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Moving photos from one hard drive to another.

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John Cicchine

Active Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2016
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166
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Operating System: Mac OS X 10. 10.5 Yosemite.

Lightroom Version: 5.7
(Please go to Help menu > System Info to double check the exact version number)

Question or Description of Problem: I plan to go on a trip and instead of bringing both my external hard drives that have my photos on them plus my external hard drive that I use only for my LR catalog I decided to make a separate folder on my Catalog hard drive to bring only that hard drive and temporarily store my travel photos on that drive plus edit them using that drive and then when I return home transfer the photos to one of my hard drives that I use to store photos. I did a test earlier this week where I imported a project of photos into the temporary folder on my catalog hard drive and edited them and all went well but when I highlighted them in grid view and dragged them to the permanent folder on the photo storage drive I got a message that says "Items cannot be moved because they already exist there". I will try to attach a screen shot that I took of the window that I saw. Only some of the photos went. Then I went to my list of folders on the left side of my screen and dragged the folder from the Catalog Hard Drive to the Folder and all the photos went and in the proper order. So my question is what is the best way to transfer photos from a folder on one hard drive to a folder on another hard drive?
Thank You very much.

John

Screen Shot 2017-10-10 at 9.59.19 PM.png
 
The cleanest and least error prone method to do this is to use the LR Folder panel and (with both volumes present) drag the folder from one volume to the other. This updates the path stored in Lightroom and used the File system function MOVE to move the actual files from one volume to the other. There are other means to do this outside of LR using Finder, but this does not automatically update the path store in the LR catalog and requires you to do this manually.
Where I think you went wrong in your method is " imported a project of photos into the temporary folder on my catalog hard drive" Since these files had already been imported (to the original location) in LR, you effectively imported the same files twice. When did the drag and drop in LR, LR encountered the same files and displayed the error message. The cardinal rule in LR is to NEVER reimport.
 
The cleanest and least error prone method to do this is to use the LR Folder panel and (with both volumes present) drag the folder from one volume to the other. This updates the path stored in Lightroom and used the File system function MOVE to move the actual files from one volume to the other. There are other means to do this outside of LR using Finder, but this does not automatically update the path store in the LR catalog and requires you to do this manually.
Where I think you went wrong in your method is " imported a project of photos into the temporary folder on my catalog hard drive" Since these files had already been imported (to the original location) in LR, you effectively imported the same files twice. When did the drag and drop in LR, LR encountered the same files and displayed the error message. The cardinal rule in LR is to NEVER reimport.

Hi Cletus. Thank You very much. When I imported the photos I imported them only once into the temporary folder and no other folder. So then the way I understand you is that in the future have both hard drives (volumes) with the temporary folder and the other drive with the permanent folder turned on at the same time then in the folder panel on the left side drag the folder from the catalog drive to the photo storage drive. Please let me know if I am understanding you correctly. Thank You once again Cletus for your help. I truly appreciate it.

John
 
When I imported the photos I imported them only once into the temporary folder and no other folder.
If this is indeed the case, when you tried to "drag them (from the temporary folder) to the permanent folder on the photo storage drive", you should never have gotten the error message that you did for those files that you imported into the temporary folder. To answer your question about "drag and drop" between folder, yes this is the cleanest way to move file using LR.

As an aside, I don't recall if LR5.7 supported Smart Previews (I don't believe so). LR6/CC certainly does and you are able to disconnect your EHD and use the Smart Previews for all edition purposes when you travel. Traveling this way permits you to Take only the drive containing the catalog and Previews and leave any EHD containing the original Image files at home.
 
If this is indeed the case, when you tried to "drag them (from the temporary folder) to the permanent folder on the photo storage drive", you should never have gotten the error message that you did for those files that you imported into the temporary folder. To answer your question about "drag and drop" between folder, yes this is the cleanest way to move file using LR.

As an aside, I don't recall if LR5.7 supported Smart Previews (I don't believe so). LR6/CC certainly does and you are able to disconnect your EHD and use the Smart Previews for all edition purposes when you travel. Traveling this way permits you to Take only the drive containing the catalog and Previews and leave any EHD containing the original Image files at home.

Hi Cletus,

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks again for your help. Just to let you know LR 5.7 does indeed support Smart Previews. I am trying my best to put some money aside to upgrade to LR 6 but I need to buy a new back up hard drive and do a proper and complete back up first before doing the upgrade as has been recommended to me. If I may I have only one more question. When you use the term “volumes” I assume you mean hard drives. Am I correct?
Thank You Cletus.

John
 
When you use the term “volumes” I assume you mean hard drives. Am I correct?
More or less. A disk drive can be partitioned in to one or more volumes. Similarly, a Volume can span multiple disks (RAID or JBOD). The proper term for the distinct area where files are stored is "Volume". With a Single disk that has only one partition, a Disk = Volume. Storage media is not restricted to a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), There are also Solid State Drives (SSD) that contain no disks. A Floppy (FDD), Optical (DVD) and Tape are also other storage media that can have volumes defined.
 
More or less. A disk drive can be partitioned in to one or more volumes. Similarly, a Volume can span multiple disks (RAID or JBOD). The proper term for the distinct area where files are stored is "Volume". With a Single disk that has only one partition, a Disk = Volume. Storage media is not restricted to a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), There are also Solid State Drives (SSD) that contain no disks. A Floppy (FDD), Optical (DVD) and Tape are also other storage media that can have volumes defined.

Hi Cletus.

Thank You very much for all your help. WOW!!! I sure learned a lot about drives from you! Of course I know of SSD’s and DVD’s but I never heard the term FDD. Ok my friend. I am grateful for all your help and I will keep you posted as to how I make out. Chat with you soon.

John
 
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