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Attaching a external hard drive to Lightroom classic
Aug 20, 2019 10:58:22   #
Dbrogers Loc: Shenandoah, Iowa
 
Good morning, I recently had a WD USB external HD crash ( this is the second one in two years). The steps that I use to get my photos into Lightroom is download them on my external HD and then add them into LR. I purchased a new external HD to start over, put can’t remember exactly how to get LR to see my external HD once I open LR. I was wondering if anyone has a good YouTube video that shows the steps how LR recognizes my external HD? I have a Mac desktop. I’d appreciate any help.

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Aug 20, 2019 11:06:38   #
DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area
 
Not a video, but maybe this will help:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/move-photos-another-hard-drive-leaving-catalog/

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Aug 20, 2019 11:25:14   #
sandiegosteve Loc: San Diego, CA
 
Make sure you can see the left panel and the one with the drives should be there (where you see your folders). In the header for it there is a "+" (plus) sign.

If you just give your new drive the same letter, LR won't know the difference.

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Aug 20, 2019 13:55:24   #
Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)
 
Dbrogers wrote:
Good morning, I recently had a WD USB external HD crash ( this is the second one in two years). The steps that I use to get my photos into Lightroom is download them on my external HD and then add them into LR. I purchased a new external HD to start over, put can’t remember exactly how to get LR to see my external HD once I open LR. I was wondering if anyone has a good YouTube video that shows the steps how LR recognizes my external HD? I have a Mac desktop. I’d appreciate any help.


If you are using My Book or My Passport or any other sort of mfgr-packaged external hard drive solution you are wasting your money. Buy an enterprise/datacenter-quality drive - and put it into a fan-vented case (Rosewill- $35) - You'll get a drive with a 5 yr warranty and you can stop buying sleep aids.

As far as transferring your data from one drive to another, copy the files, using the parent folder (not individual folders) from one drive to the next. Open Lightroom - and your top level or parent folder will have a question mark on it - right click and tell LR to go find your files, which will open Finder and you'll be able to point LR to that drive.

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Aug 20, 2019 16:09:31   #
Dbrogers Loc: Shenandoah, Iowa
 
Thanks, for the information

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Aug 21, 2019 08:03:41   #
whitehall Loc: Canada
 
Dbrogers wrote:
Thanks, for the information


Just don't forget that once you imported your images, all further transfers must be done in LR’s left panel!

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Aug 21, 2019 08:10:34   #
mborn Loc: Massachusetts
 
whitehall wrote:
Just don't forget that once you imported your images, all further transfers must be done in LR’s left panel!



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Aug 21, 2019 08:17:00   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
Assuming your catalog looks for the photos on the drive that failed, the easiest thing is to (1) make sure your new drive has the same folder structure as the old drive, and (2) make sure your disk name is the same as the old name. That way the path will not have changed and LR will see all your images where they were before.

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Aug 21, 2019 08:31:12   #
Fotomacher Loc: Toronto
 
Dbrogers wrote:
Good morning, I recently had a WD USB external HD crash ( this is the second one in two years). The steps that I use to get my photos into Lightroom is download them on my external HD and then add them into LR. I purchased a new external HD to start over, put can’t remember exactly how to get LR to see my external HD once I open LR. I was wondering if anyone has a good YouTube video that shows the steps how LR recognizes my external HD? I have a Mac desktop. I’d appreciate any help.


It may be a “closing the barn door” comment, but I have 2 external drives attached to my iMac, one is primary and used exactly as you noted and the other is redundant and used to backup the primary. And I have a subscription to BackBlaze which backs everything to the cloud regularly. I have over 30,000 images and can’t afford to lose anything.

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Aug 21, 2019 12:04:13   #
jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ
 
Dbrogers wrote:
Good morning, I recently had a WD USB external HD crash ( this is the second one in two years). The steps that I use to get my photos into Lightroom is download them on my external HD and then add them into LR. I purchased a new external HD to start over, put can’t remember exactly how to get LR to see my external HD once I open LR. I was wondering if anyone has a good YouTube video that shows the steps how LR recognizes my external HD? I have a Mac desktop. I’d appreciate any help.


If you have a few of the files on that new external HD you can open LR, make sure it's in Library Panel (you can see all the little squares of pictures) Then open Finder on your Mac, and drag the folder that you put those pictures on to the center of LR where all the little squares are (thumbnails) and drop. This will put those pictures in the LR Catalog. Now it should be as it was and you can either import them the way you used to or you can keep importing them this way. This way is the way a teacher taught us in a class he was teaching. It's pretty easy.

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Aug 21, 2019 20:53:09   #
via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP
 
To see a new external drive in LR simply click on the + to create a new folder, then navigate to the external hard drive that you want to link up to LR. You can delete this folder after you move whatever it is you want to move.

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