Lightroom hard drive names/clones/backups

[robertwright]

Adobe can't seem to resolve this so I'll try the brain trust here:
eg: I have all images referenced on a drive called "photo". I also have a clone called "photo mirror".

for a while I had to run off of the mirror- "photo" drive went to the place all drives go to when they get old and grey. No problem, I just changed the name of the mirror to "photo" and all the references in Lr were maintained. Everything intact.

However, on import it is another story, every import creates an additional entry in the Lr Library sidebar, same drive name, same capacity, same total free status indicators, etc, just another "photo" drive. It won't see the new drive as the same drive. Why it will recognize it for existing pics and not for new imports is a mystery.

ideas?

has anyone every renamed their drive entirely and then reconnected the whole shebang with "find missing"- we are talking 400gb and 25,000 pics...

 

[glenerrolrd]

I have done the find missing several times with more images. It took a while but not anything like copying more like 5 minutes. Technically I think your are just updating the small reference file that "points to the images". You are looking at the previews DB which is also small...

I organize my raw images by year ..its not perfect but this creates logical units for backup.... so my older raw images are all backed up and stored offsite (at another house)on cheap drives I ve replaced .

I can then "find the images " by using the Master Folder (year) . You could have a folder (Photos above year )and do it in one step.

 

[robertwright]

I have done the find missing several times with more images. It took a while but not anything like copying more like 5 minutes. Technically I think your are just updating the small reference file that "points to the images". You are looking at the previews DB which is also small...

I organize my raw images by year ..its not perfect but this creates logical units for backup.... so my older raw images are all backed up and stored offsite (at another house)on cheap drives I ve replaced .

I can then "find the images " by using the Master Folder (year) . You could have a folder (Photos above year )and do it in one step.

You mean 'add parent'?
right now it is volumes/master enclosing folder/job folders etc.../subfolders
ie;
volume/photos/jobs/ where volume is called "photo" (i am so original)

I was thinking of changing the volume name to photo1- then update

but you are saying change the parent folder or add parent so;

volumes/photo1/jobs

or

volumes/working/photos/jobs

what happens then? either way I have to add parent to all the jobs folders (only about 40) since I was already at the top level of the tree.

years and dates never worked for me. imagine having 2010/january/01, 02, 03 etc...not only do the dates mean nothing but the folder tree quickly multiplies out to 12x31-360+ folders per year....never understood that.

 

[glenerrolrd]

You mean 'add parent'?
right now it is volumes/master enclosing folder/job folders etc.../subfolders
ie;
volume/photos/jobs/ where volume is called "photo" (i am so original)

I was thinking of changing the volume name to photo1- then update

but you are saying change the parent folder or add parent so;

volumes/photo1/jobs

or

volumes/working/photos/jobs

what happens then? either way I have to add parent to all the jobs folders (only about 40) since I was already at the top level of the tree.

years and dates never worked for me. imagine having 2010/january/01, 02, 03 etc...not only do the dates mean nothing but the folder tree quickly multiplies out to 12x31-360+ folders per year....never understood that.

First you can use whatever folder structure you want and still move folders at will between drives.. You can actually do this by dragging the folder in the lists of the lightroom folders from one drive to another. For example lets say you had a folder called vacation on your laptop and now you want to put into your "Photo folder" on an external drive. You can move it independently of LR and then use Find Folder to retrieve its location or you can drag the folder in your list of folders in LR .

Folder naming conventions should be based on the type of work you do and the requirements you expect for the hard drive. My folder structure is only broken down at the year level because it now takes almost 1TB to hold a years originals . The trade off in any DAM structure will be ....do you want to have redundant images (copies of your selects ) or do you want to have 10TB on line to have access. For my work I need a way to partition the folders and I choose year.

My structure isn t as you suggested. Its YEAR,SUBJECT.....so I might have a folder for 2010,then 2010_SpringTraining. Spring Training lasts 30 days in Florida ..I shoot maybe 15 days ..so I will have 2-3000 images . Each card is a folder 2010-03-01.1_SpringTraining. If I do 2 weeks of street shooting in Paris ...I have a folder for 2010_Paris.

I flag any image that I am interested in generally about 1/3-1/2 without picking from groups. Then I rate the flagged ones to create a select and rate them 1 0r 2 and so on. I can go to the top folder of spring training and using a 4 rating find the best 100 images from Spring Training . I can go to 2010 and do the same across all folders.

