LR5 Exporting photos to external hard drive

[WSA]

I was trying to save extra hard drive space by exporting some of my files from Lightrool5 to an external hard drive. I did it through LR and thought the files were moved, but when I go into the actual hard drive and pull up the files it shows the file names and that they are JPEG but when I click to open them it says "can't be found". When I did this was I only moving the catalog reference of the files? I'm so confused.

[JP Hess]

From your description, it's difficult to understand what really happened. The export process in Lightroom is not one of moving images, but rather a process of making copies of the master images in Lightroom. So did you move the images to the new external hard drive, or did you export copies to the external hard drive?

[WSA]

From Folders in LR, I created a folder to recognize my Seagate external drive. Then I went to my Pictures folder on my hard drive where I have my Lightroom imports and also that's where I save my exported JPEGs. I clicked and dragged some of the files (for example they are labeled 2014-03-27) into my external hard drive. Everything looked ok until I went outside of LR and clicked on my Seagate external and tried to open up the JPEG files and it said "not found". I ended up restarting my computer and then I could see the files in the external drive. Now I'm afraid to do anymore moving of my files. Its obvious that I don't completely understand how and where things go in Lightroom as I should. 

My process of importing into LR is to put my SD card in my iMac and then I put those RAW files onto a file on my iMac. Then I drag the Raw files to LR and Copy them and edit them, then I export as JPEG back to the same folder on my iMac in Pictures folder. I'm probably doing way too much, but I want to have my edited JPEG files on my computer so I can upload to social, print, upload to Smugmug, etc. and not lose my RAW files. Not sure how they all connect with LR so I've been afraid to do anything with them until now.

[JP Hess]

It sounds as if you used your operating system to move the images. By doing that it has caused Lightroom to lose track of where the images are located. Perhaps the following article will help you get things straightened out. Follow the instructions carefully, and I think you will be able to get things realigned:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/ 

[WSA]

I'll give that a try. Appreciate your help!