Thanks John, that worked.
In future, use Lightroom to move files
In this case it wasn't possible. The external HD I was using would not mount correctly, usually crashing finder, and Lightroom would crash all the time. Moving 30 GB of photos within crashing Lightroom wouldn't work, but when the HD mounted for long enough, I could transfer over files, rescuinged by copying onto another drive using finder/Mac OS. Now everything's up and running.
Now wondering if I should upgrade to LR3 or not....