Moving Pictures & Catalog to External USB HD (5.0)

This is part of a post by Ward Grant re: Moving your files to external HDs.
"If you use the File/Move Burn command, it physically moves the image from your hard drive to your external hard drive, makes a proxy file and assigns that hard drive an identifier."
My question is:
(WXP SP2 PSE 5.0)
How do I get this to work? On mine, it is greyed out.
I assume it wants me to tell it what & where, but How? The Help Menu is of no help!
Also, are the files that are 'moved' really moved (as in no longer on internal HD?) I have some pictures on HD that have not been brought into the Organizer yet, so I need to be able to differentiate them. Also I need to do this to free up internal HD space. What about files that were backed/up to CD's when I had PSE 3? I have the CD's & don't use the pix very often, but it would be a mess to go back to get them all 'online'.
Also, I am not able to do Incremental back/ups. It lets me go thru all the steps, then at the last step, will go no farther. I have been just doing Full b/u's and then going back and deleting the previous one. It is cumbersome, but at least works!
An unrelated question, but have not seen an answer to is:
What is the difference between Unsharp Mask and Adjusting Sharpness in PSE 5? I am used to the Unsharp Mask, but don't see any advantage to the other. Is there any difference, or just another tool to do the same thing?
Any & all input is appreciated!
Thanks
Irma

In message <[email protected]>, [email protected] writes >This is part of a post by Ward Grant re: Moving your files to external HDs. > >"If you use the File/Move Burn command, i >How do I get this to work? On mine, it is greyed out. There isn't a file > move/burn command. There is File > move, which stays greyed out unless an image is selected (but this is just for moving on/between hard drives) There is also a file > Copy/move offline option, which should (going on the behaviour here) always be enabled. which one do you mean? For moving to a HDD I would assume the former, without creating proxies like you would with the move offline to CD/DVD option. Unless you intend to not have your external hard drive always attached. > I assume it wants me to tell it what & where, but How? The Help Menu >is of no help! You select the relevant images in the Organiser, then select the relevant menu option. You tell it where to a little later on in the process >Also, are the files that are 'moved' really moved (as in no longer on >internal HD?) Yes. >I have some pictures on HD that have not been brought into the >Organizer yet, so I need to be able to differentiate them. There is an easier way. >Also I need to do this to free up internal HD space. What about files >that were backed/up to CD's when I had PSE 3? I have the CD's & don't >use the pix very often, but it would be a mess to go back to get them >all 'online'. I could guess, but I'd have to try it out to be sure, I never have used the offline options.. Why not just experiment on a copy of the catalogue? > >Also, I am not able to do Incremental back/ups. It lets me go thru all >the steps, then at the last step, will go no farther. I have been just >doing Full b/u's and then going back and deleting the previous one. It >is cumbersome, but at least works! > <shrug> - this aspect of Organiser seems to have always had problems for some people. Backing up externally to PSE in my normal backup procedure makes lots more sense -- Chris French

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Moving pictures & catalog to newly installed second hard drive

Hi!
I just checked John's file (http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Move_your_photos_1) on moving files. My friend, a real non-technical guy, had a second drive installed on his computer. Up to now he only had one physical drive with C: and D: logical drives. All his pictures are sitting on the D: drive and there is nothing else on that drive.
I am supporting him remotely in Vancouver, BC from Austria (with logmein.com).
The new drive, 500 GB, is formatted and the chap installing it gave it the drive letter J:
My questions:
1) I change the drive letter D: to say X:, change the new drive's letter to D: and then do a disk copy from from X: to D: will this work?
2) Have my friend do a normal backup to his external USB drive and then do a restore with "Restore to original folder location" to the new J: drive and he uses from now on J: drive. Check that the Preferences are set correctly.
3) Simply move with Organizer all files to the new J: drive, leaving the catalog on the D: drive.
4) Any other good ideas? My friend has about 9,000 pictures on the file, probably quite a few disconnected ones.
Thanks and have a nice day!
Alexander
(Waiting for October 9th and PSE 8 as announced on Amazon. Surely John you soon will have another long list of items to add to your index! GGGGG!)

