How to copy ALL files to external drive AND keep links

[elijeve]

Hi,

Does anyone know is there a way to copy ALL of my Illustrator, InDesign, PDF and image files to an external drive from an external drive, so that when another person opens an .ai file, in the second drive, the links are found?

I tried basic copy-paste from finder but it looses the links, probably because the Drive was with a different name.  For example, the path to a link in illustrator would have been:

Drive1 - Archive - Client - pictures2022 - picture0133.jpg and now it is:

Drive2 - Archive - Client - pictures2022 - picture0133.jpg

I changed the name of the Drive later to the same s the first one, but it did not fix this. Any idea is this possible to achieve? 

Could using Timemachine help, any other ideas?

[marliton]

Hi.  After copying the files, you can Relink the links using the Links panel and save the changes.

[elijeve]

Yes I know. But there are hundred of files and in one file, an add for instance, might have dozens of links of different product images.

So if there would be a way to keep links, it would save a ton of time. 

[marliton · Accepted solution]

How about this?

1.  Copy all files to the new drive including the Illustrator file.
2. Open the Illustrator file on the new location and"Save as" it to the original location.

[elijeve]

Thanks for your suggestion. But I have hundreds of Illustration .ai files. So it would take full work days to open them all, relink missing links and save them.

Or did I misunderstand you, what Illustration file do you mean?

[elijeve]

So I did that, copied all files to the new drive. Opened one ai file on the new drive on another computer, saved as but links are still missing. 

I am trying to get all my files for an intern use.