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Exporting Folders into new External Hard Drive (without photos)

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Maryarena

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Aug 10, 2008
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Hi,

I currently have two external hard drives where I have all my bird photos classified into folders by the name of the bird. There are more or less a hundred. I have one external hard drive where I import all the photos to and the other external where I backup the first external hard drive every night. They are getting full and I will soon have to purchase two more, but I was wondering how I could export all the folder hierarchy into the new external hard drive. It surely will be a chore to have to create each one again.

Thank you!

Gloria
 
Hi Gloria, good to see you posting again!

Are you Mac or Windows? My first thought would be to copy the contents of the drives over to the new drives using Explorer/Finder (or better still, file sync software with verification), and then rename/reletter the new drives to match the old drives. LR wouldn't even know the difference that way! You certainly shouldn't need to recreate the hierarchy whichever way we do things.
 
Hi Gloria, good to see you posting again!

Are you Mac or Windows? My first thought would be to copy the contents of the drives over to the new drives using Explorer/Finder (or better still, file sync software with verification), and then rename/reletter the new drives to match the old drives. LR wouldn't even know the difference that way! You certainly shouldn't need to recreate the hierarchy whichever way we do things.

Oh, I'm so sorry, I never had read your reply! I'm actually really having to do this now as the hard drives are really full.

I have a Mac. My problem is this: I'm a bird photographer. I have a folder with all the Classified Species listed under the "Classified" folder. There are many folders.

I am going to add two more external drives. I will do as I have done until now, add new photos to one external and have SuperDuper mirror the drive to the other hard drive nightly.

I want to be able to have access to the two main external drives and have access to all my birds. I've been practicing and I added another Classified folder to my internal hard drive and then imported it to the Birds catalog. Now I have the Macintosh drive and my external Bird drive in the catalog. My problem is that I can't add the new photos of for example, a hummingbird to it's original folder, because it's in the older external hard drive, which is full. So I have to make a new folder with the hummingbird species in the internal hard drive. I end up with two folders of the same hummingbird in the catalog. It seems that for me to be able to work with all my birds, I will have to make a new folder for every bird again. I was thinking that maybe at least I could export the folder hierarchy without the photos?

As you can see, it's a mess. I could just buy two 2 terra hard drives and export everything there, but then eventually the same thing is going to happen and I would have too many photos in one place.

I am imagining how confusing this must seem to you. Sorry and just ask anything.

Thank you!

Gloria
 
Another Approach:
50 Folders stay, 50 folders move to the new drive, means split your system instead of duplicate it.For LR no problem to handle two drives.
Franz
 
Exactly what I was thinking Franz. But yes Gloria, you're right, the same would happen again. Big drives are pretty cheap now, so worth considering.

Have you considered using keywords for the names of the birds, instead of folders? That would avoid the issue entirely - you could keep the photos in folders for each year, and just add a new hard drive for a new year when you run out, but you'd be able to search all of your photos by keyword.
 
...Have you considered using keywords for the names of the birds, instead of folders? That would avoid the issue entirely - you could keep the photos in folders for each year, and just add a new hard drive for a new year when you run out, but you'd be able to search all of your photos by keyword.
this is exactly how I manage my birds and other plant and animal life. I use common names as the key word and the taxonomic name as the synonym. From there it is easy to create a smart publish service or smart collection. Here is an example that searches for the parent key word (Ornithology) and returns every completed bird photo that I want published at Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cletuslee/sets/72157630689158200/
 
Another Approach:
50 Folders stay, 50 folders move to the new drive, means split your system instead of duplicate it.For LR no problem to handle two drives.
Franz

Yes, that could be a possibility, but then they eventually would get full too. Definitely a larger drive is needed. Thank you!!
 
Exactly what I was thinking Franz. But yes Gloria, you're right, the same would happen again. Big drives are pretty cheap now, so worth considering.

Have you considered using keywords for the names of the birds, instead of folders? That would avoid the issue entirely - you could keep the photos in folders for each year, and just add a new hard drive for a new year when you run out, but you'd be able to search all of your photos by keyword.

Yes, a bigger drive is needed. Too many photos! Thank you Victoria!
 
Exactly what I was thinking Franz. But yes Gloria, you're right, the same would happen again. Big drives are pretty cheap now, so worth considering.

Have you considered using keywords for the names of the birds, instead of folders? That would avoid the issue entirely - you could keep the photos in folders for each year, and just add a new hard drive for a new year when you run out, but you'd be able to search all of your photos by keyword.

