Lightroom sync quesiton

[John Camp]

At one time I was using a FireLite portable USB hard drive on my Macs to store Lightroom photos. Now I'm trying to consolidate everything on one machine (a Mac Pro), but the Mac Pro apparently sees the FireLite as one of its own hard drives, sees no reason to import the full photos onto one of the internal Mac hard drives (having already imported the thumbnails and the references stuff) and so declines to import them, seeing them as duplicates of something it already has. I tried hand-carrying all the FireLite photos to the watched file on the desktop, and then detaching the Firelite, but that doesn't work -- the Mac (or Lightroom) still sees the watched file photos as duplicates. At the same time, when the Firelite is not plugged in, and I want to work on a photo, I get the message that says that the reference photo is missing or off-line...In other words, the full RAWs are stuck in the Firelite.

How do I get all the photos, including the full RAWs, onto one drive where LR will recognize them?

JC

[DavidB]

How do I get all the photos, including the full RAWs, onto one drive where LR will recognize them[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188348\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

If they're already known in the LR catalog, the fastest way to move them to a different disk will be to quit LR, and use Finder/whatever to copy the files to the new disk (preserving the folder structure).
Then disconnect the USB disk and start LR (this is assuming the LR catalog itself is on an internal disk already).  In the Library's Folders pane it will show the folders as red (not available).  Pick the top-level folder, right-click (or as you're on a Mac you can control-click if you prefer) and select "Locate Missing Folder".  Point it at the matching new folder on the other drive, and LR will re-link all the sub-folders as well.

If you don't disconnect the USB disk (or remove the original copies from the USB disk) before starting LR you won't get the "Locate Missing Folder" option.  Sometimes even just moving them to the Trash isn't enough (unless you then empty the Trash): LR can often automatically find where a folder's been moved to on the same drive.