Import question Lightroom Classic

[arbor123]

I have a LR Classic catalog with 20,000 images.  The original camera files are in a folder called "ORIGINALS"  The catalog and ORIGINALS are on a thumb drive, and everything works properly.  External to Lightroom, I have just added 750 more images into that ORIGINALS folder, and now want to import those into LR.  In the IMPORT screen, I select the folder ORIGINALS, and LR does see the NEW images.  I want to ADD these to the catalog, leaving the camera files in that ORIGINALS folder, along with all the previous images which are now in LR, but the import screen only allows COPY.  Why can I not use ADD?

Thanks for your assistance.

Lester

[JP Hess]

Lightroom doesn't usually consider a thumb drive or flash drive as permanent storage. How did you get the catalog and 20,000 images onto the thumb drive in the first place?

[arbor123]

I think you're onto something.  Originally the catalog and ORIGINALS were on a hard drive.  I copied that from the hard drive to the thumb drive for portability (and yes, had to tell LR that the originals had been moved.)  So are you saying that by using a thumb drive, instead of a hard drive, I cannot ADD new images?  If that is the case, I think this is a serious design flaw!  Why should Adobe tell me on which device I should store my catalog?

[dj_paige]

Why should Adobe tell me on which device I should store my catalog?

There are probably valid technical reasons for this, although I certainly can't explain them. Images cannot be on thumb drives, cannot be stored in the cloud for use in Lightroom Classic CC, etc.

[arbor123]

Seems to me a solid state thumb drive is a more reliable storage medium than a spinning hard drive.  A file is a file. Adobe says  I can store my catalog and originals on an external hard drive,and on an external thumb drive. I can print from that thumb drive, export, make slide shows, etc., but not ADD.  Makes absolutely no sense!  A thumb drive is a great compact, secure way to carry around my entire catalog, which I use for frequent overseas lectures.  I think Adobe should immediately stop everything they're doing and fix this problem TODAY, if not sooner.

[JP Hess]

This forum is primarily a user to user forum. Here is a link to a forum where the developers monitor much more closely and consider suggestions from those who participate:

Photoshop Family Customer Community

[John R Ellis]

Seems to me a solid state thumb drive is a more reliable storage medium than a spinning hard drive.  A file is a file. Adobe says  I can store my catalog and originals on an external hard drive,and on an external thumb drive.

To build on what others have said, LR asks the operating system whether a drive is "removable" or not. Generally, Mac and Windows consider thumb drives and SD cards as "removable", while external disks connected by cables are not. I don't know precisely how the operating systems make this determination, though.

LR has long had a policy of not allowing you to to store catalogs and photos on removable drives. You've rediscovered a partial workaround by copying the catalog and photos to the removable drive and then telling LR to relocate the folders, but that workaround doesn't help with Import.

I don't know the origins of that policy, but I can speculate. It may be that Adobe wanted to prevent people from accidentally Adding photos from their camera SD cards -- especially with less technically savvy users who only have a fuzzy idea about files and file systems and drives, I can see that happening all the time.  It may also be that in 2007, Adobe felt that the existing removable drive technology (cheap USB thumb drives in particular) were not overall as reliable as external spinning disks.

I agree that today, there shouldn't be any restrictions on using a removable drive for storing catalogs and photos.

In helping people with external drives that the operating systems mistaken categorized as removable, I've come across purported methods for manually telling the operating systems a drive is external and not removable (but I've never tried them).  You might Google for those methods.

And to reinforce Jim Hess's suggestion, do post your feedback in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom Classic CC | Photoshop Family Customer Community

[JP Hess]

A thumb drive is considered "temporary" storage by Lightroom that can vanish at any time. You may not agree with that philosophy, but that is by design and probably will not change. If you want portability and then it will be necessary for you to have a small external hard drive. I can see where you are going with this, but thumb drives have never been usable in the way you are trying to do this. Apparently big brother is keeping you from making a big mistake down the road.

[dj_paige]

In Lightroom, you can't ADD from thumb drives. (Although bugs have been reported where you can do this)