The Do's & Don'ts of Hard Drive Safety
Today I am talking about how to avoid that pesky exclamation mark in the corner of your images and how to not lose things ever again. First, I want to discuss not moving things on your hard drive. Gone are the days of accessing photos via folders on your hard drive. We will now be viewing and moving images within your collections in Lightroom. By moving images in your folders, you will then see the exclamation mark in the corner of your images. This is because your Lightroom catalog no longer understands where the images are and will then ask you to find said image. The same goes for renaming files on your hard drive. Your catalog will also become confused about those images and will put an annoying exclamation mark on the corner of those images. So, in other words, do not rename or move files on your hard drive. Only move images within your collections in lightroom. You will be able to name your files when you import them. I do recommend using an import preset. I teach how to create an import preset in the eBook. By creating one you will be organizing in collections within your catalog, it will name your files, and include your metadata, as well as organize all of your images within you hard drive.
Next, I want to touch base on hard drive safety. Please do not keep all of your hard drives in the same place on your desk. What if a fire happened and all of your back ups and hard drives were gone? Please invest in an off location hard drive. Mirror copy to this hard drive consistently so that if a natural disaster happens you will not lose everything. With that being said it is also extremely important to be backing up! Please mirror copy everything on your main hard drive to a backup hard drive. This way if your main hard drive fails you can pick up right where you left off on a backup hard drive. This is why I don’t recommend relying on a cloud-based system. A cloud based system will not back up your Lightroom catalog. Therefore if you lose anything you will have to reorganize everything again.
If you are ready to be more organized and never lose anything again head to the link below to check out The Ultimate Guide To Lightroom & Hard Drive Organization. And…. The 50% off sale will be happening this month on May 30th - 31st!
Talk to you all next week same time same place!