3 operating systems

I am picking up my new laptop this afternoon. An Intel i7 with 4 GB memory with Windows 7.

I have a Pentium 4 tower running Windows XP Lightroom 1.3, Photoshop Elements 4, Microsoft office etc. (Family room computer.)

I have a quad 4 tower with 4 GB of memory, a 150 GB fast hard drive for the OS and photo software (LR 1.3 & PS3) and a 500 GB hard drive for storage. (mostly photos) Running Vista and dual 22" monitors in the basement office.

I have purchased Windows 7 ultimate for the basement computer. ( I hate Vista.)

I have one 500 GB external hard drive to use as I back-up file prior to installing new software. ( presently backing up the family room computer)

My plan is to play around with the laptop for a while and then install Windows 7 on the basement computer.

I will retire the family room XP/P-4 and download files to the networed two Windows 7 machines.

I have over 20,000 photos stored on both computers. (Not well organized.)

I wonder if I am better of upgrading to Lightroom 3.0 before trying to organize my photos.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to do this?

Any warnings?

Thanks in advance,


Tapeman

When you say not well organized, are they organized at all (folders, dates, places...)? If not, you will benefit from at least consolidating and then organizing them initially before importing them into LR. Different people organize differently. I personally have a Work, Personal, Students (I also teach photography on the side), NewsPaper & Yearly (for year books). Then, within each are projects (libraries or catalogs depending on the program you use). Some people like to organize completely by date and place, or just by place or event. You'll also need to figure out if you are going to let the photos reside in the place you catalog them from (thus not allowing LR from moving them).

The best thing you could probably do is organize them as best you can first, using whatever method you like. You could use a free program like FastStone Image Viewer so you can see thumbs of all the photos as you move them around. You could also start cleaning up house by moving photo's you don't like or will archive into another part of your drive. You can organize in Windows 7 by date of creation, which can make things really easy or by order of names.

The first step is thinking through your method of organization, then when that is done start moving things around. You might want to do a backup just before this to make sure you don't loose anything in the process.

I run three main machines back home, oldest runs XP SP3, second runs Vista, third runs W7 home premium. All three machines can share files with the other two machines without any fancy setups or anything.

basroil wrote in post #9732133
I run three main machines back home, oldest runs XP SP3, second runs Vista, third runs W7 home premium. All three machines can share files with the other two machines without any fancy setups or anything.

Just remember though, LR is not network capable (without hacks and then not very stable). Consolidating on a network drive like a NAS will prevent you from using LR. I'm not sure if LR3 is network able, but probably not since it has retained the same database structuring.