Moving Files to External hard drive done Now What ?

[Photos]

Alright so I've successfully moved my photos and catalog to my external hard drive tested and works. Now In LR5 im trying to remove those 1600 photos so i can start a fresh catalog its still showing those 1600 under >Catalog >All Photographs. I can't get them to go away. ultimately I'd like to edit current projects within lightroom and my hard drive and when im finished PP i want to save them to my external hard drive and be able to access and edit them if i ever need to in the future Thanks for the help in advance

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Photos, welcome to the forum!

I'm not 100% sure I'm following - you just want to start a new catalog and start completely afresh? If so, File menu > New Catalog and import the photos, with it set to Add at Existing Location at the top of the import dialog.

But if you want to be able to keep the files in the catalog, with the older ones stored on the external drive, I'm not quite sure I understand why you want to start a fresh catalog. You could just carry on from your current catalog. Would you like to explain that one a little more?

 

[Photos]

yes, I successfully moved all the pictures and the catalog to my external hard drive. now the problem is that i still see them in my lightroom will they always remain there ? does it hurt to have them as an old catalog? when i plug in my external hard drive i can access them and edit them just fine. but i guess my question is.. is it ok to just start a new catalog and leave the old one on my computer hard drive ?

 

[Victoria Bampton]

You can certainly start a new catalog and leave the old one there, but any work you've done up until now will still be in the old catalog instead of the new one.

I think we're still talking at cross-purposes - why is the fact you can still see the external hard drive photos in your catalog a bad thing? Do you not want to be able to access the photos that are now stored on the external hard drive? Or are you think that when you want to edit the external hard drive ones, you'll plug it in and open the old catalog?

 

[Photos]

Do they have to have a catalog on the internal hard drive to access them from the external hard drive ?

 

[Victoria Bampton]

The catalog can be on any internal or external drive, and that doesn't have to be the same drive as the photos. For example, I keep my catalog on my internal drive and my photos on an NAS unit.