while i am generally comfortable with technology, i can also be a total and complete idiot... just ask the IT support guy at work - thankfully he has the patience of a saint ;p
anyway, i'm about one photo away from causing my computer to have a major meltdown and i need help!
here's my tale of woe... i work off a macbook pro... it doesn't have enough space... so a year ago i got a terabyte of external storage and my workflow is to load images from SD card to laptop thru Lightroom 5... i do whatever processing is needed, export to macbook hard drive, and then move all the RAW files that i'm keeping to the external storage drive, but from within LR... this worked perfectly...
only apparently i take a lot of pictures and i'm terrible at culling... so now i've managed to use up my terabyte of storage... but no worries, right? storage is cheap! buy another external drive...
only problem is, my computer is now confused... i eject the old drive, attach the new one, and it thinks it's the old one.. it won't let me create a new subdirectory in LR, and it won't recognize one created from outside of LR...
i'm pretty sure i need to set up a certain type of directory, but i don't know what kind, or where to create it, and googling has come up empty...
Oh I can relate - I take way too many photos and culling is not in my dictionary hahaha - I have 3 hard drives with photos saved and also Cd's and various ones on both my laptops.
I don't have light room - so sorry I can't help with that - I just save my photos from the SD card straight onto hard drive - I try to do some culling as I first look through them before the transfer - I now know I need to cull my hard drives - oh the thought pains me LOL
@annied bahaaa! i had to cull some off my first external drive to get the end of 2014 on it... but now it is definitely full... as is my laptop... the disk utility is telling me i have 12.7 MB of space left on my laptop - RAW files are bigger than that so i'm just a smidgeon nervous over what's likely to happen next time i need to download from the camera!
@northy oh I get nervous because my laptop only has 15gb left - although sometimes it drops to mere MB for no reason and then pops back up again for no reason too - the laptop doesn't like working with photos sometimes as it takes up memory
So then each time you plug in that particular ED your computer recognises it as P or Z or whatever you call it. They recommend using letters further down in the alphabet.
Oh dear, that Lightroom catalog again. Here's a link at adobe.com that might help. https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1673963 You may need to logon first with your adobe ID.
I'd suspect that you will need to keep *both* drives attached. Lightroom probably needs to see all the database sources perhaps? If you've run out of USB or Thunderbolt ports, a USB bridge should work OK although access might be a little slow.
What version of LR are you using?
I have used multiple drives hosting my Images. My workflow seems different. When I backup my images to my external drives, I have a LR catalog for each year on my master external drive. I launch the external catalog for the appropriate year and import the catalog that is on my mac. My catalogs never get confused with the wrong files. At the most, I can't find a file but it is because of an error I did in moving it outside of LR.
Are the external volumes sharing the same name and directory structure?
plug in the new drive & go to the the import screen. On the right of "Source" is a cross if you click on it it says add network volume. Navigate to the new drive.
I think that is wHAT I have done previously. You only have to do it once.
@northy thanks for this thread! I actually did have a computer meltdown that allowed me to (thankfully) get everything transferred to the external before the actaully demise (and thankfully, I revived my computer and it's completely like new!). BUT, I have the LR catalogue for 2013 on the external and when I launch it, I think everything is GONE because 2014 and 2015 are missing. Anywho, all this advice and the threads will help me figure out my next steps. I always have to remind myself to do the steps from within LR, or it all gets messed up. :) Glad to hear it all worked out for you!
Oh, and I'm culling like mad. And now I only load what I'm interested in developing. Otherwise, it's "bahbye." I have loads of space, but I hate the number of shots I know I'm not going to touch (all RAW too), so before I head into year three, I'm going back to each month, adding my tags I always forget to do, and I'm dumping what I never touched before. And I re-edit what I liked (my skills are much better). Year 3 will probably not have much new stuff except from my new camera -- it's in the mail -- beside myself!!!!
@northy , do you back up your external hard drives? If so, how do you do that? I always do backups on my laptop, but am not sure how to do the hard drives.
@paula365 the answer is "I'm not sure" ;p. My terrabyte storage thingy is always hooked up to my laptop, and would be there when the backup happens on the other bigger external storage thingy... Of course, now that I have a new terraabyte, I guess back-ups will override the other terraabyte... No clue what to do about this... I've been thinking I need to invest in cloud storage or something
Thanks for this thread, as I am overloaded on my computer and my externals (I have at least 1TB per year) and I'm needing to move from Aperture to LR. Big learning curve ahead.
But a word of warning: I just had an accident on New Years Eve, a very small one it would have seemed, but with terrible consequence. My external slipped to the floor from the couch, made a small thump as it's the Lacie Rugged with rubber bumpers and fell onto a rug, got disconnected, and it's irretrievably dead. I would have lost an entire year = 1TB except that I back up my external to another external, a 20TB giant thing. I ended up losing the last two libraries, but everything else from the year was backed up to the larger external.
Moral of the story: backup onto more than one device.
@northy , sounds like we better figure out how to make sure we are backing up our HD. @jyokota , thanks for the word of warning. I'm so sorry that you lost your pictures:( I've made my switch from Aperture to LR and I love LR. I think you will adjust fairly quickly to LR. I got a Scott Kelby book on LR and it helped me tremendously.
@paula365 yeah... that's worrisome... really need a better system all around... my back-up thru time machine is a bit hit and miss... and really, i should know better as i lost most of my first year of digital photos in a computer meltdown in 2002/03...
tx for the warning @jyokota - and so sorry you lost some images...
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I don't have light room - so sorry I can't help with that - I just save my photos from the SD card straight onto hard drive - I try to do some culling as I first look through them before the transfer - I now know I need to cull my hard drives - oh the thought pains me LOL
I don't have windows 7, it's much the same for them all.
I'd suspect that you will need to keep *both* drives attached. Lightroom probably needs to see all the database sources perhaps? If you've run out of USB or Thunderbolt ports, a USB bridge should work OK although access might be a little slow.
I have used multiple drives hosting my Images. My workflow seems different. When I backup my images to my external drives, I have a LR catalog for each year on my master external drive. I launch the external catalog for the appropriate year and import the catalog that is on my mac. My catalogs never get confused with the wrong files. At the most, I can't find a file but it is because of an error I did in moving it outside of LR.
Are the external volumes sharing the same name and directory structure?
I think that is wHAT I have done previously. You only have to do it once.
thank you! the link Frank provided did the trick... i also needed to close down LR and re-open it... but all seems good now... phew!!!
But a word of warning: I just had an accident on New Years Eve, a very small one it would have seemed, but with terrible consequence. My external slipped to the floor from the couch, made a small thump as it's the Lacie Rugged with rubber bumpers and fell onto a rug, got disconnected, and it's irretrievably dead. I would have lost an entire year = 1TB except that I back up my external to another external, a 20TB giant thing. I ended up losing the last two libraries, but everything else from the year was backed up to the larger external.
Moral of the story: backup onto more than one device.
@jyokota , thanks for the word of warning. I'm so sorry that you lost your pictures:( I've made my switch from Aperture to LR and I love LR. I think you will adjust fairly quickly to LR. I got a Scott Kelby book on LR and it helped me tremendously.
tx for the warning @jyokota - and so sorry you lost some images...