# Using an External Hard Drive



## Tim Gilp (Oct 31, 2018)

I thought i was doing so well ! Have added an external hard drive to transfer my photos onto. Tried setting it up through lightroom but didnt find the hard drive at all - just didnt appear in the list. So went into Mac OS and set up a folder on the external hard drive. Copied and pasted the parent folder [ headed 2018 ] out of pictures into the new folder location on the new drive. Went into LR and right clicked on 2018 folder to relocate it and went into the external hard drive to choose the new folder to point LR to. It came up in the panel and i was so proud of myself! Anyway then went back into the pictures folder and deleted it to save some space. The pictures were and still are on the external drive so there was no danger of losing them. Anyway - restarted lightroom and the new hard drive is not detected !? However it is if i go on import [ ie i can see the drive ]  I thought maybe i should import so pressed that button but of course all the pictures just came back to the Mac hard drive ! Help what should i do. Incidentally the computer did crash a few times when i was doing the procedure and asked to send a crash report off. There were only 300 items copied so it was hardly overloaded.


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 31, 2018)

If your computer crashed a few times, then you have more serious problems than just Lightroom not seeing an external drive. MacOS X hardly ever crashes the entire computer. If that happens, it is usually a hardware issue. So I would first check the cable to that hard drive, maybe replace it by another one.


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## Roelof Moorlag (Oct 31, 2018)

The first thing to check is having good backups of all your photo's? When having hardwareproblems like this you better be sure.


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## Tim Gilp (Oct 31, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> If your computer crashed a few times, then you have more serious problems than just Lightroom not seeing an external drive. MacOS X hardly ever crashes the entire computer. If that happens, it is usually a hardware issue. So I would first check the cable to that hard drive, maybe replace it by another one.


Thanks for this. First off sorry , it was LR that seemed to crash not the computer and i have checked cable etc. given you can see the pictures on the hard drive [ external ] and you can see the hard drive when i go to the import screen on library i dont think this is a hardware issue. So i have the photos on the hard drive and when i open up the import screen the hard drive with folder and subfolders on is clearly visible on the left side.. It is also visible on the right hand side of the screen [ ie i could export to that drive ] so im not sure how to get LR connected with the new hard drive so it is seeing the pictures as sson as i open it up which is what it was doing before. Maybe i should import from the hard drive [ external ] and that will put a copy of the pictures back on the Mac. Then delete the pictures from the external drive and then copy again from the Mac in to external drive which i can see on the right side of the panel ? This way maybe because LR has done an import from the external drive it might see it next time around. Suggestions / help / mercy ?


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 1, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> If your computer crashed a few times, then you have more serious problems than just Lightroom not seeing an external drive. MacOS X hardly ever crashes the entire computer. If that happens, it is usually a hardware issue. So I would first check the cable to that hard drive, maybe replace it by another one.


Hi Johan and thanks . I now have no trouble with any crashing but still have issues with LR not seeing the external drive . I have successfully copied the folders and files from the Mac hard drive and they are on the external hard drive .  If I start LR up the hard drive doesn’t appear on the left panel even when I have told Lr where the folder is ( relocate folder ) given some of the reading I have done some say you have to import from the source for LR to connect to it . Now when I go to the import screen the external drive is visible with folders and RAW file in tact.Given the above advice I imported from the external drive but now have duplicates appearing in LR.  and , by association, on the Mac hard drive.  The good news is all the images and files are still on the external drive and they are in tact no problem.  Should I try relocating folder action again ? I feel tantalising close but not yet succeeding.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 1, 2018)

You really shouldn't try importing again, that is just complicating matters. Please post a screenshot of the Folders Panel in Lightroom.....if you originally did the "Update Folder Location" correctly, that drive should be visible in the Folders Panel. Make sure the screenshot shows all of the panel down to the Collections panel below (we don't need to see all the expanded folder trees though, just the top level folders are fine).


