Keywords from external to internal hard drive

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jcrader

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I have a catalog of 5','''+ images that I've keyworded on an external hard drive. I've recently purchased an internal drive that I'd like to use as the storage place for these images. After moving the images over to my internal hard drive, none of my keywords are showing up after importing this new drive full of pictures back into Lightroom 2.3. How do I get my keywords to show up in Lightroom on this new internal drive?

Thanks,

JC
 
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Welcome to Lightroom Forums jcrader!
It seem you dit it the wrong way. For now, stop messing immediately and follow me or the other Gurus here as I am about to leave...
  1. To "keyword on an external drive" means that you activated "Autowrite to XMP" or typed Ctrl/Cmd-S for all files. But as your keywords didn't came back, you didn't keyword ON the external. You just did it in the catalog itself.
  2. It seem that you moved your files with the file management system of your operating system rather than WITHIN Lightroom so Lightroom didn't know about it.
  3. If you then reimported, this means that you have now one file structure in Lightroom with ? marks under one drive and another structure with what appears as new files?
  4. Did you created a new catalogue to reimport?
 
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Hi Denis...thanks for the response. My new catalog is just the folder that holds all of my images on the internal drive. Can I get my keywords into these files? They have been imported in but no key words show.

Thanks,

JC
 
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Let's backup, did you keyword the images with Lr?

The word catalog has a special meaning within Lr. It's the fundamental unit of organization used by Lr. The catalog consists primarily of the Lr database file called *.lrcat, which in turn provides links to the original image files in their location(s) on the storage drive(s). Lr needs both of these components to function correctly.

From your description, you're only referring to the original image files. In order to help, we're going to have to know more about the first part, the Lr catalog file as well.

Can you describe in more detail how you've proceeded?
 
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I use Lr to keyword my images. I import all of my images from my CF cards into Lr and after import, I keyword them using a keyword list I've developed for my images. I've been doing this on two external hard drives but now I want to house all of those images on an internal hard drive I've recently purchased. All of the images are currently on the internal drive and the same images are still on the external hard drives too. I did use lightroom to export the images onto the internal drive but none of the keywords are there. This is what I don't understand. Thanks for the help.
 
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jcrader said:
All of the images are currently on the internal drive and the same images are still on the external hard drives too. I did use lightroom to export the images onto the internal drive but none of the keywords are there.
Click to expand...

OK, this is where we need more explanation. 'Exporting' the images shouldn't have come into play.

There were two basic ways you could have accomplished this:
1) Within Lr, simply move the images and their containing folders to the new internal drive.
2)With the OS tools Finder/Explorer you could have made an identical copy of the existing images(the whole folder tree) from the existing external drive, on the new internal drive. Then within Lr, right-click on the top-most folder available, and choose Update Folder Location.... and navigate/point to the new internal drive location.

Before you try anything else, make sure you have a good backup(s) of the *.lrcat file(s). If the image locations on the new internal drive are identically arranged compared to the external drive, you can give method 2 above a shot. You might want to start down low with a small child folder, instead of a top level master folder, just to verify the results, before committing to a wholesale change.

Unfortunately, like Denis, I'm going to be offline for a few days as well, I hope somebody will keep up, in our absence.
 
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Thanks Brad!

jcrader, Brad's last message is right to the point. To be certain that you are accessing the originals from their new location, you can also do this:
  1. Close Lightroom.
  2. Unplug those external drives.
  3. Open your OLD catalog rather than the new one without keywords.
  4. You should now see ? marks beside your folders as a proof that you are with the proper catalog containing the keywords. You should see them in the right panel of Library.
  5. Right click on the top most level folder and choose "Find missing..." and navigate to where you moved (copied) that folder on the new internal drive.
Lightroom will relink all the images within this folder and its subfolders and there will be no more ? marks. You should now see that clicking on an arrow at the right of a given keyword will show you all images having this keyword. You should now be all set and can trash that catalog you created uselessly to import again.

Lesson: Never RE-import!

Tell us how it went. ;)
 
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Thanks to all for the help. The keywords are now safe and sound on the new internal drive. Used the steps above and things transfered over perfectly. Thanks again.

JC
 
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