Moving files and Lighroom

[Wreck96]

Dear Abby,
I suddenly find myself lacking hard disk space on my laptop and am going to need to move many of my original files to the external hard drive I had previously used as back-up only. When I move them, will it affect viewing them in Lightroom? Will Lightroom get confused about where they are and not be able to find them? Am I going to have to re-import them in their new locations on the new disc drive?
Scared in Maryland

[Grizz]

Dear Scared in Maryland,

LR will indeed be confused and sad if you move your files away to a far off HD. But there is hope! After you move your files away and open LR a ? will appear in LR on the images that have been moved, LR will not be able to find them and will wonder where o where they went. So..you must click on the ? and LR will ask if you would like to locate the missing image, browse to the new location and LR will now look there for the lost images.

Bear in mind you must keep the same file and folder names in the new location.

Abby

[In2Photos]

Scared in Maryland,
Alternatively to Grizz's answer you could also do the following:

Import the new hard drive. Follow your normal Import procedures for 1 test image. Make sure you select your new drive as the destination to Copy your test image. Now that drive should be visible under your Folders panel. Now you can move your files directly within LR from one drive to the other.

Abby.