Help with Lightroom folder org

I have a mess in Lightroom 3 as far as folders (and on my hard drive). I want to reorganize everything into a single main folder, subdivided by date, and rely on keywords and collections for sorting. I know everyone does it different but I am wanting to go the Scott Kelby route, "You can have as many sub-folders inside that one main folder as you want, but if you want to have peace, calm, and order in your Lightroom, the key is not to import photos from all over your computer. Choose one main folder and put all your photos inside that folder. THEN import them into Lightroom."
My question is, since I already have photos in many places on my computer and a lot of folders in Lightroom, how do I go to this format. I am tempted to move all of my photos on my computer out of their current folders and into one giant folder (/Photos) and reimport everything into a new catalogue by date. My concern is I will lose the existing "lightroom data" associated with those photos (flags, picks, ratings, key words, develop settings...). Hoep that makes sense and someone can help me out.
Thanks

Just create your Parent folder in Lightroom, and you can move folders and/or files simply by clicking and dragging, creating new folders as needed. Give some thought to how you want the final "look" to be and take it a step at a time. You create a Parent folder by righ-clicking on the little icon next to the Folders label. You creat a child folder by right-clicking on the name of the parent folder. It's all pretty easy.

This way, your folders and images remain integrated in your catalog.

One thing you may want to do. When you want to move an entire folder, first click on it to open it (show the images) and do a Ctl-A (select all). Then you can drage the folder and drop it on the parent folder and it will all move. If you have a subfolder it may require an extra step. So, if you end up with an "orphan folder" you can just right-click and delete it.

Like I said, doing it this way will prevent you from losing your catalog data for these images, including editing metadata. You don't need to re-import the images, which would lead to a total loss.

Sometimes it may be more efficient to move a whole block of folders/files in your file browser rather than in Lightroom. In that case, when you open Lightroom they can show up "missing". If you right-click on a missing high-level folder and choose to Find the missing file or folder, browse to the folder (don't open it) and choose it and then Lightroom will chug away to re-establish the connection. And, it is pretty smart -- it can hunt the immediate disk area for other missing stuff. Often, just a couple Find operation can turn up tons of stuff.

Now one observation. It's been a few years since I read Kelby's stuff so I don't know if he addressed this, but many of this have catalogs of many thousands of images, and a lot of people have multiple catalogs, and at some point we found it necessary to "spread out" our operations over several disk drives. For example, I try to keep my internal "data" drive with plenty of free space, but I do use it for "local shoots", and so I have a Parent folder called Local Shoots on that drive that fills up with my short-term work. I name my folders and files at import. I do all my short-term processing, keywording, collections, etc, and then I do my priority short term output (Web and any quick printing project).

From there, I'm done with the internal drive use -- I want to get these hundreds of files offloaded, so on my several external drives I have Parent folders of the given year (my folder/file names start with a date). These Year parent folders are in my Lightroom Catalog, so a move operation as above is easy and that is where those shoots will "live" from then on. As I said, they are keyworded and in Collections so they are easy to find in any of several ways. And, once I move tham I also back them up to a dedicated backup drive that is unplugged when not in use.

So, yeah, that differs from the "standard" approach but I found it effective in dealing with a catalog that spans images from a number of years and over several drives and still keeps my internal data drive with a lot of free space.

Tony,
I appreciate you taking the time to give that detailed response, its exactly what I was looking for. I think I can tackle this now. After reading your last section I am considering incorporating that technique as well, I want to move a lot of my old shoots onto an external, so I may start importing my new shoots on my local drive in the fashion you described. I am not too clear on how you name/move stuff once you are done with the project but I will try and figure that out as I go. Do you delete your old catalogue once you moved them from your local internal drive?
Thanks again
Brent

It's easy you move if you use something like my structure -- the Local Shoots is my "working parent" on my internal drive, and each imported shoot had exactly the name that will stay with it thoughout. The Year parent folders also show up in the catalog, although they are on several external drives. So, once I'm done with the external processing the move is done withing Lightroom so all the catalog settings and metadata is preserved. Click on the folder you want to move, do a Ctl-A (Select All) to include all the images, then just drag and drop the folder into its "new Parent" year (if that's how you will organize things). Or, if the folder is hard to reach, you can just right-click on the new folder when you get to it and choose to Move the selected files and folders to this folder. Wait a few secs and it's done, and your Catalog and Metadata are undisturbed.

ok this is the part where I reiterate that I am not an expert in LR or File management. SO, I imported all my photos into a new master folder on a new external HD, /Wedding Photos....I used the import dialogue in LR and imported them from their current location on my Computer HD to my external HD, selected every folder with photos in it (that I wanted moved) and had include sub folders checked. Well it put them in my master folder on my external by year, and month, etc, broke it down very nicely. I used the "move" option in the LR import dialogue. My question is it doenst look like they are all there...maybe I am still checking but more importantly they are all still on my computer HD right there in LR, just as they were...????I thought this was supposed to "MOVE" them to their new location. What am i doing wrong??

It's hard to say from your description -- it "sounds like you did things right". I'd examine the steps you took and also the actual state of things -- are you saying there are now duplicates in the system? That means Lightroom copied things into the catalog instead of moved things, right? Look at your Import dialog and see if you "missed" something. Maybe post a screenshot of it here.