The point though on your request ..is that you can change the organization of the folders you maintain under OS and LR will adjust as long as you inform it (e.g.Find it ) where you put it. For example I could put all my Baseball stuff into a folder called baseball and then have it by year or by team or whatever . Your are in charge ..you know what that means ..if you lose it ?

 

[robertwright]

First you can use whatever folder structure you want and still move folders at will between drives.. You can actually do this by dragging the folder in the lists of the lightroom folders from one drive to another. For example lets say you had a folder called vacation on your laptop and now you want to put into your "Photo folder" on an external drive. You can move it independently of LR and then use Find Folder to retrieve its location or you can drag the folder in your list of folders in LR .

Folder naming conventions should be based on the type of work you do and the requirements you expect for the hard drive. My folder structure is only broken down at the year level because it now takes almost 1TB to hold a years originals . The trade off in any DAM structure will be ....do you want to have redundant images (copies of your selects ) or do you want to have 10TB on line to have access. For my work I need a way to partition the folders and I choose year.

My structure isn t as you suggested. Its YEAR,SUBJECT.....so I might have a folder for 2010,then 2010_SpringTraining. Spring Training lasts 30 days in Florida ..I shoot maybe 15 days ..so I will have 2-3000 images . Each card is a folder 2010-03-01.1_SpringTraining. If I do 2 weeks of street shooting in Paris ...I have a folder for 2010_Paris.

I flag any image that I am interested in generally about 1/3-1/2 without picking from groups. Then I rate the flagged ones to create a select and rate them 1 0r 2 and so on. I can go to the top folder of spring training and using a 4 rating find the best 100 images from Spring Training . I can go to 2010 and do the same across all folders.

The point though on your request ..is that you can change the organization of the folders you maintain under OS and LR will adjust as long as you inform it (e.g.Find it ) where you put it. For example I could put all my Baseball stuff into a folder called baseball and then have it by year or by team or whatever . Your are in charge ..you know what that means ..if you lose it ?

sorry didn't mean to take issue with your damn dam- like religion and politics it is not for po-lite company

Just the idea of going through manually and reconnecting all the folders I do have seems daunting. I know when you locate one folder Lr asks if you want to locate nearby folders too, but I'm talking 400gb.

it just seems like a bug to me that Lr recognizes the drive and the photos are not missing, yet on import it stubbornly refuses to see the drive as the same entity, and creates another Library top level with the same name etc.

Basically, it is a bug. If Lr did actually see the folders like the finder sees them then on import the new pics would show up in the same drive. But they don't.

You can synchronize folders post-facto but that is not importing with the Lr import dialogue.

I suppose changing the top level parent folder name to photo1 would not hurt- and then rebuild the catalogue.

This is a good reason to automatically write xmp changes into sidecars or dngs- if my captions get separated from the images it will be a disaster.

 

[ustein]

The best way to keep LR and your files in sync is to have also the LR catalog on the same drive.

drive photo + main catalog
drive photo2 _ copy of catalog

Now drive photo goes bad. Switch to photo2 and open that catalog. LR will find all images because it also stores a relative path.

Best all folders have only very few different root folders. This way you can re-attach just the root folder and LR finds all the images in the subfolders.


By the way renaming a drive does no make them identical. LR may also use drive IDs and they differ anyway.

 

[robertwright]

The best way to keep LR and your files in sync is to have also the LR catalog on the same drive.

drive photo + main catalog
drive photo2 _ copy of catalog

Now drive photo goes bad. Switch to photo2 and open that catalog. LR will find all images because it also stores a relative path.

Best all folders have only very few different root folders. This way you can re-attach just the root folder and LR finds all the images in the subfolders.


By the way renaming a drive does no make them identical. LR may also use drive IDs and they differ anyway.

Thanks all for the responses-

I know the drive ID is different, but then why does Lr recognize the images from old? it is only when I import that there is a difference.

the reason I put the catalog folder on the boot drive was for speed, but perhaps now that is not an issue. I like your idea of having the photos and catalog on the same drive and then when I clone I get an instant backup of the catalog too.

so based on what you are saying, should I just wrap the root folder in another folder- then the re-attach will be everything inside?

 

[ustein]

I use an external FW800 drive and have about 65K images (not all on this drive though). Works ok for me.

>should I just wrap the root folder in another folder- then the re-attach will be everything inside?

Need to know your current structure.

 

[robertwright]

current structure is as follows

all images are on external fw800

volume named photo/folder named photos

path
Volumes (photo)/photos/job name/possible subfolder for selects or retouch

ie: photo/photos/nytimes/artgallery/selects/_img_xxx.crw

so I could change the name of the drive to "photo1"

or I could wrap "photos" in a parent folder 'work'

yielding;

photo1/photos/nytimes/artgallery....

or

photo/work/photos/nytimes/artgallery....

