My Hard Drive is filling up. What do I do now?

[strad549]

I'm using a Mac G5 that has two hard drives on it. All or most of my LR photos go into the picture folder on the default hard drive. It is a 160 gig drive and only about 3.5 gigs are left. Before long this hard drive will be full and I'll be in trouble. What are my options? Can I move some of the photos on this drive to another internal/external hard drive? How do I do that? How will I be able to view and work with those photos once they are moved? Also, on importing new photos can I put them into a different drive?

Thanks for your help!!!

Regards, Dave Taylor, Chicago

[francois]

I'm using a Mac G5 that has two hard drives on it. All or most of my LR photos go into the picture folder on the default hard drive. It is a 160 gig drive and only about 3.5 gigs are left. Before long this hard drive will be full and I'll be in trouble. What are my options? Can I move some of the photos on this drive to another internal/external hard drive? How do I do that? How will I be able to view and work with those photos once they are moved? Also, on importing new photos can I put them into a different drive?

Thanks for your help!!!

Regards, Dave Taylor, Chicago
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=169146\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Well, with only 3.5Gb left on your boot disc, you're asking for trouble. Anyway, I would move the entire LR catalog(s) with files to your second drive or to an external FW drive.

I guess that the best way to to use LR's export as catalog function (File>Export as catalog…) and don't forget to check "Export negative files" in the export dialog. This will copy all your RAW (and other) files to your other drive along with LR's library.

[plugsnpixels]

I just saw a MyBook 1TB external drive at Office Depot on sale for $329!! Dave, you need to get something like this and get your images off the internal drive. And back up stuff on data DVDs too. I'm not comfortable unless I have duplicate hard drive and disc backups of my projects.

[Colorado David]

I backup my entire library to another firewire drive that lives in my safe deposit box.

[plugsnpixels]

"safe deposit box"

OK, you win! Now that's secure. Not too convenient if it's at the bank, but secure from theft and fire/flood!

[Colorado David]

I started doing this after attending a conference and hearing Peter Krough, the author of The Dam Book, speak.  He said if you don't have secure, off-site backups of your images, then you don't care about losing them.  It convinced me.

[Bill Caulfeild-Browne]

I started doing this after attending a conference and hearing Peter Krough, the author of The Dam Book, speak.  He said if you don't have secure, off-site backups of your images, then you don't care about losing them.  It convinced me.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=169345\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You're absolutely right! I back up to two external drives which are kept in separate locations away from my house. Belt and suspenders.....
Bill

[Hank]

Repeat after me:

Firewire.  Firewire.  Firewire.  Firewire.

When you select an external drive, don't believe ANYONE who tells you USB2 is virtually as fast as Firewire.  USB2 burst speeds are fair, but for steady throughput of large volumes of data, USB2 is pathetically slow compared to Firewire.  I recently bought a USB2 Western Digital external drive, much vaunted for its reliability.  Biggest waste of money ever compared to my other Firewire drives.

[Quentin]

I've just started backing up data using a LG Blu-ray rewriter.

Prices for the latest internal blu-ray writers like the LG are approaching the reasonable.  The rewriter itself looks the same as most internal PC DVD drives, (except it has a black facia). The difference is in the capacity of the disks.  A dual layer blu-ray disk is nearly 50GB.  A single layer 25GB.  So far so cosy, but the disk prices at the moment are pretty steep and they are difficult to get hold of - no doubt this will change over time.

I simply don't trust external or internal hard disks after losing some images through HD failures and file corruption.   External media are not infallible, but I feel better trusting something that is not whirring round at 7,200rpm all the time.

Quentin