Alexander,
Using Display > Folder Location view to move the photo folders is the most straightforward way of moving the photos to a new drive, as described in the FAQ you referenced:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Move_your_photos
The question remains of what to do with the catalog folder:
1. Is it on the C drive (where it usually resides) or the D drive?
2. If it's on the C drive, there's no harm in leaving it there -- it uses relatively little space.
3. If it's on the D drive, and your friend doesn't mind leaving it there, then leave it there.
4. If your friend really wants to move it from the D drive (e.g. so he can free up that drive and use some partitioning tool to merge D back into C), then he'll need to move the catalog folder:
a. If he's on PSE 7, he can safely move the catalog folder using File > Catalog > Move.
b. If he's on PSE 6 and he doesn't have any projects (e.g. slideshows) or files archived to DVD/CD, he can safely move the catalog folder using File > Catalog > Move.
c. Otherwise, he'll have to use the backup/restore method (rather than Display > Folder Location view) to get the catalog folder moved along with the photos to the J drive.

Moving LR catalog to external hard drive

I am new and in the process of learning LR. Currently all my photos are stored and developed in my laptop, however it is getting too much for its hard drive. I am thinkinng of moving the entire LR catalog to an external harddrive. Would someone please give me some advice how to do this safely and also how to point the LR to its new location when I open it from the icon.
Thanks much.

Please note:
When we talk of the "catalog" in Lightroom, it means the database where Lr stores everything. It does not mean your photos.
The catalog (i.e. the database, i.e. the file with the ending < .lrcat>) does not have to be on the same drive where the photos(the image files) are.
So you can move your photos to an external hard drive and leave the catalog where it is now. Where is it? Go >Edit >Catalog Settings ? General tab. It tells you the name and location of the catalog.
Before you do any moving of your photos, please note: Lr stores - among the many other things - in its catalog also the location of each one of your image files. This has the consequence that if you move the image files in Win Explorer / Mac Finder Lr does not find the photos in the location stored in the catalog and sends you the much feared "?". How to solve this, see here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS3BC0B0A1-D48C-4271-891D-DA04EF388E29.html
So, there are two ways to move your photos to an external drive:
a) do it within Lr and Lr will keep on top of the moved files;
b) If you want to move the image files in Win Explorer / Mac Finder it is best you create one (1) parent folder that contains - in various sub-folders - all of your images. Do this in Lr.
Then - in Win Explorer / Mac Finder - you move the parent folder with all its sub-folders to the external drive. When you open Lr again it will show - in the folders panel - a question mark besides each folder. You then have to do the <Find missing folder> routine:
Locate missing folders
If a folder is moved in the operating system instead of in Lightroom, the link between the catalog and the folder breaks, and a question-mark icon appears on the folder in the Folders panel.
To restore the link, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) on the folder and choose Find Missing Folder from the context menu.
Navigate to the file path of the moved folder and click Choose.

Moving Picture Files to External Hard Drive

I have been using PE3 on my desktop computer for about a year. I am now scanning several thousand photos from slides using my laptop and a Windows file structure and will soon incorporate them into PE3 with my other photos soon.
Given HD space limits on my desktop computer, I plan to begin storing all my photos on an external hard drive.
1. What is the best method to move the existing PE3 files to the other drive? I understand that some methods lose the file structure that exists. Is that true?
2. What is the best method to incorporate the scanned photos into the PE3 system? I guess I can copy the files into the new HD structure and then inport the photos into PE3.
I would be interested in inputs from someone who had made such a change.
Please help,
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Doug
Just to add to Gary's answer
Can you clarify if you are using the Organizer or not. You say "a Windows file structure." Is this a folder based system and you use Windows Explorer for file management-renaming, moving, deleting, etc.
If this is the case, you can simply move the photos without any trouble.
If you use Organizer and have images tagged or built into collections, you should move the images inside of Organizer. Otherwise the underlying MS Access database does not get updated and this is when photos "get lost" in Elements.
A second option would be to move your pictures outside or Organizer and then do a File>Reconnect>All Missing Files. If the only change is a different drive letter, it should find them on the new drive. You'll have to "accept" these changes.
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Moving a catalog from hardrive to external drive

I am trying to move a catalog from my hardrive to an external drive. I have followed the steps i found online, but my pictures aren't there. They are still on hardrive and the catalog folder on the external is empty. Please help. I am sure there is something silly I am missing.