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 1, 2018)

Thanks Jim . I will do this when I return from holiday which is in three weeks  . Can I take the opportunity to thank you Johan and others on the forum . Your assistance has been invaluable.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 23, 2018)

Hi Jim or whoever picks this up. I have done a screen shot of the left panel and you will see that the external drive is infact now visible after i repeated the operation to re-locate the folder. However you will see two question marks by the two sub folders which i dont understand. I now have the exclamation marks on the picturess too. I have tried pointing LR to where the images now are but i think because i re-imported [ se previous post ] the numbers are somehow messed up so the same image on the hard drive  doesnt seem to match the one i can see via LR. I wonder if i should just delete the images now off my Mac drive ?  Also i thought i should see the Mac dribe as well as the external one in the left panel ? Help would be much appreciated but i do think at least i am making some progress !


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 24, 2018)

Can you post a screenshot of the picture folders in Finder?

The local system drive will only appear in the Folders Panel when it contains images that have been added to the catalog. Lightroom is not a file browser, it only shows drives and folders that contain cataloged images.

The screenshot shows that the current catalog only contains 293 images, is that what you would expect to see?


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 24, 2018)

Hi jim,

Yes 293 would be about right . Infact I thought it had created some duplicates so I didn’t know if it was a bit high. I decided not to try to put all my stored images in the external drive - I have about 13k of them in iphotos but I haven’t tried to link them to LR following earlier advice from the forum.  So just thought I would start afresh with new images . 
Do you want a screenshot of the pics folder on the external drive or the local drive ? They both look identical. There are sub folders too underneath “2018” ( ie for the months of September and October) and then events within the months ( beer festival and walking in Derbyshire and London ) . Thanks .


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 24, 2018)

External drive please, specifically looking to see where the September and October folders are placed.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 24, 2018)

Hi Jim,

here are three shots of finder and the folders om the hard drivbe. One is the overview / umbrella folder. The next shows the two sub foldrs and the nest shows one of those sub foldrs and its subfolders. thanks for your help.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 24, 2018)

Sorry, I need to see the full path of those two folders (which should be at the bottom of the Finder window). I'm trying to establish if those two folders are in the root directory of the Pictures folder, or are they inside another folder, such as 2018? Your post suggests they are both inside 2018, but that's not what Lightroom thinks.

But if they are inside the 2018 folder, then simply right-click on one of the September and October folders, select "Find Missing Folder", then in the resulting file browser navigate to and select the actual folder. Repeat for the other folder.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 24, 2018)

Jim Wilde said:


> Sorry, I need to see the full path of those two folders (which should be at the bottom of the Finder window). I'm trying to establish if those two folders are in the root directory of the Pictures folder, or are they inside another folder, such as 2018? Your post suggests they are both inside 2018, but that's not what Lightroom thinks.
> 
> But if they are inside the 2018 folder, then simply right-click on one of the September and October folders, select "Find Missing Folder", then in the resulting file browser navigate to and select the actual folder. Repeat for the other folder.


Will have a look Jim. You are a god send . Thankyou .


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 25, 2018)

Hi Jim,
There is definitely something strange going on as LR crashed and asked to send an error report to Adobe and Apple when i tried to do the "find missing folder" action it just went off the screen and i had to re-open it. However i kept trying and on the second or third occasion  it did work ! ie the October folder was found and the question mark by the folder in LR disappeared. I opened finder to try and understand what you were after but there is nothing else i can screen shot in the left panel other than tags. I have attached two shots of the panel but there is nothing else at the bottom of the finder window as you suggest but maybe i dont understand what you really want. However look at the September[2] folders. It seems to be on the same level as 2018 and there is another September folder which has just one picture in ! When i try find missing folder for this one it just says that which i attach. The other thing to say is there are definitely duplicates in the London folder .I have made a right mess of this so your assistance is very welcome indeed.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 25, 2018)

What I was looking for is the path bar at the bottom of the main window, as per this screenshot:



But it's possible you have the Path Bar hidden, see the Finder View options.

Can you tell me how many images are in that September folder that you see in Finder?


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 25, 2018)

Hi jim,

I think this is what you are after. There are 29 images in the September folder as seen through finder.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 25, 2018)

Hi Jim,
Please see the screen shot attached. What seems to have happened is LR is in some way pointing at both drives. You can see the numbers 17,18,19 in October. There was also a 13 which you will see is on the local drive and LR knows it is there because i pointed it to that location using the find missing folder command; 17,18,19 are also on the local drive not the external which, as you know has subfolders in October of London and Rail and Ale Day. So even though  those images are in the external drive it looks to me that LR is pointing to them on the local drive. Hope that makes sense. I wonder if i should start again if possible ? Maybe deleting all the images and folders on the local drive and just working with the external drive ? Your help is greatly appreciated.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 26, 2018)

Hi Jim. I just wondered if you had any advice for me re my issue yet ?