Hmmm....do you know that most of my photos do have their keywords. All in the Classified folders have for example :Aves, Birds, Canon 7D, Dendroica angelae, Elfin-woods Warbler, Maricao, Puerto Rico, Reinita de Bosque Enano. I really have to look at this possibility. It's that I'm so picky at organizing that I wanted them all in their respective folders. Hmmm....classify by year and keywords. I think this is where I must be heading. Thank you, Victoria!
 
this is exactly how I manage my birds and other plant and animal life. I use common names as the key word and the taxonomic name as the synonym. From there it is easy to create a smart publish service or smart collection. Here is an example that searches for the parent key word (Ornithology) and returns every completed bird photo that I want published at Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cletuslee/sets/72157630689158200/

I do have them organized also by keywords with their Common names in English and Spanish and Scientific name, plus location, etc. etc. This is an example of the keywords in a photo: Aves, Birds, Canon 7D, Dendroica angelae, Elfin-woods Warbler, Maricao, Puerto Rico, Reinita de Bosque Enano So, I'm thinking this is the solution. The thing is that I have to make sure and have my Unclassified folder up to date. Beautiful photos you have there! You can view some of mine at Flickr too, http://www.flickr.com/photos/10532430@N00/sets Thank you so much!!
 
Cletus, I also have to learn how to use the Synonym option. At this moment, when I add a name to the bird, LR automatically lists the scientific name as an option and I add it. I still have lots to learn. Thank you!

Thanks so much to everyone that has contributed to my question. It is very much appreciated!

Gloria
 
I do have them organized also by keywords with their Common names in English and Spanish and Scientific name, plus location, etc. etc. This is an example of the keywords in a photo: Aves, Birds, Canon 7D, Dendroica angelae, Elfin-woods Warbler, Maricao, Puerto Rico, Reinita de Bosque Enano So, I'm thinking this is the solution. The thing is that I have to make sure and have my Unclassified folder up to date. Beautiful photos you have there! You can view some of mine at Flickr too, http://www.flickr.com/photos/10532430@N00/sets Thank you so much!!
It is possible to manage your complete workflow from the import dialog to publish through keywords, Smart Collections and smart Publish Collections. This is how I do it. Everything is managed in LR and I never access my original source master images outside of LR. I do not keep any derivative JPEGs except for some for dedicated slideshows on my GoogleTV and a few that I might print with an outside printer.

I keep only my active current three months of photos on a local drive, Images older that three months go onto an EHD and recently I started focus stacking insects. This generates hundreds of originals and an equal number of TIFFs to produce one derivative final image. I have taken to importing these onto a third EHD. My Lightroom Master catalog manages everything in the folder panel. Most of the time however, in LR I keep the folder panel hidden since it is of no importance what folder a source file is stored, and folders are not a part of my workflow.

BTW, if the Puerto Rican Lizard Cuckoo eats Cuban Anoles, I want some!. Cuban Anoles are a local invasive pest and eat my butterfly larvae.
 
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Ha, ha, you might want the Yellow billed Cuckoo, which is not endemic and similar to the Puerto Rican for those Cuban Anoles :) I am really interested and impressed how to learn to use LR keywords instead of folders. It will take some learning and getting used to as I'm and organization freak and although I would be organized, it's a whole different approach. Right now I'm working with my "Unclassified folder" (no keywrods). That I have to eliminate, if I am going to work this way.

Thank you very much!!

Gloria
 
One caution about losing your folders. As a one-time archivist and currently a librarian, it is not thought to be the best practice to "lose" your folders. If everything is in one folder and you use keywords only to find things, what if in the future you wish to migrate the catalog into a new database that cannot read the LR keywords. Or, what if there is a major crash somewhere. With the folders you can still find what you need even without a database, just simply through Mac version of windows explorer. And, you can still depend on keywords for searches, but just keep the folder system in case... We won't get into file names here (which should have meaning to them, not just numbers or dates). : )

I know this issue comes up every now and again. I had a fuller statement on this a year or so ago, maybe it can be searched for.

Good luck

Munene

p.s. I also thought to just split your work onto two drives, with mirrored two drives as your backup. Also, you should keep a second backup off site (even if you only back it up every once in a while). Imagine if a storm comes and destroys all the hard drives!
 
Lightroom's keywords use industry standards when writing them to the files, so any photographic software should be able to read them.
 
Thank you so much for your input too, Munene. I now have learned what options I have. I am going to buy my 2 hard drives and decide. I have lots of my photos in Zenfolio, full size, but not RAW.

This has been a learning experience for me. I had no idea what to do.

I really appreciate all your help!

Gloria
 
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