Associate digiKam with New Ext-HDD?

Software digiKam
9

Sorry I only got a chance to take a seat in front of my laptop.
I would do the following:

  1. Backup your pictures collection

  2. Backup your *.db files (if they are not in the same folder where the pictures collection is)

  3. Backup digikam settings (search for "digikamrc" and then open the folder and backup all the configuration files from that folder. If you are on windows 10 it probably won’t find them. I downloaded open source double commander and searched from there.

  4. Copy the collection to the new HDD

  5. If you are planning on moving the database files to the new HDD and if they are not in the same folder where the pictures collection is move digikam4.db, recognition.db, thumbnails-digikam.db to the new HDD

  6. Open digikam, if you moved the database files go to to Settings - Configure digiKam - Database and point the new location of the database there.

  7. Go to Settings - Configure digiKam - Collections - Add collections ( I have never used network locations. I have used local and removable collections and did not see any difference between them). Add the collection on your new HDD

  8. Click OK, close settings and wait until digiKam finishes adding the new collection.

  9. Now in the Albums tree on the left side you should have two root folders:
    Albums
    /your/collection/on/old/hdd
    /your/collection/on/NEW/hdd

  10. Everything will be duplicated. That is fine

  11. Now you need to do random checks to make sure that pictures you copied to the new HDD contain all the metadata you have entered.

  12. If you are confident that the items copied to the new HDD contain all the data your had in your database you can go to Settings - Configure digiKam - Collections and remove the collection on the old drive (look for a little trash can icon on the right). This will delete the collection from the digiKam database but it won’t physically delete your pictures.

  13. That is it. It worked for me few times but again, I write metadata to JPEGs themselves as well as sidecar files for read-only files (RAW images and video files) so my system was more redundant. I actually treat database files as temporary files and deleted them many times and then restored again reading metadata from images (when I was using Windows Live Photo Gallery and Picasa in parallel)

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