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 26, 2018)

Tim Gilp said:


> Hope that makes sense. I wonder if i should start again if possible ? Maybe deleting all the images and folders on the local drive and just working with the external drive ?


Given the small number of images in the catalog, it probably makes more sense to start over. Simply do File>New Catalog to create a new empty catalog (give it a different name when you do that, so that you know it's the latest catalog). Then decide which drive you wish the images to be on, and organise them that way before importing them,  using the "Add" import option. Once the import is complete, and you are happy with the way it looks, you can delete the old catalog.

Going forward, try not to do reorganising/moving/renaming/deleting any of the cataloged images and folders outside Lightroom. That breaks the link between LR and the images, and it can sometimes be a problem trying to reinstate that link.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 27, 2018)

Success ! It was easy enough to do thank you Jim. The only pedantic point i would make is would it be usual to lose the folder titles below the months ? On folders i imported i definitely had sub folders [ onlyx2 ] for the month of October but now the pictures seem to be grouped by date. It is easy enough to change through lightroom [ i think ?!] but just wondered.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 27, 2018)

It sounds as though you didn't do the "Add" import that I suggested (which simply references the images from their current location, thus retaining all existing folder names). Instead you've probably done a "Copy" or "Move" import which creates a new set of folders, and if you additionally specified "Organise by Date" then the new folders would all be date-based.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 27, 2018)

Ah thanks Jim . I definitely didn’t do copy because non of the images remained in their previous location but I may have done “move” though. Anyway thanks to you I am in a lot better shape . Thanks again.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 27, 2018)

Spoke too soon ! I have copied 750 RAW images from my memory card using LR onto the external hard drive and they have gone into the folders as specified. When I look in finder they are definitely there but some of the thumbnails in LR  are just grey ( no image just grey ) yet on some you can see the image. Because I have transferred so many is it just a question of time for them to appear or is there a problem? I have looked at the root folder etc. And all that is fine . Any ideas as to what I should do ?


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 27, 2018)

Here is a screen shot. Some thumbnails have an image others are just grey. So frustrating. Im doing my very best with LR but i do wonder whether this is worth it.


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## Tim Gilp (Oct 31, 2018)

I thought i was doing so well ! Have added an external hard drive to transfer my photos onto. Tried setting it up through lightroom but didnt find the hard drive at all - just didnt appear in the list. So went into Mac OS and set up a folder on the external hard drive. Copied and pasted the parent folder [ headed 2018 ] out of pictures into the new folder location on the new drive. Went into LR and right clicked on 2018 folder to relocate it and went into the external hard drive to choose the new folder to point LR to. It came up in the panel and i was so proud of myself! Anyway then went back into the pictures folder and deleted it to save some space. The pictures were and still are on the external drive so there was no danger of losing them. Anyway - restarted lightroom and the new hard drive is not detected !? However it is if i go on import [ ie i can see the drive ]  I thought maybe i should import so pressed that button but of course all the pictures just came back to the Mac hard drive ! Help what should i do. Incidentally the computer did crash a few times when i was doing the procedure and asked to send a crash report off. There were only 300 items copied so it was hardly overloaded.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 27, 2018)

The three dots that you see in each of the empty thumbnails indicates that Lightroom is trying to create the library previews, which involves reading the individual image files and doing the Raw conversion. As this is happening very slowly I'd be concerned that there's a problem of some sort in this process, either a problem reading from the drive or a general system performance issue. So a couple of questions:

1. What type of previews did you select during the import?
2. What type of external drive are you using? Spin speed? Interface type?

If you quit and restart Lightroom does the preview building speed up?


