Hi guys! I need a lot of help and hope you can point me in the right direction. I have photos everywhere....on my hard drive, in a couple of catalogs in LR 2, and on 2 external drives. I need to get everything in one place and am trying to find the best way to accomplish this. I know there are duplicates everywhere as well. What is the best way to do this? Copy everything into a new catalog in LR and then back up on another External Drive? Will this move my photo's "correctly"? I would just transfer everything to my HD, and then back up to a 3rd External Drive, and then into LR, but do not have enough free space on my HD to accomplish this. I still need to remove any duplicates, and then when I get everything into one location, and backed up, I can delete everything else. Any thoughts....suggestions....articles I can reference? Thanks for all your help! Brian I
Ouch - always a tough thing to try to get organized all over again! I can't help much - I'm going through transferring everything to a new computer at the moment at home - bought it 2 days ago, and I'm only about 1/4 the way there. ; Previously, I had photos on my main harddrive and one external harddrive, then backed up onto 2 seperate harddrives. ; I tried to keep my stuff mostly in one location, and I've stuck to not using any photo organization type software like Lightroom/Google/etc only because I had already long before established a strict routine of using Microsoft Explorer folders and subfolders for my organizational filing system, and wanted to stick with it since I had 15 years of photos already being done that way. The new computer has much more space (my old was 250GB, with an external 250GB drive for more space - the new one is 2TB, backed up onto a second 2TB drive, and I'll still use external drives for specific additional backups such as photos and music. I'm only about 100GB in so far on the transfer - more to go tonight when hopefully I'll finish getting all my data onto the new system. ; Then I get to go through the fun of reloading all my various software and hardware, including much of it that is likely not compatible with Windows7, meaning lots of searching for new updated drivers and versions. Fun!
I may suggest a program like AcdSee Pro - it allows you to organize your photos in windows directory structure YET attach sidebar files with searchable terms, ratings, etc. ; I think the latest versions may also help looking for duplicates as well. ; (However I can't always speak to that, when you take enough photos that your counter rolls over in the camera....) It's not that expensive and they do give a trial. ; I remember that it was easy to keep track of files on DVD/removable hard drives using their system. ; I stopped using them when I switched to Aperture, but I'm back with Windows right now. /Apple hates 3D it seems //it's not a fad ///the inventor of the first real motion picture camera thought motion pictures was fad too
