Replace symbolic links with actual file

Question

Hello everybody,
I have recently decided to move my seven iPhoto collections from an old external drive with insufficient capacity to a new bigger one. We talk some 50.000+ photos. Up to a couple of years ago, I had decided NOT to let iPhoto import the photos into its internal library, but I left the originals in a distinct directory external to the iPhoto package.
Moving the iPhoto packages from the old to the new disk, I ran into a problem with the links to this external directory once I had retired the old external drive … because all links to the external originals broke.
Here an example:
- The old drive is called MOBIL
- The new drive is called Photos
In the directory /Volumes/Photos/iPhoto Library 1999 - 2002/Masters/2000/ESRIN, I find a symbolic link named:
/Volumes/Photos/iPhoto Library 1999 - 2002/Masters/2000/ESRIN/DCP_0211.JPG
In a terminal session this file is: -rw-rw-rw-@ 1 js  0 29 Okt  2006 DCP_0211.JPG
The original is correctly reported as /Volumes/MOBIL/Eigene Bilder - Jurgen/Fotos/2000/09 September/ESRIN/DCP_0211.JPG
Of course, iPhoto does not find the original once I remove the volume MOBIL.
I see two possible solutions to this issue:
1. Replace the broken symbolic link /Volumes/MOBIL/... with the new one /Volumes/Photos
2. Replace the symbolic link with the actual file, i.e., copy each file from MOBIL to Photos (I don't care about the additional disk space used by this)
I'd prefer solution 2 but my UNIX knowledge is not sufficient to automate this task - we are talking hundreds of directories and thousands of files …
Any idea ho to achieve the above ? Any utility around ? Any other idea ?
Many thanks in advance - Jurgen

Answer 1

I believe that /Volumes normally contains a single symbolic link to the boot volume, and that all the other items there are not true symbolic links but are rather "mount points" which are managed dynamically by the system. Try running
ls -l /Volumes
in Terminal and you will see that all the items except for the boot volume show up as directories, and that only the boot volume item is a symbolic link. When you look at /Volumes in Finder (via Go To Folder) , the mount point icons have curved "alias" arrows and are labeled "alias", similar to symbolic links,  but they are different entities.
With respect to the iPhoto paths, if you still have the old drive I think I would try cloning it to the new one so that the contents of the new drive are identical, disconnecting the old drive, and then renaming the new drive to match the name of the old drive. Then launch iPhoto and see if it finds everything.