Sorry the images did not show up. I am reposting the exact same text with the images here. OK - As will all things Adobe, there are multiple ways of doing things. I will suggest two different ones for this task and it depends on how many images you are moving and what structure you currently use. All should work. The main thing to understand is that your Lightroom folder on your internal drive should contain these files: the catalog that ends in .lrcat, a Previews.lrdata, possibly a Smart Previews.lrdata (if you made those) AND your folder of Photo Files which are the images themselves. As you can see in the screen shot below, my photo files are in the folder called L K Travel Photos. With the first method, you open the Lightroom catalog and in the Library module you click Export and make sure to select Export as Catalog. This Exports your whole library as a Catalog and includes the Photo files to your external drive. This is fine if you want your catalog on the external drive. However, personally I have found that Lightroom seemed to work faster if my catalog is on my internal boot drive with the application. The second method may be easier if all your images are in one folder with no structure. The third method (my preferred method) might work better if you already have a folder structure you like and want to keep on your new external drive. The folder structure I use is one folder for the year with three subfolders each year designating Travel, Family, and Misc for that year. Then within each sub folder I have the places I traveled in a folder, for example, Images> My Main Lightroom Library> 2017> 2017 Travel> 2017 France. For these screen shots, I am moving a folder called L K Travel Photos from my internal drive to my external drive which is called SSD 500GB. The structure you use can be by year, date, shoot job, client name, however you choose. I am just giving you an example so you can follow my structure in the screen shots. If you already have a folder structure from your photos on your internal drive, you can continue to use that structure and put a folder on your external drive and name it something like Photo Library to get started. Please read through all 3 methods before you start. FIRST Method: 1. Connect your external Drive. (In my case my external drive will be designated as SSD 500GB just for the screen shots.) 2. Open that external drive and create a folder on it where you will move your photo files. (I named my external drive "Images" and the main folder is called "My Main Lightroom Library. Then within that folder I have 2017 France and then LK Travel Photos). 3. Launch Lightroom. In the Lightroom Library Module, select all the photos in your Lightroom Library, click File> Export> Export as Catalog. In the Dialog box that appears, select a name (in My example I typed in L K Travel Photos).Expand the box to show where and select the external drive (my screen shot does not show the expanded box). Select the external drive and folder where you want the catalog and photo files to go. AND be sure to check the box, Export negative files (these are your photo files). I selected the other two as well because I already have smart preview and other previews made. Click Export Catalog and your catalog, your previews, and your photo files will now be on the external drive. ******************************************************************************************* SECOND Method: In this method you select all the photo thumbnails in your folder in the Lightroom Library and export the photo files to a new location. 1. Connect your external Drive. (In my case my external drive will be designated as SSD 500GB just for the screen shots.) 2. Open that external drive and create a folder on it where you will move your photo files. (I named my external drive "Images" and the main folder is called "My Main Lightroom Library. Then within that folder I have 2017 France and then LK Travel Photos). 3. Shift click the first and last photos in the film strip or in the viewing area to select them all. 4. Click File > Export. In the Export to Hard Drive dialog box (shown below) make sure your settings are like mine so you do not export them as jpgs or smaller sizes, etc and then Export the catalog and photos to a folder you have already created on your external drive. When everything is set, click Export. Then all your photo files and your catalog will be on the external drive in that one folder. ******************************************************************************************* THIRD Method - and this is the way I prefer to move photo files from one drive to another: 1. Connect your external Drive. (In my case my external drive will be designated as SSD 500GB just for the screen shots. 2. Open that external drive and create a folder on it where you will move your photo files. (I named my external drive "Images" and the main folder is called "My Main Lightroom Library). Again, the folder structure I use is one folder for the year with three subfolders each year designating Travel, Family, and Misc for that year. Then within each sub folder I have the places I traveled in a folder, for example, Images> My Main Lightroom Library> 2017> 2017 Travel> 2017 France. Start with Lightroom Closed. In the Finder select the folder on your internal drive that currently holds all your photo files (not the catalog and previews) (In my first screen shot it is the folder called L K Travel Photos) , and drag copy just that folder with any subfolders of photo files that are inside, to the "MY Main Lightroom Library" folder on your "Images" external drive. This will make a duplicate of exactly the photos and folder structure you are currently using. In this action you are copying the folder of photo files, i.e. leaving the original folder on the internal drive. Depending on how many photo files you have this "drag copy" can take a long time. When the copy is done, make sure that the number of photo files in the folder on the external drive is the same as the photo files folder inside your Lightroom folder. I also click a couple of images in the external drive to see if they are there. If you were to launch Lightroom at this point, Lightroom would still see all your photos as they are because it would still be looking at the original folder. So don't open Lightroom yet. 2. Now still in the Finder, go back to the original photo files folder (again not the catalog nor the previews) on your internal drive and click and drag to move it elsewhere, - you can move it to your desktop. In this move, you are actually moving (not copying) the original folder of photos to another location but it is still on your internal drive, so this move is not going to take very long. The idea is to get Lightroom to NOT see them. Remember you are not moving your catalog. 3. Finally launch Lightroom . This opens the Catalog (In my case , I would double click the 2017 France-2.lrcat file). On the left panel you should see your folder or folders with question marks on them. The photos will also have a little white box in the upper right corner as in the Screen Shot below. Here, I have just copied the folder called "L K travel photos" that was on my internal drive to my external, and then moved the original folder from my internal drive to the desktop. 4. Next, click one of the little white boxes on the upper right hand corner on one photo thumbnail. I suggest scrolling to the first photo thumbnail and clicking that one. You will see a box that appears asking if you want to locate the photo file as In the screen shot below. 5. I suggest noting down the photo file name that is inside the quotes to make it easier for the next step. 6. Click the Locate button. 7. using the finder window that opens, select your external drive and then the folder where you moved the folder of Photo files. 8. Scroll until you see the same photo file name that you had clicked on in step 4 and click Select. Lightroom will reconnect your Catalog that is on the internal drive with all the photos that are now on your external drive. As you can see from the screen grab below, all the photos that were on my internal drive named ARTIST1TB, have now been moved to my external drive named SSD 500GB in the L K TRAVEL PHOTOS folder. When all the photos appear in Lightroom in their new location on the external drive, and you are sure the count matches and all your images appear, then you can delete the original folder of photo files, in my case that L K Travel Photos folder that I had moved out of the Lightroom folder and put on my desktop on my internal drive. Hope that makes sense.
... View more