LR 2 Catalogue question

xxredmaxx

xxredmaxx

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Hi

For the last few years I have stored al my photographs on an external HDD.
I have set up a catalogue within LR 2 and everything works fine.

I have filled the drive up now, so I purchased a NAS with 2 x 1TB drives and have copied the contents of my external drive to the NAS.

My question is ... what is the best way to keep continuity of my existing catalogue.
Is it best to point LR 2 to the new location for the existing catalogue? If so How?
....or is it better to create a brand new catalogue? If so how?

What would you do?

Thanks
 
It would have been better to move the pictures WITHIN Lightroom. Do the pictures show a question mark now? If so right click and show in explorer - then find - navigate to the new location and tick find similar (or some such wording) - LR will find the pictures and update the catalogue for you.
 
I thought you couldn't have catalogues on network drives. am sure thats the error I got when I tried it
 
I would open up your catalogue in LR with both HDs connected then

File - Export as catalogue, ticking export negative files and export to your new HD.

You can then move the catalogue file back to your PC hard drive if you wish
 
Keep you catalog on you existing computer. I believe you can use a catalog on a network drive but you have to mount it as a drive on your machine. Personaly I'd keep on your computer, but back up to the NAS.

I wouldn't let Lightroom move the files. I've had the occasional problem with this on both PC and Mac. I'd copy the files to the new locations, then let LR update the location.You do this by right clicking on the root folder and select "Update folder location"

This means that if anything goes wrong ( hopefully it wont) you still have the orriginals on your computer. Once you are 200% sure everything is OK delete the images on your computer.
 
Wow
I just logged on at work and just seen al of the advice.
Thanks guys fr the input whcih seems to be varied.

Looks like I jumped the gun and copied over to the NAS prematurely.

When I get home tonight I will look at all of the options suggested and see whats best.

I like Chappers suggestion which was what I was groping toward I think.

Thanks for al the helpful advice I will report back with result or further request for help;)
 
I think there is a bit of confusion here between catalogs and the files referenced by the catalogs. The catalog file (.lrcat?) is best stored locally, but the image files referenced by the catalog can be stored

In answer to the OP, the best way would have been to move the images withing Lightroom, infact, if you still can (ie have the image files on the old external HD and haven't added anything to the catalog since) I would delete the images off the new drive and move them there from within Lightroom.

The other option is to open Lightroom without the old external HD connected, all the thumbnails in your library module will have a "?" (as will the folders in the folder explorer bit). It is then just a case of clicking on the ? and pointing to the files on your NAS. If they are all in one parent folder, it may be easier to do it with the folder explorer, but with Lightroom, there is typically 3 or 4 ways of doing anything...
 
I've been going through a similar process of moving files from my main hard-drive to a NAS, and found the best way to it was:
  1. Map a network drive for the NAS (I map P: to the /Photos folder in my NAS as I'm also using the NAS for other storage, but I think the key for simplicity is to map the drive to the root folder that your photos are going into.)
  2. Open lightroom, and then click and drag the folders you want to move from their current location to the root of the drive you just mapped.
  3. Optimise the catalogue - when I moved a few thousand files across, LR started to seem sluggish. I assumed it was just because they were network files, but optimising made a huge difference.)
  4. I generated previews for the all the files that are on the network drive. This took quite a while (I let it run overnight, so not sure how long it took) but it means that I can search through images etc even when I'm not connected to the network drive. This will be particularly useful if your working from a laptop)
 
markrichardson said:
I've been going through a similar process of moving files from my main hard-drive to a NAS, and found the best way to it was:
  1. Map a network drive for the NAS (I map P: to the /Photos folder in my NAS as I'm also using the NAS for other storage, but I think the key for simplicity is to map the drive to the root folder that your photos are going into.)
  2. Open lightroom, and then click and drag the folders you want to move from their current location to the root of the drive you just mapped.
  3. Optimise the catalogue - when I moved a few thousand files across, LR started to seem sluggish. I assumed it was just because they were network files, but optimising made a huge difference.)
  4. I generated previews for the all the files that are on the network drive. This took quite a while (I let it run overnight, so not sure how long it took) but it means that I can search through images etc even when I'm not connected to the network drive. This will be particularly useful if your working from a laptop)
Click to expand...

Hi Mark

Thanks for the advice.
I will not be using one of the HDD in the NAS for anything except Photos. I have created a share in the NAS and mapped the share as a drive P:
Can you refresh my memory ...how do you optomise the catalogue?

Looks like I've got a bit to do for the next few evenings!

Thansk again.
 
EDIT, CATALOG SETTINGS then it's in a wee box which says RELAUNCH AND OPTIMISE.
 
In Lightroom go to Edit, Catalog Settings and then Relaunch and Optimise.

Edit - seems Mike got there before me!
 
Sorry, thought you were away.
 
No need to apologise - that's the thing I like about this forum: plenty of knowledgeable people around who are willing to answer questions!
 
.....Just to let you all know that I pointed LR to the new location on the NAS and it done its stuff and everything seems fine.

I have kept the original files on the old external HDD just in case and I am going to run a back up of the NAS on a scheduled basis just to be sure :D



Thanks again for the help.
 
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