Problem swapping between external hard drives

[jleekley]

I am having a problem after copying files to and from a second external hard drive. I see from reviewing the other threads on the forum that there are file issues with this program, but none of them appear to be on point with my problem

I use a laptop for my LR 1.4.1 and have all of the pix files on an external IOmega hard drive. In anticipation of a long vacation, I bought a fits-in-your-pocket portable hard drive and used Karen's Power Tools Replicator to copy the Iomega contents to it. I had some problems while on vacation. and even more after returning and after using the Replicator to transfer the new files back to the Iomega. (The beauty of Replicator is that it will only copy only those files that are new or have been changed.)

Basically, LR will not recognize the presence of files even though it has the image in the screen and the file is present on the hard drive. I know that the underlying file is ok because I have found it with Windows Explorer and even printed it with another application. So, The two questions appear to be: 1) How do I get the program to recognize the files on the hard drive? (I'm thinking: just delete the lrcat file and ask it to import the whole hard drive and go get a cup of coffee) and 2) What is the proper procedure for swapping files between hard drives so that the linkage doesn't get lost?

Thanks for the help.

John Leekley

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi John, welcome to the forum, and apologies for the delay in getting to your question.

Am I right in thinking you picked up my book in the last day or so? If so, did it answer your questions, or is there anything else we can help to clarify?

 

[jleekley]

Problem mostly solved

Yes, kinda-sorta. Your book gave me the courage to just delete the catalog and re-import the whole hard drive. It took two tries, because the first time, it didn't reflect the file hierarchy - just a flat list, no folders or sub-folders. I don't know what I did different the second time, but all of the files (some, however, seem to be reported in two different places) seem to be there and accessible. I tried the tactic of putting a new image at the top of the pile and asking for an import, but it just gave me an error message. And when I tried to re-import a folder that was red on the list on the left side of the Library screen (forget what LR's name for it is), it would give me an error message and then delete the listing!

So, many of the prescriptions given elsewhere in this forum and in your book did not work for me. I don't know if it's my fault or the program's, but I DO think that if LR is to be a database for people who are not database nerds, it leaves a lot to be desired. I didn't buy it to learn more than I ever wanted to know about catalogs and sidecars (I thought that was a drink), I wanted to store and print pictures efficiently. I gather that LR2 has issues too, so I won't go there for a while.

As for a long-term solution, I think I'll just set up catalog for each hard drive and when I swap new stuff onto a drive, delete the catalog and ask it to build a new one.

Thank you, though, for all your help. You seem to be keeping LR users afloat on this forum single-handidly. Do you ever get time to take pictures??

John

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hmmmm, don't suppose you can remember what the error messages were? I'd bet we can sort them out for you.

We've got a great team here, some brilliant brains!