As Steve has already pointed out, the "catalog" and your photos are two different things. The "catalog" is the LR data base where LR references your photos.
So for LR to work properly you always need two things: (a) your photos and (b) the catalog.
The catalog is the file ending with < .lrcat>. See here where you can find the catalog in various OS: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/843/cpsid_84313.html
These are the default locations; you can put your catalog in a different location, and you can have it also on an external hard drive, provided that it is one with a fast connection. The USB connection is too slow, it is therefore not recommended to put the catalog on an USB drive.
The catalog and the photos do NOT have to be in the same location. So you can move your photos to an external hard drive and leave your catalog on an internal drive.
If you move your photos via your OS (Mac Finder / Win Explorer) you will have to re-connect LR with the new location of the photos.
WW

Is there a way I can edit pictures in Lightroom 5 on my mac and be able to switch to my pc if I have my catalog and my pictures on an external hard drive?

Hi,
I have a MacBook Pro and I also have a Wacom Cintiq companion and I would like to be able to edit my pictures on both the computers. I prefer using my mac but sometimes, when I need to be more precise with my editing, I like to use my Wacom Cintiq companion. I followed the steps to install my catalog and pictures on an external hard drive, then added the ''Folder'' of pictures in both computers but the problem I have is that since a PC and a Mac doesn't read the hard drive ''root'' the same way, it creates a second folder on my mac that I can't have access and I am not able to edit pictures on one computer and keep them on the other computer.
Can someone help me??
Here is an exemple of what I get ...

Contact the Apple account security team for your country and request assistance: Apple ID: Contacting Apple for help with Apple ID account security. If you can prove your identity to them, they can reset the password and help you regain control of the account.

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I recently bought a new Mac Book Pro. I have quite number of pictures on an external HDD that I wish to move onto my new laptop, then on to my iPhone 5. How do I do this (step by step please)?

I would recommend restarting your media migration and use Migration Assistant, it's the easiest and quickest method. AppleCare can help you through that, when you call let them know the history so they can help you start with a clean slate. If you have an Apple Store in your area I'd strongly recommend booking an appointment with a Genuis who can walk you through the process. If you want to go to the trouble of bringing your iMac and EHD with you they will also help you.

Moving Time Machine backups from Time Capsule to External USB Drive

Hi all,
hoping someone out there can help I'm trying to move my time machine backups from my old Time Capsule to my external USB drive. I've already used the Airport Utility to "archive" my Time Capsule to a USB connected WD MyBook Elite.
Right now my WD MyBook Elite has both the archive, and recent (roughly 5 backups) of both my MacBook & MacMini. I've tried to follow the seemingly simple steps located in the FAQ's here [URL="http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html#id22"]Copy NETWORK backups to be used LOCALLY[/URL] , but I cannot past step 1.
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
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Any advice?
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
Thank you in advance.

Dark Heart wrote:
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
There is no option to "Ignore Ownership" in Snow Leopard for the Spars Bundle or when expanding it to see its folders.
That's not referring to the sparse bundle you're copying FROM, but the new volume you just formatted on the USB drive you're copying TO.
If you didn't just format the partition, that box may not be shown -- it not, there's no problem and you don't need to do anything in that step.
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
I'm not sure what you mean by that: you cannot combine the backups of two different Macs. You can put them both on the same hard drive, either in two different partitions, or, if any are going to be backed-up over a network, in a sparse bundle.
If I've misunderstood, please clarify exactly what you're trying to do.

Moving entire iTunes library to external USB hard drive

My internal hard drive is nearly full. I need to move the entire current 10 GB iTunes library of songs, podcasts, album art, etc. to a 300 GB external USB hard drive with plenty of space. Within a few weeks I'll get a new replacement computer with a much larger internal hard drive and will want to relocate the iTunes library again onto the new machine. The iTunes Help Forum had some tips but explained "From now on, new songs & other items are stored in the new location. Songs you've already imported stay in their current location." That doesn't help. I won't be importing anything new until I've gotten my new computer and am running iTunes on it. Any help is very much appreciated.

