LR - having trouble importing/syncing with external USB drive

I have a USB external hard drive connected to a Mac AirPort Extreme, and am using it to backup and archive photos to. No trouble seeing, reading and writing to the drive for normal files.

I thought it'd be handy to add the archive files to LR's catalog. If I add folder or sync, I can see the folders and files I need but when I click import it goes almost all the way then error message pops up that no photos to import. But they were checked and visible at the beginning.

Anyone else had similar probs and/or know solution?

When you say they are archive folders, does that mean the originals are already in the LR Library? If so, I'm not sure that there is a way to get Lightroom to do that...

I've got the originals still on my hard disk and in the LR catalog, but intend to remove them from there to free up space on my disk. I have copied the files I want to wipe off my disk to the external drive into a folder called "archive". It's that archive folder I want to be able to, if possible, add back to LR catalog.

Hmm...what I would do is, in Lightroom, move the folders from your hard drive to the external -- you can drag them and drop them into a parent folder, for example. I don't thing LR will "play well" with trying to import duplicates. I could be mistaken, but your experience points to that.

Also, taking your approach would lose any edits and metadata you've done. These things are stored in the catalog in Lightroom, not in the original file.

An alternative that can work is to move them in your system browser -- in LR they will show up as missing and normally you can direct LR to "Find missing files/folders" but it takes an extra steps and I've seen LR get "confused" doing that.

For me I just do it using Lightroom moving. Click on a folder, select Ctl-A to select all images in that folder, and you either drag an drop it into the target parent folder or right-click on the target folder and choose to move the folder/files.

Thanks mate. I'll have a bit of a play with it.

I faced a similar situation a couple days ago:
On my internal disc I have all the photos for the current year and they are in the LR catalog; on my two externals I have all my photos - current year and past years. The past years' photos are also in the catalog, listed with one of the externals as their address. At the end of the year I deleted the 2010 folder from the internal and replaced it with an empty 2011 folder. Of course LR panicked, screaming at me with question marks. I simply clicked on the highest one (2010) and redirected LR to the external. Smooth and simple.

Think I solved it. Used the "update folder location" command. Mustn't have liked having multiples of the same images.

I think by default LR has the "Do not import Duplicates" flag set, hence it may just ignore them all.

I'm very sure I had that unchecked, could (and often am) be proved wrong.