Hard drive/Catalog question

[Heirloom Bob]

My photos are currently stored on a 4 TB drive on my windows PC and it's pretty much full. I want to move them all over to an external 5 TB drive. (The ultimate goal is to cull them down to a more manageable level and then perhaps move them back to the 4 TB drive.)

Can you tell me the process I must go through to accomplish the move to the external 5 TB?

Is there merit in keeping the more current photos on my 4 TB drive as it's not an external, and then have older photos on the external?

Can Lightroom have one catalog with photos on two different drives?

Any recommendations for cloud backup while I am on this topic?

[dj_paige]

In WIndows (but not Mac), if you COPY the photos to the new 5TB drive, and then give the new drive the exact same letter as the previous drive, that's all you'd have to do. It really is that simple. (You'd probably have to give the 4TB drive a different letter first...)

Yes, you can have one Lightroom catalog file that accesses multiple drives. So it would be very easy to leave the existing photos on the 4TB drive and import the new photos to the 5TB drive. Sounds like a very good plan!

I use Carbonite for my cloud backup, but fortunately, I have never had to restore all my photos from the cloud, so I cannot comment on whether or not that's easy to do; however restoring a few photos from the cloud as a test was very simple and easy.

[Heirloom Bob]

Thank you dj_paige. Could you explain the COPY to new drive comment? Do you mean copy outside of Lightroom as in Explorer?

[dj_paige]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Heirloom+Bob  wrote

Do you mean copy outside of Lightroom as in Explorer?

Yes

[Heirloom Bob]

I am reading again your comment and have more questions.

I think I would prefer to have all the photos currently on my "K" 4 TB internal, put onto the "N" 5 TB external. I am unclear on how I COPY as per my earlier reply. This would allow me to reformat my "K" drive and then use it for all future photo imports.Am I wrong in thinking the speed would be quicker to access my internal "K" than an external USB 2.0 drive?

I could then leave the Lightroom import process as it is now and import all new shots to "K" but still have access to all the "old" shots on my "N" external.

Also, from within Lightroom, I can see my :C", "J" and "K" drives. I am unsure how I can now add my external "N" drive to the folders list. Is it as simple as Create a New Folder and then navigate to the "N" drive?

[dj_paige]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Heirloom+Bob  wrote

I think I would prefer to have all the photos currently on my "K" 4 TB internal, put onto the "N" 5 TB external. I am unclear on how I COPY as per my earlier reply.

You COPY the photos in your operating system. Are you saying you don't know how to do that?

This would allow me to reformat my "K" drive and then use it for all future photo imports.Am I wrong in thinking the speed would be quicker to access my internal "K" than an external USB 2.0 drive?

Speed of your disk has such a trivial impact on LR that you will not ever notice it.

I could then leave the Lightroom import process as it is now and import all new shots to "K" but still have access to all the "old" shots on my "N" external.

Sure you could, but its a lot easier to leave the photos where they are now and import the new photos to the empty 5TB drive. Meaning I think this is a better and easier solution than copying the photos to the new drive and reformatting the old drive.

Also, from within Lightroom, I can see my :C", "J" and "K" drives. I am unsure how I can now add my external "N" drive to the folders list. Is it as simple as Create a New Folder and then navigate to the "N" drive?

When you Import photos, and select a Destination on the N: drive, then the N Drive will appears in the Lightroom folder panel as expected.

[JP Hess]

If everything on your existing K drive is organized so that all of your folders are stored within one master folder then all you would have to do is copy that one master folder to the new N drive. Then start Lightroom and go to the library module and locate the K folder and right-click on it. Choose the option to update the folder location. In the dialog that appears, point Lightroom to the folder that is now on the N drive, and you're done. If you have more than one folder to copy, then you'll have to do it with each of those folders. But after you have done that with all of those folders then all you have to do is reformat the K drive. All of the subfolders will be relinked automatically. I would recommend that you COPY all of the folders and do the relinking while you still have your images in their original location. It's the way I moved my images around and found it to be very straightforward and simple.

[Heirloom Bob]

What I have done thus far is firstly, create a photo folder on the newly formatted "N" Drive. I have all my folders setup by year on my current "K" drive, so I dragged Year 2000, Year 2001 etc etc and dropped them into the new photo folder created on the "N" drive. Because this was all done within Lightroom, there should be no issues within my catalog? All should be good?

[JP Hess]

In theory, all should be good. I should've mentioned that it's usually best to use Finder or File Explorer to do the moving and not use Lightroom. But if you feel confident that everything moved successfully then you shouldn't even have to update the folder locations.

[dj_paige]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Heirloom+Bob  wrote

Because this was all done within Lightroom, there should be no issues within my catalog? All should be good?

The problem with doing this in Lightroom, which is why no one recommended this, is that bulk moving of photos from one drive to another using Lightroom has been known to cause photos to disappear without a trace (a serious bug) and the photos cannot be found in your operating system, and you need to make sure that hasn't happened.

[Todd Shaner]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Heirloom+Bob  wrote

What I have done thus far is firstly, create a photo folder on the newly formatted "N" Drive. I have all my folders setup by year on my current "K" drive, so I dragged Year 2000, Year 2001 etc etc and dropped them into the new photo folder created on the "N" drive. Because this was all done within Lightroom, there should be no issues within my catalog? All should be good?

This is where you may have "lost" some of the folders! It is possible the missing folders on the new 'N' drive were moved accidentally (i.e. dropped) into one of the year folders as a subfolder. I suggest using Windows Explorer and examine each of the year folder's contents to see if the missing folders are inside as subfolder. You can also use Windows Explorer's Search function to search from the drive root (N:) for the missing YEAR folder, such as below for year 2016:

In addition you should always backup your image files to a separate external backup drive. Do you have a backup copy of all your image files?

[dj_paige]

They "appeared to transfer" yet are not visible on either the original location or the drive I transferred them to. Are they truly lost forever?

But the horse has left the barn SailorGuy57.

Are you saying that you do not have backups of your photos?

[SailorGuy57]

I have used Crash Plan very successfully for several years.  Great functionality (versioning, can backup to local USB drives or other user computers, very intuitive restore process, etc.) and they don't charge for storage space.  So I have turned off the "purge deleted files" option and can go back to the very first day I started using CP to restore a file to any specific date I need.

I have a family subscription that allows me to backup 10 devices including Windows and Mac systems.

Sailor Guy

[Heirloom Bob]

But the horse has left the barn SailorGuy57.

[selondon]

Hi Bob,

I used Adobe Revel for storage and sharing, but they closed it last year.

As a heads up, you may/may not be interested to know that in the closure notice they said that cloud storage would come to Lightroom at some point.

When though and at what cost is the question!

[Heirloom Bob]

I did not follow your directions dj-paige, as I had started the move before I saw your response. I had always remembered people saying that if you move things around, always do it in Lightroom. Oh well...live and learn. Now I have as you described, missing folders. They "appeared to transfer" yet are not visible on either the original location or the drive I transferred them to. Are they truly lost forever?