We’ve got 4 catalogs running on our production computer (Families, Weddings, Fashion, Personal). All of these catalogs contain images that we want to retain long term.

When our hard drive filled up, I moved all the original “raw” images over to our NAS (network attached storage) in order to free up space.

When we went back into the catalogs, we saw a “ghosted” folder of those pictures, since the raws were missing. Later, we needed to recover on of those images, and since it was on the NAS, all of the LR edits were lost.

I need a way to archive the images to the NAS, delete them from the primary computer, and still retain all of the Lightroom edits in case we need to recover the images.

What is the right way to achieve this?

lightroom-3 backup archive

The easy way: Use LR to move them.

Add the NAS folder to the folder list

Open the local folder in the library view

drag the images from the local folder to the NAS folder.

Note that this will lose the undo stack!

The better way: move them in the OS, then tell LR where you moved them to.

Quit LR

Do the move as you did, best to move the entire folder

Restart LR

in the Folder view you’ll see the folder is greyed out with a question mark, right click on that folder and choose “find missing folder”

Navigate to the NAS and select the same root folder

wait.

Note that this is the way I highly encourage you to do it. And you will not loose your edits this way, or your undo stack. (At least I haven’t, and I do that all the time.)We’ve got 4 catalogs running on our production computer (Families, Weddings, Fashion, Personal). All of these catalogs contain images that we want to retain long term.

When our hard drive filled up, I moved all the original “raw” images over to our NAS (network attached storage) in order to free up space.

When we went back into the catalogs, we saw a “ghosted” folder of those pictures, since the raws were missing. Later, we needed to recover on of those images, and since it was on the NAS, all of the LR edits were lost.

I need a way to archive the images to the NAS, delete them from the primary computer, and still retain all of the Lightroom edits in case we need to recover the images.

What is the right way to achieve this?

lightroom-3 backup archive
The easy way: Use LR to move them.

Add the NAS folder to the folder list
Open the local folder in the library view
drag the images from the local folder to the NAS folder.
Note that this will lose the undo stack!

The better way: move them in the OS, then tell LR where you moved them to.

Quit LR
Do the move as you did, best to move the entire folder
Restart LR
in the Folder view you’ll see the folder is greyed out with a question mark, right click on that folder and choose “find missing folder”
Navigate to the NAS and select the same root folder
wait.
Note that this is the way I highly encourage you to do it. And you will not loose your edits this way, or your undo stack. (At least I haven’t, and I do that all the time.)Hey

We’ve got 4 catalogs running on our production computer (Families, Weddings, Fashion, Personal). All of these catalogs contain images that we want to retain long term.

When our hard drive filled up, I moved all the original “raw” images over to our NAS (network attached storage) in order to free up space.

When we went back into the catalogs, we saw a “ghosted” folder of those pictures, since the raws were missing. Later, we needed to recover on of those images, and since it was on the NAS, all of the LR edits were lost.

I need a way to archive the images to the NAS, delete them from the primary computer, and still retain all of the Lightroom edits in case we need to recover the images.

What is the right way to achieve this?

lightroom-3 backup archive

The easy way: Use LR to move them.

Add the NAS folder to the folder list

Open the local folder in the library view

drag the images from the local folder to the NAS folder.

Note that this will lose the undo stack!

The better way: move them in the OS, then tell LR where you moved them to.

Quit LR

Do the move as you did, best to move the entire folder

Restart LR

in the Folder view you’ll see the folder is greyed out with a question mark, right click on that folder and choose “find missing folder”

Navigate to the NAS and select the same root folder

wait.

Note that this is the way I highly encourage you to do it. And you will not loose your edits this way, or your undo stack. (At least I haven’t, and I do that all the time.)