Moving photos to external drive

[john Nall]

I just installed an external hard drive on my 2012 iMac running Catalina.  I plan to move all my photos to this drive and delete them from the iMac’s internal hard drive, since my new iMac’s hard drive is one-third the size of the old one, which is almost full.

I tested the moving process by dragging a picture folder into the external drive and deleting it from the iMac.

Once I did that, the folder name disappeared from Lightroom. I then tried to import it. Lightroom recognized the external drive, opened the folder but none of the pictures were selectable. Two other facts: the E drive does not appear in Lightroom’s Library menu; only the Macintosh HD is listed.  Also, the E drive is not in the Volumes folder in the iMac’s hard drive.

This experience does not bode well for deleting pictures in the internal drive after moving them, and then recalling them into Lightroom from the external drive.

How can I fix this?

[dj_paige]

I tested the moving process by dragging a picture folder into the external drive and deleting it from the iMac.

Since Lightroom does a MOVE, not a copy, you shouldn't be able to delete the photos from the internal drive. So this doesn't make sense.

Once I did that, the folder name disappeared from Lightroom.

Expected result.

I then tried to import it. Lightroom recognized the external drive, opened the folder but none of the pictures were selectable.

Expected result. No need to import now, in fact importing is entirely the wrong thing to do here. The photos are still in Lightroom's database!

Two other facts: the E drive does not appear in Lightroom’s Library menu; only the Macintosh HD is listed.  Also, the E drive is not in the Volumes folder in the iMac’s hard drive.

You might want to try restarting your computer. Although this shouldn't be necessary, sometimes it is.

In the future, there are plent of internet explanations of how to move Lightroom photos to another drive, that work perfectly well, and none of them require importing. For example, "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location" of this document: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

[john Nall]

`Thank you for your detailed answer. I read the link you attached and the info is very helpful.  However, it did not seem to directly reflect my situation. 

So here's where I am now:

•  I dragged eight folders from my old Mac to a new external hard drive. Those folders correspond to what I call the primary folders in Lightroom (e.g. holidays, events, friends, etc.)
• I then installed the external drive onto my new iMac Pro.
• Then I opened Lightroom in the new iMac and began importing the folders from the external drive.  At first I imported sub-folders within each primary folder (e.g. Christmas 2017 within the holidays folder).  
• This seemed to make the sub-folders primary folders.
• Then I discovered that I could import the whole primary folder. When I did that, sub-folders were properly shown underneath each primary.
• This seemed to work well until I enlarged some thumbnail pictures within the library function. Some (not all) were blurry and captioned "embedded preview." Others were fine. 
• Once I moved a picture from library to develop, the caption disappeared and the picture was sharp.

This experience tells me I did not properly move files, or many previews would not be blurry. However, I could use Lightroom as it is but think the whole transfer is "messy."  Since I still have the pictures in my old iMac (late 2012 version), I could just start all over again.  I'm retired so have plenty of time and with the imac pro, the process is pretty fast. Any suggestions?  I'll go back and re-read your linked article again. 

Thanks, John

[dj_paige]

Since one of the steps is Importing photos, this is a mistake.

You need to start over, using a backup of your catalog file from before the move/copy to the external HD, move the photos back to the internal HD if they are no longer present on the internal HD; so now everything is as it was before you started this process. Follow the directions in that document exactly.

Remember — NO IMPORTING PHOTOS.

[JohanElzenga]

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