Copy /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external.
To use this folder, hold Shift and launch iTunes.
Select *Choose library*.
Select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.
Make sure the external is connected and ready before launching iTunes.
When you get your new computer, copy the entire iTunes folder from the external to /Music/ on the new computer.

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I moved LR5 catalog (Irdata & Ircat) to a new hard drive and photos. Lost all meta data - How do I move meta data along with catalog?
The meta data for each image is missing.
I have over 2,000 images. I don't want to go back through each image and add meta data.
Is there some way to move everything?

No, do not re-import your images. I assume you can see the thumbnails in the library module, just cannot access the full images, right? If this is the case there should be an exclamation mark in the top right corner of every one of your pictures and you only have to tell LR where the images are now.
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Moving My Catalog PSE 13

Ok I hope someone can assist me. So I used the Move/Copy to another drive I moved all of my pictures using this command and now I have a mess. I use to have all of pictures neatly tucked away in individual folders. I needed to free up some space on my hard drive. Now all of my photos or at least most of them moved to the external hard drive but now I don't have any folders and there still are many pictures still remaining on Hard Drive. To make matters worse I thought I would do a back to the same external drive but I forgot to make a separate folder and now I have a mess. If anyone has a solution for this it would be greatly appreciated.

KJSMN a écrit:
Ok I hope someone can assist me. So I used the Move/Copy to another drive I moved all of my pictures using this command and now I have a mess. I use to have all of pictures neatly tucked away in individual folders. I needed to free up some space on my hard drive. Now all of my photos or at least most of them moved to the external hard drive but now I don't have any folders and there still are many pictures still remaining on Hard Drive.
The command 'Copy/move' is similar the 'Export' command. It works on individual files, not on folder trees or branches. The result always gets into the folder you have chosen.
What you want to do is to 'move' a folder tree or a part of it to another location. It's not moving the catalog (the database where the details and location on the drive of the pictures are kept) it's moving the pictures themselves while keeping their structure in the Explorer/Finder. I'd call that moving a 'library' or part of a library.
Keep in mind that 'moving' is only an image, a metaphor in computer language. You really first Copy something somewhere, then you Delete the original files.
How to do this library move ? If you do it from the Explorer/Finder by drag and drop or the menu, that seems easy, but the catalog is not updated, so you'll have to 'reconnect' your files. If you do it by small batches, that can work well.
It's recommended to do it from the Organizer itself. In the left folders panel, depending on the Elements version, you show the folder tree just like in the explorer/finder. You drag and drop, and the Organizer updates the path for the files in the catalog database.
Organizer: Moving folder trees or branches - Elements Village
To make matters worse I thought I would do a back to the same external drive but I forgot to make a separate folder and now I have a mess. If anyone has a solution for this it would be greatly appreciated.
You should deal with that problem first. Your backup has stored a number of copies of your files in a wrong folder, and you want to delete them. Most of those files begin by B00... It's relatively easy to find them and to delete them. That should recover most of the space on your drive.
The problem you have left now is that you have lost your folder tree structure. If you had no backup, there is no way to restore it exactly. It's possible to use other data in the catalog to create a new folder structure based on dates (recorded from exif in the picture files), on albums or themes like events or places. You select pictures corresponding to a specific empty folder and you move them there.
My advice is to keep the new structure simple since that does not add any advantage to using the catalog and its virtual organization of categories and keywords.

PSE 8 - move catalog from external to internal HD

On my old computer, I moved my catalog from an internal hard drive to an external one. After ages and ages of reconnecting files, I backed it up, put the external HD on the new computer, and restored it. Now I want to copy or move all the files from the slow external HD to the faster internal one. But I can't figure out how to do this? Only the catalog moved but not the individual files.
Any suggestions?

Excellent point. I should have been more specific.
What I did was:
File->backup catalog to CD, DVD or Hard Drive
followed by
File->restore catalog from CD, DVD or Hard Drive
I then selected restore files and catalog to new location, specified a new location on drive C, and selected restore original folder structure.
After all that, I have all my photos but when I click on show properties for one of them, it lists its location as being on the external HD and not the internal drive C.
Hope this helps.

