How to spread folders over 2 hard drive ?

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dryfly

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How can I transfer and spread photo folders over 2 hard drives and keep them under one Lightroom Catalog ?

My LR5 Catalogue/Previews and photo folders are stored on a 600GB internal HD "F" which is almost full. Most of my folders are Personal but I also cover Social Events and once exported to the event organisers I rarely need to refer to these SE folders again.

I now wish to transfer the Personal folders to a seperate 1TB internal HD "P" but it's important that I keep ALL the folders in the same Catalogue as the Personal and Social Events can overlap and I may need to look for "All pixs of Fred Bloggs" or "All pixs at Venue X"

My back up system will then consist of two 1TB external drives, one for each of the internal HD s
 
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You can move the folders within LR to the new drive. LR catalogs are fine with images residing on different drives so long as it know where they are located.

--Ken
 
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Thanks Ken, I have tried to do that but the result is that the old folder in F HD is greyed out and I have to go to the new folder in P HD. Can you provide step by step instructions please as I have spent 3 whole days on researching and tests without success ?
 
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Sounds like you did not move the folder inside Lightroom. Right-click on the old greyed-out folder, choose ‘Find Missing Folder’ and in the dialog that follows navigate to the new location of the folder on the P drive. Select it and you’re done. Lightroom will now no longer show this folder on the F drive, but on the P drive. You may have to restart Lightroom before it shows correctly.
 
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I followed the recommended LR "move inside Lightroom " procedure for my Test folder. The Test folder shows OK on the P drive albeit the metadate is missing) . The greyed out folder is what shows under the catalog listing on the F drive. Right clicking on that does not give an option of "Find Missing Folder".
I am now in the situation whereby I will have to search two different catalogs namely F and P . As stated in my posting I want to locate ALL F and P based folders using just one catalog. Lightroom implies that folders can be stored anywhere and the catalog will find them - unfortunately after nearly 4 days of searching I am unable to find out HOW ! Could it be that what I consider to be a simple practical usage of LR exceeds its capabilities ?
 
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In that case the folder is greyed-out because it is empty. Does the image count confirm that? If so, you can simply remove it by right-clicking on it. Maybe you should post a screenshot if something is still not clear. Using several disks with one catalog is simple and should not create any problems. Lots of people use such a setup. By the way: where does that second catalog come from?
 
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Thanks . As you can see my F ( Minor) 600gb file is almost full. My P (Major) 1tb is empty (except for new test pics) I wish to leave all social event folders on the F (Minor) HD and transfer all other folders to P (Major) HD. whilst still showing the catalog listings for both HDs in one place and not in two different places as per the screen shot. The reason being that occasionally I need to search both drives for the same subject.
LR screen.JPG
 
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It's not possible for Lightroom to show you the folders of two different drives under a single drive listing, which is what you seem to be asking for. The Folders Panel shows you the individual folders on a per drive basis, which reflects how the folders are organised in the computer's file system.

If you want to see or search the contents of both drives together, that's what the All Photographs collection at the top of the left-hand panel is there for. Click on that and all cataloged images, irrespective of drive, will be shown in the Grid where they can be filtered or searched as needed.
 
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In fact, you can accomplish what you want (having all photos accessed thru drive C, being either on drive C or drive P) by "mounting" the drive P in a folder of drive C. Photos on drive P will then accessible thru the mounting folder on drive C.
But this is not necessary to search over all your photos. You currently have only one catalog, which references photos on drive C as well as on drive P. A said above, selecting "All Photographs" will allow you to serach in all your photos, being on drive C or drive P.
 
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Jim Wilde said:
It's not possible for Lightroom to show you the folders of two different drives under a single drive listing, which is what you seem to be asking for. The Folders Panel shows you the individual folders on a per drive basis, which reflects how the folders are organised in the computer's file system.

If you want to see or search the contents of both drives together, that's what the All Photographs collection at the top of the left-hand panel is there for. Click on that and all cataloged images, irrespective of drive, will be shown in the Grid where they can be filtered or searched as needed.
Click to expand...


Many Thanks, thats a big help and now I just have to move my wanted folders from F drive to P drive. I think the problem was being confused by lightroom stating that the catalog wasnt bothered where the folders were located but failed to emphasise that they had be on the same drive.
 
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dryfly said:
I think the problem was being confused by lightroom stating that the catalog wasnt bothered where the folders were located but failed to emphasise that they had be on the same drive.
Click to expand...
They are not on the same drive and they don't have to be on the same drive. What you misunderstand is that the folder panel in Lightroom shows you the real situation. If a folder is physically located on the F drive, then that is where Lightroom shows it in the folder panel.
 
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