streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

About 4 years ago someone set up my portable external storage drive (Lacie 2 TB) so when I opened LR my photo dates, folders and collections showed on the left panel. This external drive was slowing down and getting near capacity so I transferred the images to a new drive. Could someone explain how to get the new drive synced with LR as my old drive did? My new external portable drive is a 4TB WD. Also, could you tell me the most efficient way of backing up this drive.

Thanks,
David

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You didn't state your OS (Operating System). On a Windows system, the external drive is assigned a letter (B - Z, with certain values reserved). You should assure your new 4TB drive is assigned the same letter as your old 2TB drive. Also, the folder structure should remain the same.

So, if the 2TB drive was called 'G' when connected to your computer and used with LR, the easiest way to use the 4TB drive is to copy all the contents from the 2TB to the 4TB and then connect the 4TB to the computer as 'G'. Use google on "assign same drive letter to multiple usb drives" to find various references for how to assign the same drive letter to the 4TB drive when connected to your computer. Similar instructions apply to a Mac.

You can have both drives connected to the computer at once, but only one of the two can use the example 'G' assignment. After copying the files to the 4TB, this drive would be the 'master' and should be connected first to the computer to pick-up the 'G' assignment.

LR knows the absolute location of the individual image files, example: g:\folder-name-a\sub-folder-y\IMG_0001.jpg. As long as the files can be found at the same drive letter, folder structure and file name, Lightroom does not 'know' anything has changed about the equipment where the file(s) resides.

streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

Sorry. It's a Mac Book Pro laptop.

David

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Within LR, assure the folders are displayed in the Library view. Find the highest level of the structure and right-click. (Or, right-click on any folder and select 'Show Parent'.) On the highest level folder (aka 'Parent'), right-click that folder and select Update Folder Location. With the new 4TB attached, navigate to the external drive and confirm to LR this new location.

streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

Thanks...I knew there was a trick to it.

Best,
David

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

For the back-up question, you might choose to subscribe to a cloud-based solution or buy another 4TB drive (or larger) and periodically copy files onto the secondary back-up.

streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

I will buy another drive and back it up. Thanks

streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

I named the new drive the same as the old drive and LR read it perfectly.

Thanks for the advice.

David

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

It's always a pleasure when technology works ....

traderjohn Loc: New York City

The technology works when someone knows how it works and passes along their knowledge in a manner you can understand. My eyes glassed over long before you explained the solution to his problem.

guardineer

Paul, I don't know you except through UHH but you certainly win my, make believe, Humble and Kind Award. (Stolen from Tim McGraw's song). Intelligent, sharing, motivating...thank you, Paul, for willingly sharing all of your insight.

streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

Thanks again. I have another related question. Now that I’ve copied all my images from a old and probably failing drive to a new 4 TB drive what’s the best way to now copy that to another similar drive for backup or should I just use time machine? David

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Thank you guardineer!

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

My situation is similar. I've gone from the 1TB to 2TB to 4TB USB drives and am starting to see the need to go higher. Although it takes forever, I just (initially) copy the entire contents of the primary HD to the secondary HD. Given these drives support images that mostly grow / change only for the newest files, I name my folders based on date (YYYYMMDD) and periodically copy new image folders onto the secondary drive. There's a window between this manual sync step when I could lose some new stuff because it wasn't copied onto the secondary / back-up. The cloud-based solutions address this risk with more immediate back-ups. I'm not running a business so this risk is tolerable vs the cost and effort (and need) I want to apply to maintaining a back-up.

streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

On the initial copy do I just drop and drag the entire contents on the the new drive?

Also if I back up every few weeks and just copy the new images onto the backup disk then the backup disk will not have the edits I made recently to older images. Is time machine more efficient?