Moving Files to an External Drive

I need some help.... I just bought a new external USB drive. (1 TB) and I am now wanting to move some of the bigger files (all my iTunes library, iPhoto library, and iMovie library) to the external drive. I want to do it with the littlest amount of disconnivence possible. In other words, I don't want any messages showing up telling me that it can't find the files. So I suppose what I am asking is what is the best, and easiest way to go about moving files to the drive. Thanks

if you don't want to move your entire home folder, then the easiest way to do this is by using symbolic links.
Use my [post|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7044223&#7044223] for instructions. It explains how to do it for the Documents folder but you can do the same with your Music or Movies folders.

Back up - large files - external USB drive - copy failure

Just the facts:
I cannot backup my Music folder to an external USB FAT32 drive. I have no large single files over the FAT32 limit of 4GB. The copy process stops at various amounts progess: 500MB to 6GB. My Music folder is ~16GB total in size. I recently did a clean install from Tiger. I had no issues moving my 14GB Music folder in Tiger to this same external drive.
1) Has anyone solved this?
2) Has anyone talked to Apple support in a store or over the phone on this?
3) Anyway to highlight a (likely) important issue with Leopard to the Apple folks?
There are numerous posts all dealing with moving/copying large files. Seems to be a common issue to Time Machine, iDisk, external drives, copying large folders to Desktop, and others.
Cheers,
MostlyHarmless
PS New Mac user and really like it so far. I realize these are just Leopard "birth pains."

This is the Windows forum, not the Mac forum.
But it's the same. Simply drag the iTunes folder to the external drive.
Or use a backup prgroam such as SuperDuper!
You do have a bootable backup of your internal HD, correct?

I have a first generation apple tv synced to a itunes library on an external USB drive. Movies and Music Won't Play

Here's my setup. First Generation Apple TV. G4 Powermac running OS X 10.5.8 iTunes 10 with the Library stored on an External 3 Terabyte USB 2 drive. It's plugged into a PCI USB 2 card. Everything worked fine till I transferred my iTunes library to the external USB drive. Things seem to sync up fine. I have it set to copy TV shows to the Apple TV's internal drive and that seems to work but when I try to play music or movies that are streaming from the library, I get an error. With movies I get the "The selected video cannot be played. The format was not recognized." error. The movie and music list seems up to date but now it won't play. Did I waste my money on this external drive? How do I get this setup to work?

I don't think this will be a complete answer to your question, but may point you in the right direction.
I have a similar setup (same OS X and iTunes versions), but my library is on a network attached 2TB harddrive (vs a USB 2 drive). Mine works fine, both syncing (which you don't have a problem with) and streaming. It's possible that iTunes doesn't like the USB 2 drive, but I don't know. Are you able to watch TV shows on your PowerMac after having moved the files to the USB drive? If you can watch content on your laptop but not on your AppleTV, it suggests the Apple TV doesn't like the USB drive.
Perhaps you didn't transfer iTunes library content correctly. (Forgive me if I'm telling you things you already know.) The iTunes library consists of a list of content and it's location (local harddrive, network drive, etc.). If you simply moved the files, but didn't actually update the library with the new locations, this can explain why you can't stream the content. The Apple TV displays what is in the library, but cannot play it if the library entry is pointing to the wrong location. Note: This "library update" I'm referring to is not the same as simply changing the iTunes media folder location in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced.
When I moved my content to an external drive, I had to delete everything in my iTunes Library, then re-import everything (File > Add to library). Don't let the phrase "delete everything in my iTunes library" freak you out. Deleting entries in the library is not the same as deleting the files (which you definitely do NOT want to do).
If you select an item in your iTunes library and press the Delete button, it asks for confirmation thus:
Are you sure you want to delete the selected TV show from your iTunes library?
It's OK to answer "Delete TV Show". It will then ask you if you want to delete the file. Do NOT delete the file. You can select your entire library and delete everything at once, just make sure you do NOT delete the files when it asks. When that is done, make sure the iTunes Media Folder Location is set to where you want and that the files are there. Then, go to File, Add to Library and re-import everything. It will take several minutes to more than an hour, depending on the speed of your computer and the size of your library.
I have had to do this everytime I've moved my library to different storage devices. If there is a simpler way, I am not aware of it.
I hope this helps.

Moving Pictures & Catalog to External USB HD (5.0)

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