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 28, 2018)

Hi Jim . Do the screenshots below  any sense of it for you ? Its a Seagate USB3 if that is what you wanted. Dont know spin speed i am afraid. I didn't really select any type of previews just the type the system had already set up [ default ?] i suppose. I didnt expect any problems as i haven't had any of this nature to date. The bar at the top was at the end when i came back to review progress and i did leave it a long time but i wonder if i interrupted it too early ? It was when i re-opened that the second message appeared.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 28, 2018)

When i click on chose a different catalog it does bring me to the new one i created but i am loathe to click on it given the problems i have but maybe i should ?


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 28, 2018)

Jim. I have solved it ! I have no doubt i will be back in the forum but all the pics are loaded and can be seen in LR. I would never have worked it out for myself without your invaluable input. Thanks.


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 28, 2018)

Tim, make sure you have the Lightroom Preferences set so that the correct catalog is opened when you launch the program. Look at the General tab and set the "Default Catalog" to be whichever of those two is now the correct one. Suggest you also move the old one out of the way so that Lightroom no longer sees it (rename, delete, or move it to an archive folder). If you're sure the new one is working OK, and you have started to back it up, deleting the old one might be more sensible.

Also spend some time looking at the Import dialog so that you understand how it works. Don't just leave it to Lightroom to make default decisions on your behalf, you decide how you want things done and set it up accordingly.

If you haven't already done so, I suggest you download and read Victoria's free Getting Started guide, available from her web-site (click on the Freebies link at the top of the page).


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 28, 2018)

Thanks Jim i will take all that on board. I think the linkage between LR and the images on the Drive is what is quite difficult to conceptualise and then not forget. I followed what you said and created a new catalog and then added [ probably moved though as you said] the images to the new catalog. I renamed the new catalog Pictures 2 . Once i had deleted the folders that i didn't need on my local and hard drive i then changed the folder description back to Pictures but of course by doing that i had broken the link hence LR not been able to find the catalog as i had renamed it ! I went in to Finder and changed the name back to Pictures 2 [ nb there had to be a space between the words and the number, at first i renamed it Pictures2 and LR couldnt find it ] and incredibly every image came across almost instantaneously. The exclamation marks were there but now i am getting my head around it is was easy enough to find the 2018 pictures folder and choose that as the location. The exclamation marks have gone and i have approx 700 images from our trip to NZ all imported in. I will read about backing up as i have a hard drive for time machine that has always backed up from my local drive - hence all my images from iphoto are backed up but not the new ones. I do still have those on the memory card and will keep that safe until i figure out how to do a back up. I have no idea how Victoria recognises or gets to know how helpful her colleagues have been but without you holding my hand i think i might have just reverted to the Apple software which is no where near as powerful as lightroom. Thanks again and i have no doubt i will be asking your advice again but hopefully on a little more complex areas of the Develop section.


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 30, 2018)

Jim/Anyone. I'm back ! Not this time with a real difficult query i dont think but i have somehow created and extra sub-folder which i dont want. The folder hierarchy is meant to be Pictures2; 2018; Month ; Hong Kong / New Zealand etc. Then pictures by date but i seem to have 2018 again repeated in the folder hierarchy. Septemebr and October are fine though. I attach two screen shots to show what i mean. How can i tidy this up please so i dont have and extra unnecessary  folder ?


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 30, 2018)

In the Import dialog, look at the Destination Panel. Although it's difficult to see from your screenshot you have probably chosen the option to "Organize by date" and in the "Date Format" box below you have selected one of the first 9 formats which automatically creates a year folder and well as individual dated sub-folders. The bottom four of the options are formats which do NOT create a year folder, instead only a dated sub-folder is created for each of the capture dates in the import selection. So if you don't want the year folder, change your selection.


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## Roelof Moorlag (Nov 30, 2018)

Tim Gilp said:


> How can i tidy this up


Jim descibed how you can prevent the images coming into the wrong folders at import so you don't have to tiding up in the future.
Tiding up the present situation is easy but be sure you are doing it from within Lightroom:
- You can move the photo's from one folder into another by selecting them and draging them.
- You can move folders to another folder also by draging them.
- You can rename folders at rightclick


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## Tim Gilp (Nov 30, 2018)

Thank you . I did try moving the folder and it said “a 2018 folder already exists in this folder ( or something like that ) but I could easily drag and drop the images into the parent folder and then remove the one they are in now. This forum is just superb. Thank you .


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