Lightroom 2 – Better External Hard Drive Support

The release of Adobe Lightroom 2 is packed with tons of useful new features and capabilities. One note-worthy addition is the extended support for external hard drives.

If you’re like me, you probably have at least one external hard drive used as a back-up device or for additional photo storage. In Lightroom 1, all imported photos were visually clumped together in a often-confusing folder list. Version 2 of Lightroom gives us a much more meaningful and informative view of our photo folders and attached devices.

In the Folders field of the Library module, Lightroom 2 now offers more information for the hard drive (or “Volume”) that the photos are stored on, including the name of the hard drive and the amount of disk space being used.

If you right-click (Ctrl+click on Mac), you’ll bring up a menu of options that let you choose what information you want to view, such as Photo Count, Status (if the Volume is online or offline), or None if you don’t want any additional information displayed.

As if that wasn’t cool enough, check out the little green bar to the left of the volume title. Green indicates that the volume has plenty of storage space available. If the bar turns yellow/orange, that means the volume is nearly full of data. If the bar is red, run for your life! …or, just take that as a warning that your hard drive is full.

To import photos from an external drive, go to File > Import Photos from Disk… In the import dialog box, make sure the File Handling pull-down selection is set to “Add photos to catalog without moving.”

When you click the Import button the drive that the files are stored on will now appear in the Folder list.

Another useful feature of this new system is the ability to drag-and-drop the files from one hard drive to another. There are some limitations to this ability, as you are presented with a prompt notifying you that moving these files cannot be undone. This doesn’t mean that you can’t move the files back to your initial hard drive by simply dragging-and-dropping again; you just won’t be able to undo this move via the Edit menu.

If the external hard drive is not connected, it will appear grayed out in the Folder list if you still have imported photos referenced on that drive. If you no longer have any need for these photos or this particular external drive, simply Remove the folder(s) and the hard drive will be removed from the Folder list automatically.

While this extended support for external hard drives is not one of the most exciting new features inside Lightroom 2, it’s still a welcome addition for anyone who likes having the flexibility to manage photos on a separate hard drive.

Don’t have Lightroom 2 yet?

• Adobe Lightroom 2
• Adobe Lightroom 2 Upgrade Only

[ad name=”468×60″]