Question on how to use wireless external drive

Discussion in 'Learning Pad' started by Coreen, Sep 11, 2019.

  1. Coreen

    Coreen Active Member

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    Okay, all of this is so new to me. I've been here, left for mother's illness, thought I was ready to come back in April and wasn't and find myself back again now.

    I am thinking of using Bridge for supply organization, Lightroom for photo organization and Photoshop for scrapbooking. Of course, I have to learn how to use it all first. LOL! I currently have photos in PSE 2018 and some are tagged, some are not. I am needing to free up space on my laptop, so I thought I was being smart by purchasing a wireless external harddrive. Problem is, when I moved my photos...it didn't seem to keep my tags. Maybe that is normal and maybe it was just user error on my part.

    Before I start over with this new system, I'd like to understand how others might be using their external drives. My THOUGHT was...I will keep my photos and supplies on this wireless drive and then just pull from that whenever I want to use anything. But does it really work that way and is it pretty seamless?

    I'd hate to move all my photos and start storing supplies there, tag them all and then figure out it doesn't work as I expected and suddenly nothing is tagged. Maybe I'm missing some key information?

    Help! :)
     
  2. michelepixels

    michelepixels A pun is not fully matured until it is full groan.

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    I'm only guessing because I haven't used PSE in many years, but I'm wondering whether you moved the photos to the EHD via PSE or just in your computer file system. Because in Lightroom I know we have to move photos within Lightroom or things get messed up.

    If that doesn't help, at least I bumped up the thread and hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be by soon! :)
     
  3. gonewiththewind

    gonewiththewind I choose joy.

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    Like Michele said, PSE Organizer works like Lightroom. If you move photos outside of the program to a new location, it "orphans" the images because it doesn't know where to find them. Both programs have methods for recovering orphaned files, but I've found that if I've moved something inadvertently outside the program (using File Explorer) then I can just move them back to their original location and all is well again. If you don't remember where the folders/files were originally, then make use of PSE Organizer's ability to find the orphaned files. This video may help you do that:

    Once your photos are no longer orphaned, make sure your PSE catalog is updated/synced. Then pop over and check out this thread that talks about importing your photos and tags from your PSE catalog into Lightroom: https://the-lilypad.com/forum/threads/question-about-photoshopcc.65771/

    As far as using an external hard drive, whether it's wired or wireless, as long as your program knows the location of the photos/digital supplies, you should have no problems. I use a wired EHD and access files with no problems, and keywording/tagging works just as it would if your photos/digital supplies were on your internal hard drive.
     
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  4. Coreen

    Coreen Active Member

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    ah, okay...this all makes sense and i got it to work. now, if i could just get my wd my passport wireless pro to work wirelessly. it works great always plugged into my laptop. :) oh well, baby steps.
     
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  5. Karen

    Karen Wiggle it, just a little bit!

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    I didn't even know they MADE wireless EHDs! That's cool! I know some people have fancy routers that you can plug (with a wire) your EHD into the router and that effectively makes it wireless for anyone on your wireless network. I've never set ours up that way though. I just use a regular EHD and plug it into whichever computer I'm using at the time. I think it would be faster to plug it in as opposed to running it wirelessly. I do love having all my files OFF my computer and on my EHD though. It makes it so easy to work an different computers and also when you get a new computer, there's so much less to transfer. Make sure you check into backup options for your EHD though. I know a lot of people use BackBlaze (an online backup service you pay a bit for each month). I have an extra EHD at work that I back up to on Fridays, but that's manual and I have to rely on myself to remember to do it. It's such a habit now, that I very rarely forget a week.
     
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  6. Coreen

    Coreen Active Member

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    @Karen they DO make them, which would be cool IF i could figure it out. lol! i tried plugging it into my router, but for some reason...i couldn't figure that out either. of course, i waited until 9pm to start on all of this, so maybe i should give it another try someday when i've got nothing but time on my hands. :)
     
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  7. Karen

    Karen Wiggle it, just a little bit!

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    You got further than I did, I never even tried to plug mine into the router... but I think mine supports that. Lol! I'm such an old dog and don't wanna learn new tricks sometimes. Ha ha!
     
  8. Karen

    Karen Wiggle it, just a little bit!

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    Oh and I looked up those wireless hard drives after I read this thread... they look cool and I can't believe I never knew they existed before yesterday. I'm always checking out EHD prices around my birthday and Christmas. :giggle
     
  9. Coreen

    Coreen Active Member

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    @Karen i hope you have better luck than me. i tried again last night and just couldn't figure it out. then i finally decided...it really isn't a big deal to have my ehd plugged into my laptop. it works fine that way. so that's what i'm doing. i've given up on the wireless aspect. :)
     
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  10. HavaDrPepper

    HavaDrPepper Space. The final frontier

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    I feel more comfortable having my EHD actually plugged in. My wireless can be flaky at times so I would hate to depend on it. Although it has been much better since I no longer have my Backblaze backup running continuously. For some reason when it runs, it "disconnects" my wireless for a short period of time (seconds but sometimes long enough to disconnect my dropbox connection).
     

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