How can I move one years worth of Raw photo files to a different hard drive and perserve the edits

Question

How can I move one years worth of raw photo files to a different hard drive (to manage space) and preserve the develope module edits and still see them in  the Library module?

Answer 1

The easiest situation, is where this year's worth of images is grouped physically inside one parent folder (something many people build in from the start, in any case).
If there is a parent folder on disk, but you are not currently seeing that inside LR's Folders panel, you can make this visible to LR by right-clicking on one of the folders which live immediately inside that, and selecting "show parent folder". This gives you a single "handle" by which to manipulate the whole grouping.
Then it is just a matter of moving this parent folder. It's usually as simple as dragging it from one place to another inside LR's Folders panel, however this is a little more difficult when it's a question of another drive which does not yet appear there.
So an alternative method will likely prove more straightforward: physically move the whole year folder into the other drive using your operating system's Explorer/Finder. The folder (and subfolders, and all the contained images) will change with ? icons inside LR, and it all goes "offline". This is because LR's records of where everything is, are known not to currently work (the former location is now not available). But all the edits, thumbnails, keywords, collections etc are still in place because these things are still remembered in the Catalog - and the fullsize previews are still cached also.
Then right-click on the parent folder in LR's Folders (the top folder which shows a "?") and select Update Folder Location. Then browse to the other disk and identify where this folder is now to be found. LR updates all its records and the whole grouping carries on just as before, only using a new  storage location for each image concerned.