB 2.0 connections. I would like to buy a >1 TB external drive specifically for photos via Lightroom. The last time I tried this was a few years ago, and the transfer failed. What's the key to moving large files and keeping them accessible in Lightroom? I am looking to spend $400 or so on memory and cable.

[Just Shoot Me · Accepted solution]

Use the File Manager for your OS to first Copy the files to the external drive. Once you are sure all the files have been copied you can then Delete the originals from your internal drive.

Keep all the folder structure the same as they are on your internal drive. So if all your images are in a folder called Picture and then Subfolders containing the images create a folder on your external called Pictures then Copy over the Subfolder to that Pictures folder.

Once that is done you can open LR and Re-Link the folders to the new locations on your external drive.

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

Updating the Folder Location in Lightroom « Julieanne Kost's Blog

Re-linking Files and Folders in Lightroom « Julieanne Kost's Blog

[Ernie1953]

Thanks, yes

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