Move Library and Catalog to Portable??

[bostaurus]

I have a library and catalog that is rapidly growing...and eating up some precious space on my laptop's hard drive.
Soon I will have to move them and I was contemplating moving them to a portable firewire hard-drive. I would like to continuing building my current catalog and library as opposed to starting a new one on the portable drive and keeping the current one where it is.
My question is this: If I move my catalog and photos, will the Lightroom database know where to reference those images on the new drive? How can I make such a move gracefully?

 

[Kiwigeoff]

I have a library and catalog that is rapidly growing...and eating up some precious space on my laptop's hard drive.
Soon I will have to move them and I was contemplating moving them to a portable firewire hard-drive. I would like to continuing building my current catalog and library as opposed to starting a new one on the portable drive and keeping the current one where it is.
My question is this: If I move my catalog and photos, will the Lightroom database know where to reference those images on the new drive? How can I make such a move gracefully?

My view would be just to move the image files. I have most of mine on external f/w and no issues.
You can just move the folder/s in finder and then re-link them in LR, they will show up as red folders and click one to start the process of linking.

 

[toneyw]

Before you do that, it would be wise to back up your LR files (you don't want to lose your edits).

 

[bostaurus]

My view would be just to move the image files. I have most of mine on external f/w and no issues.
You can just move the folder/s in finder and then re-link them in LR, they will show up as red folders and click one to start the process of linking.

So I will be able to safely move all of the images ... good. After clicking the red folder it will link them automatically, or will I have to do it photo by photo?

I have moved a group of several images before and had re-link the images one by one. Just want to double check before I find my self making thousands of clicks!!

Thanks.

 

[Bruce J]

Here's another alternative:

Create a new root folder on your external target drive; copy a dummy image to that folder; Import the folder in LR. That should get your new target folder to show up in the folder list in LR. You can now delete the dummy image.

Now, in LR, you can drag folders from their current location on your internal drive to the new root folder (that's actually on your external drive). LR takes care of all the internal shifting in the database (no red folder names to re-link) and moves everything in the folders to the new location.

Just did this last night for the same reason as the OP and it worked great. Moved all of my 2''7 images to a new drive and created a new root folder for 2''8 on my internal drive. Cheers,

 

[bostaurus]

Well I took the plunge and did it ... remapped everything to a LaCie 16'GB rugged drive. Only took a few minutes of clicking and had 4'GB of photos moved in under a half hour. Piece of cake! Thanks for all the help!!

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Well I took the plunge and did it ... remapped everything to a LaCie 16'GB rugged drive. Only took a few minutes of clicking and had 4'GB of photos moved in under a half hour. Piece of cake! Thanks for all the help!!

Good for you!!:mrgreen::mrgreen:

 

[neelin]

Just did this last night for the same reason as the OP and it worked great. Moved all of my 2''7 images to a new drive and created a new root folder for 2''8 on my internal drive. Cheers,

I'm still using a internal drives. If you use an external (&internal) & it's off-line when your LR makes a request from your internal drive located catalog, does anything funky happen or does it prompt to put the directory on-line, or other?

thanks, robert

 

[Victoria Bampton]

The folders go red and the images gain little question marks, but when you turn the drive on, you can either relink the files or just reopen the catalog and it'll sort itself out again Robert.