What is best way to move 40 GB of photos from desktop drive to home server drive?

[Texas-Hansen]

I'm using PSE 6.0 and I have about 15,000 photographs (44 GB) on the hard drive on my desktop. They are under a master folder called Photograph Albums and the photos are in sub-folders (sub-folder names based on content/event of photos). I want to move all the photos including their folder structure to a harddrive on my home server and I want the Catalog to keep track of where I moved them. What's the best way to do this given what I want to do?

Thanks

[johnrellis]

In Display > Folder Location view, the left-hand pane shows a folder hierarchy similar to Windows Explorer. You can drag and drop folders just as in Explorer to move them. I recommend doing some small tests first to make sure your server is playing nice with PSE and then moving one subfolder at a time until you're confident everything is working.

One trick with Folder Location view -- it only shows subfolders if they already contain an image in your catalog. So to expose a subfolder, put a dummy file in it and import it into your catalog.

[Texas-Hansen]

Thanks. I'm going to give this a try. When I drag and drop the folders on the new server drive from within PSE 6, will the Catalog "redo" itself so it know the new location of the actual photo?

[johnrellis]

Yup.

By the way, there's another command, File > Move, which you can use to move individual files. But in PSE 6 it has a serious bug that permanently delete files, so don't use it.

[Texas-Hansen]

Thanks. This is working but it took some trial and error to figure out how to get it work with a server based hard drive. For others who wander upon this looking for an answer, here is what I did:

1. Put a un-cataloged photo in the folder on the server where I wanted all the photos to go as suggested above. Had to create this photo within the shared filed structure. Then imported that photo into the catalog and could see that folder in the PSE file folder tree.

2. Found out that could not just drag and drop the existing folder into the server folder, i.e. //hpserver/photos/photograph albums. Got errors doing that.

3. Needed to map a network drive to that folder. In Vista, go to the orb at bottom left, pull up menu and right click on Computer and you'll see an option to Map Network Drive. Map a drive letter, I used "z", to the network folder on the server where you want to store the photos on the server.

4. Now, when you move photos within the PSE directory tree, you have to drag and drop the folder onto the Mapped Network Drive, Z in my case, which is under Computer in the PSE file tree structure. You will not see a folder structure under Z but will see it under Network in the PSE folder tree. It's weird but it works. Drop it in Z, PSE waits a few minutes, and then it appears in in the Network area at the bottom of the tree.

Still going but so far so good. Lots of folder to move. I'm moving them one folder at time rather than enmass.

[johnrellis]

Hmm, just now I was able to move a folder to another computer under Network, without mapping it to a drive letter. But your experience with that doesn't surprise me -- Folder Location view has been neglected by Adobe and has some other serious bugs in it.

[Texas-Hansen]

I agree. This surprised me too but ended up finding this route by trial and error and thinking about how it wants to have a drive letter.

[Texas-Hansen]

New question: Every once in a while when moving a folder, I get a dialog box that says, "The folder being moved contains files that are not visible in the Organizer. Are you sure you want to move this file? Yes or No"

What is this that is occuring and why?

[johnrellis]

This message occurs when there are files in the folders that aren't imported into your catalog. PSE is warning you that when it moves the folder, those files will be moved as well.

Often there is a hidden Thumbs.db file that Windows XP puts in each folder to cache the thumbnails generated by Windows Explorer. But you might have other files as well.

[MrShaky]

Would you trust the folder location view to move ~10 Gb of files? I'd like to move them in batches, but the silly thing won't let me select more than one sub-folder at a time--even with shift or ctrl.

Sure appreciate your help!

[johnrellis]

I've moved several gigabytes of folders at once using Folder Location view, and I've helped lots of others on these and the Adobe forums use it for large moves. I've heard of no reports of lost photos. I have heard a couple reports of the catalog not getting properly updated, but that may have been caused by other problems, not moving folders. Move one folder at a time until you're confident it's working for you, to minimize your risk (and make a backup of your catalog and photos if at all possible!).

Here's a workaround for "selecting" a subset of folders. Suppose you have a folder f with many subfolders, only some of which you want to move. Make a folder f\temp, and drag all the subfolders you want to move into f\temp. Then move f\temp to the new drive and, if necessary, move the folders out of temp to their final resting spot. (When you're moving folders within a drive, it goes relatively quickly, since it's not actually copying the bytes of the files around.)