Preparing to take LR on the road --- but a problem

[jackperk]

Preparing for a few week getaway during which I need to work on photos and on PS, I've duped all my LR files from the drive on which they normally reside to another and more portable drive. I did this using Carbon Copy Cloner.  So now I have not only the catalog and accompanying files but all the photo files on the traveling drive.

But, alas, (and you could see this coming) as I open LR from the traveling drive I have a lot -- A LOT -- of question marks appearing. "File Offline or Missing" messages.

My attempts to "Find Missing File" are not availing.

Please, someone, walk me through this.

Much appreciated.

Jack Perkins

[francois]

Preparing for a few week getaway during which I need to work on photos and on PS, I've duped all my LR files from the drive on which they normally reside to another and more portable drive. I did this using Carbon Copy Cloner.  So now I have not only the catalog and accompanying files but all the photo files on the traveling drive.

But, alas, (and you could see this coming) as I open LR from the traveling drive I have a lot -- A LOT -- of question marks appearing. "File Offline or Missing" messages.

My attempts to "Find Missing File" are not availing.

Please, someone, walk me through this.

Much appreciated.

Jack Perkins

Jack,
Instead of copying all your files to your portable why don't you use Lightroom's Export to catalog function? Be sure to include negative files and previews (this will save time later).

[schrodingerscat]

Preparing for a few week getaway during which I need to work on photos and on PS, I've duped all my LR files from the drive on which they normally reside to another and more portable drive. I did this using Carbon Copy Cloner.  So now I have not only the catalog and accompanying files but all the photo files on the traveling drive.

But, alas, (and you could see this coming) as I open LR from the traveling drive I have a lot -- A LOT -- of question marks appearing. "File Offline or Missing" messages.

My attempts to "Find Missing File" are not availing.

Please, someone, walk me through this.

Much appreciated.

Jack Perkins

Did you make the external a bootable backup? And if so, have you tried booting from the external?

And to everyone else, does this mean that Lightroom can only access files from/on the boot drive?

[francois]

…And to everyone else, does this mean that Lightroom can only access files from/on the boot drive?

No, Lightroom can access files on non-boot drives, at least on a Mac. I have my catalog on one drive (non-boot) and my files on another drive (non-boot).

[flash]

You will need to do two (both simple) things to get the LR catalogue to find the files.

The first is to assign a permanent drive letter/name (windows/Mac) to the portable drive. Then you can right click on a folder and navigate to that assigned drive letter/name>folder. If you don't assign a drive letter/name then every time you plug the drive in you may get a different letter/name assignment and you'll need to search all over again.

Gordon

[Nat Coalson]

On Mac, if the traveling drive has the same name as the drive on your other computer LR will most likely find the photos automatically.

If for some reason you can't or don't want to name the drives the same, relinking photos in LR will be much easier if all your image files are contained in subfolders underneath one top-level parent folder. At least then you just would need to relink that top folder.

On Windows this is a bit more problematic; as flash mentioned drive letters come into play, and become part of the file path. You would need to assign the same drive letters to both drives, which in itself is also problematic because you can't have two attached drives with the same letter. Maybe a Windows expoert can explain how to accomplish this.

And as Francois mentioned, often using the Export/Import from Catalog is better, especially for smaller sub-sets of your master catalog.