Do you think it matter which I do?

Remember, the issue is not that Lr cannot find the images, they are all there. the issue is that when I import through the Lr import dialogue, copying the images from a cardreader for example to photo/photos/newjob/etc... make Lr create a new top level photo volume. It won't put the new job alongside the old jobs in the library.

catalogue is on MacintoshHD/Users/robertwright/Pictures/Lightroom/lr.lrcat...

I suppose I could wrap photo in a parent folder "Lightroom" and then move the catalog there as well alongside the photo folder.?

tia,

R

as far as i can see this is an issue for anyone migrating images to larger and larger drives. Lr will not allow that without some sort of fudge around.

 

[ustein]

The import issue looks weird indeed. Can you show the import dialog?

Try to rename the disk back to the old name. You have a joint top folder and all should be fine. Is LR also showing this folder? Which LR version are you using?

 

[robertwright]

see three attached, first is folder tree, second is import dialog, third is result.

the drive has never been any other name but 'photo'. the problem is that if you migrate the hd to another physical drive, larger, a clone, whatever, even if it is bit for bit identical (cloned) with the same name, for the purposes of import, the name is irrelevant. it is seen as a 'different' drive (because it is).

for the purposes of referencing images already in the library that were there before the hardware change, no problem.

if I now delete the single 'An Assignment' from Lr and go up to the enclosing folder 'NYTimes' and synchronize that, it will be seen in the 'correct' place.

iow, import FAIL!

I have tried to add parent to the new entry- see the next post...


sorry, I seem to be only getting thumbnails here- when did this change?

 

[robertwright]

adding the parents all the way up the folder tree results in this.

still two entries for the top level drive-which is the same physical drive:deadhorse:

 

[robertwright]

import

this attachment thing is kiilling me....

 

[robertwright]

result.

 

[robertwright]

...anyhoo the deal is Lr 2.6 btw

I think this has consequences for anyone using Lr- you will not be able to migrate your referenced images to larger physical drives without substantial work to reconnect everything to the library.

Uwe suggested hosting the catalog on the same drive as the images, something about relative file names- well, possibly, however, as it is, Lr sees the existing images correctly despite having cloned the drive. It is IMPORT that throws the exception. On import Lr is perhaps trying to protect us by not importing to volumes with the same name but different internal id's. So you could have multiple drives, all named identically, and switch among them, they would all be referenced independently with no confusion- which kind of is an end run around asset management...

back to my solution- I am simply trying to avoid the headache of manually reconnecting each folder.

either I add a parent folder- although somehow I doubt this will work. it is the drive that Lr misrecognizes. Perhaps I should rename the drive and then hope that when I locate the parent folder 'photos' everything inside will be restored.

 

[ustein]

Here is my take:

1. LR needs to be able to work with two different disks with the same name

2. The one disk old is in the catalog and may look like a offline disk but the path (by name) works so it finds the files.

3. New files are found on the real disk but thought to be a different drive with same name

In consequence here a solution to try:


a) Make a copy of the catalog

b) Option+right-click on the folder of the files from the old disk

c) Use Update Folder Location and point to the same folder on the real drive

Hope this works.

 

[robertwright]

yes you reoriented my thinking towards getting Lr to see the "new normal' as they say... it is working. I was trying to force it back to the old normal.

advice would be to never reference files on the top level of a drive in folders, always enclose groups of folders so that this updating can be done enmasse.

I do have that but for some reason the original tree never showed the parent folder. updating a single parent would be simple.

take that adobe!- crowd sourcing works!

 

[ustein]

>I do have that but for some reason the original tree never showed the parent folder.

And right-click "Add parent Folder" does not work? I would never add the volume as the parent folder though. Why? No idea but it feels wrong

 

[robertwright]

you can add the volume as the parent folder but it does not help- in this case it did not help to add the volume as the parent while Lr was looking for new and seeing old.

for example if you have 27 folders, which is shorter, to add parent to 27 folders and then update location for the top, or to update location for 27 folders..

for some reason when I was importing the last few years, the top level folder never showed - only the job folders.

behooves one to always make sure the top level folder is visible.

off to fill up another 500gb of free space so I can do this all over again when the price of 2tb drives falls.

on some level, 1tb seems like all I would like to have on one drive, the copy time can get excessive if you have to do something drastic. even 500gb. is a pain to copy.

thanks again to everyone who helped-

r