Copy all my folder pics into a new drive

[frankieta]

Hi guys, and happy new year

I'm not a new user of Lightroom but lately i'm becoming more interested in using it as an organizational tool for my photos.

That's the issue: my external hd I usually use to store all my pictures is full.

I bought a new external hd and I want to COPY all my folder pics to the new hard drive and I don't want to do this with the OS because I would sure have to reimport all the folders into LR and I would surely lose all my edit (flags, colourm, stars, virtual copies, edits...etc).
Is there a way to do this with LR? Or is there a way I could do this PRESERVING all the things I made to my images?
I don't want to MOVE my folders, only to copy them..

Thanks guys in advance and again HAPPY 2'1'!

 

[frankieta]

Maybe I should:

1) Copy my parent image folder into another folder in the new hard drive (thus replicationg the folder structure).

2) Export this parent image folder AS A CATALOG within LR e put this catalog file into the new drive.

In this way do I keep all my edits and modifications made in LR? The result btw is that I would have 2 catalog files now..that can be a problem, isn't it?

Byee

 

[dj_paige]

In the Lightroom folder panel, drag the top level folder that contains your photos to the other hard disk.

Or, move the photos in your operating system, then in the folder panel, right-click on the top level folder and select UPdate Folder Location.

You do not want to create a new catalog in this instance.

 

[frankieta]

[quote author=dj_paige link=topic=8795.msg59171#msg59171 date=1262378289]
In the Lightroom folder panel, drag the top level folder that contains your photos to the other hard disk.

Or, move the photos in your operating system, then in the folder panel, right-click on the top level folder and select UPdate Folder Location.

You do not want to create a new catalog in this instance.
[/quote]
Isn't that procedure for moving (cut and paste) photos from a folder to another? I want just to copy (and paste) this master folder with all its subfolders, photos into the new drive.
But I also want LR to riflect this change, to not lose the edits I made to this photos, I want those edits to be reflected in the copies.
Maybe I got wrong what you were saying, I'm a bit confused..thanks for the response!

 

[clee01l]

Master Folder = Top Level Folder.

In , LR, you want to MOVE the Master folder into the new drive. When you do that all the sub folders will follow. LR maintains pointers to the "path" of each image file. What you want to do is change that pointer to the new Drive. You do this with a MOVE (Drag and Drop) If you want to maintain a second copy of your images, you need to do that with some backup operation which is outside of the functionality of LR. LR is going to maintain its pointers until you do something outside of LR to cause LR to be confused when the pointer that it knows about does not mesh with the new reality.

If you are replacing the old External HD with a new Larger External HD. then you can make a clean copy of the old HD onto the new HD. As long as the folder hierarchy is consistent between the two HDs, you can plug the new one in to Windows and reassign the drive letter that the old one used to the new External HD and after having done that, when you open LR, LR will see the same drive letter and same path to your images and will be happy and un aware that you've pull the old 'switcheroo'.

So, please be speciffic as to what you want to do. [list type=decimal]
[li]Move all your files to a larger HD[/li]
[li]Move some of your files to a second HD[/li]
[li]Or Something else[/li]
[/list]

 

[dj_paige]

[quote author=frankieta link=topic=8795.msg59181#msg59181 date=1262394158]

Isn't that procedure for moving (cut and paste) photos from a folder to another? I want just to copy (and paste) this master folder with all its subfolders, photos into the new drive.
But I also want LR to riflect this change, to not lose the edits I made to this photos, I want those edits to be reflected in the copies.
Maybe I got wrong what you were saying, I'm a bit confused..thanks for the response!
[/quote]

In Windows, "move" is different than "copy", and in your writing, you state consistently you want to do a "copy". Nevertheless, your description of your goal of how you want all your photos on the new HD, and still linked properly inside Lightroom, indicates to me you really want to do a "move". This will leave you with your photos on the new HD, and no longer on the internal HD.

In LR, there is only one choice, and that is a move. The procedure I described in Lightroom, dragging and dropping within the Lightroom Folder panel, executes what Windows calls "move". If you really do want to do a "copy", and wind up with everything on both HDs, you must do this in Windows and then inside Lightroom, right-click on the parent folder and select Update Folder Location.

So, the choice is yours, move or copy. Perhaps you can clarify what you really want.