sodacreek Loc: Ocala, FL

I am importing photos from my camera into Lightroom and then would like to export all of them prior to any edits to an external drive. Not having any success. Want to create a new folder on the external drive to export directly into from Lightroom, which I can't do either.
Leaving for Yellowstone next weekend and ill be taking a considerable number of photos and really don't want to park them all on my hard drive.
Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

sodacreek Loc: Ocala, FL

Also meant to say I am using a MacBook Pro which I am still learning to transition from a PC.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

While importing into LR select the option to make a 2nd copy on the external drive.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2011/09/lr3-make-a-second-copy-to.html

I know it says LR 3 but it's there in 5 as well

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Are you trying to move them, copy them, make backups, change file format, resize them or what? Exporting in Lightroom has many uses.

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

I'm having a little trouble figuring out just what you are trying to do. Are you saying you want your photo library to be on the external drive rather than on the internal hard drive? You can do that by creating a folder on the external drive and then, when importing, select that drive and folder on the external as the destination.

Importing photos to the internal drive and then exporting unedited files to the external will not free up any space on the internal drive because they will still exist there. Exporting them only creates another copy but does not erase the photo from the internal drive.

If you need more help, we are here!

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

It may also be worth noting LR doesn't change the original file so no need to worry about making a copy "prior to any edits"

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Except that, if you don't understand Export in Lightroom and are using it for backup files, you can be messing up.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

I quite agree hence the suggestion to choose a 2nd location copy while importing.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

It sounds like you want to move the photos from your Mac drive to you're external drive from within LR a. Is that correct? I just tried it and if there are no no photos from a LR catalog on the ext hard drive then LR adoes note show the drive.

In that case close LR and drag the folder to the external Hard drive using the Finder. Re open LR and relink them in LR. See the article at the link below which explains this in more detail

https://forums.adobe.com/message/5257734

brokeweb Loc: Philadelphia

I know LR gets really pissed off when you swap out hard drives. Every year, I swap out my hard drive with all of my raw and derivative (edited raw files) to archive. And every year, I need to re-install LR because it freezes with library error messages.

With all that bitchin, they way I configure my system is that it comprises of three hard drives. One hard drive for all of my system files. My second hard drive will contain all of my photos. My third hard drive contains all of my backup files. So if anyone of the first two die, I can recover from my third hard drive. On my photographs hard drive I separate my imports (raw/dng) and my edits (derivatives).

When I import into LR , I configure it that it automatically finds my raw folder and I create a new subfolder with the date/descriptive name. Then I do my LR edits, open the file in PhotoShop or whatever, then do my other edits, then create a file with an identical name in my derivative folder. This way, I have a couple different references, for the same image. Same file number but different format.

I would stay away from those little passport drives. I have heard horror stories about them. If you drop it. it's toast. I just pull out my hard drive, slap it into an enclosure, then plug it in when I need a file.

I don't know if you followed my with my explanation of my workflow, but it seems to work for me.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Purchase an enterprise-class hard drive - or a heavy duty enthusiast-class drive - like a Western Digital Black or a WD RE. These drives are robust and designed for an increased duty cycle. Then purchase an actively vented (fan equipped) enclosure, like the Rosewill RX-358 U3C USB 3 case from Rosewill. I am a PC guy so I am not sure which case is Thunderbolt enabled. but if you are on Mac, this would make more sense. Heat is the enemy of hard drives, and having active ventilation will help them last longer.

Then make sure that your Lightroom catalog and files are in one location on your hard drive, easy to copy (back up) to a separate device (the hard drive you just put together). Import you images using a card reader (better than the camera, since USB connectors on cameras are somewhat fragile and have been known to break). When you are done with the import, sync the data on your computer with the data on your external drive, so that it has an exact duplicate of what is on your computer.

This backup is a perfect copy of everything in the Lightroom catalog. In fact, if you wanted to do no editing on computer's drive and wanted a portable LR catalog and image store, you could tell LR to open the external volume instead of the computer's version of the catalog and edit away. When you are done you would sync the external drive to the computer's drive.

sodacreek Loc: Ocala, FL

I spent quite some time on chat with Apple last night and the problem is the external drive itself. Since I moved from Windows to Mac the drive has to be reformatted. The drive preferences is "read only" thereby not allowing me to create a new folder. I can however import images from the drive to Lightroom.
I think I will just purchase a new drive.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Or just reformat the drive.

sodacreek Loc: Ocala, FL

I would like to do as you suggest, just haven't figured out how to do it yet. Plan to work on that issue tonight after work.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

This should save you some time:

http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/04/format-an-external-hard-drive-or-usb-flash-drive-for-mac-os-x/