How to Backup - Too Many Images

[Eli Burakian]

Hello everyone. I hope somebody on this knowledgeable forum can help me.  

I know this subject has been discussed many times but I'm still searching for a clear answer.

Here's my situation: I have a lightroom library on my main computer that has about 25k images and is about 300GB.  Even though I've got a 2.66 dual Xeon Mac Pro with 4GB of ram, it's still a little slow and I was thinking if I could keep a much more refined library on my desktop with say 5k images, it might run a little faster and wouldn't be such a behemoth.  

So I've got a number of questions:

1) If I want to backup my entire database and images to an external drive, can I just copy the whole "Pictures" folder which contains my library and images to another drive? If so, how would I get lightroom to look at that library if I need it to in case I need to find another image? And will the metadata/keywords be transfered over?

2) When I slim down the database on my computer but continue to edit the metadata/keywords, can i export that new information to the much larger database on the external drive?

3) If I import new photos to my desktop hard drive, then keyword those, can I then get those photos and keywords (created after initial import) into the larger library on the external drive before deleting all of the non-keepers from my desktop hard drive?

I've watched at Michael and Jeff's videos and that has helped but I still have these qustions.  i'm going to Scott Kelby's seminar on Monday but I don't think he'll get into real specifics on these types of issues.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Eli

[CaptnWil]

1)  The database and images can go anywhere you desire.  They don't even need to be on the same drive.  

When you start LR, you can navigate to the database if it is on a dirve you can see from your computer.

If the library module can't see the images, a little ? will appear on the thumbnail.  You can click on that and reply to the popup to locate the image.  Once you have found the images, LR will find all that are in that directory.  Once you have located all the image directories, you have a modified database that will keep track of them as in the beginning.

2)  NO!  What a pain.  This isn't necessary and can be corrected is Adobe wants to do it -- it ain't no big deal.  It's just a bumer.

3)  NO!  See 2) above.

Good luck!
Wil

[seamus finn]

What happens when you click on the ? and it still doesn't work as is happening in my case. Lightroom still can't find the picture

Seamus Finn