Catalog restore

[ShSimpson]

I had to go away for awhile so I exported most of my catalog files to external hard drives (it took 4 of them) and worked on keywording, rating and some develop settings while not at home. Now I am not exactly sure of how to restore these to my main hard drives.

I am hoping that someone else has had this same experience. Do I simply delete the files from the folder that reside on my main hard drive and then copy the same files from the external drives. I want to be able to make sure that these files copy over all my applied keywords and other changes I made to them.

If I have to re-import these files in some fashion would now be a good time to move to dng. I have already made the decision to convert everything to dng format and have been doing so for the past several months. I do have alot of CR2 files still residing in a number of folders. I don't mind doing the conversion now as long as all my changes made are brought in when it converts it to a dng.

I have searched the forum here and I even went out and bought Scott Kelby's LR 2 book but I am still confused and somewhat concerned about losing my changes.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

If the image files are still as they were,you didn't move them, you could rename the catalogs you have been working on with something like -1 and move them to your main PC. Then you can import from the old catalogs (import from catalog). There are a few options there to not update the metadata etc which are fairly clear.
Copy all your catalogs first and keep the copies safe, easier to go back if something weird happens.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

When you originally moved the catalogs before you went away, did you literally copy the whole catalogs, or did you export part of catalogs? And has anything been done on your home catalogs in the meantime?

If you literally picked up the catalogs to take with you, and now want to put them back, a simple copy back would do the trick. Save the existing ones, just in case you make a mistake, until you know you're copied back correctly.

 

[ShSimpson]

When I left home I exported the folders as catalogs and then imported those catalogs into my laptop but left all of the working files on the external drives.

I have added a couple of new folders to my desktop lr but for any of these ones that I exported, I have not touched them on my desktop.

Thanks

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Import from Catalog's definitely the way to go then. That dialog will allow you to merge settings from your laptop catalog. Obviously do backups first!