[Digikam-users] Best method to move the complete photo collection

[cl at isbd.net]

Gilles Caulier <caulier.gilles at gmail.com> wrote:
> > All very true but it's very, very risky I think.  You are always at
> > risk of losing the metadata.
> >
> > As far as I understand how things work if your main digikam store
> > fails in any way you will lose the metadata if it's stored only in the
> > database.  This is because Digikam will reconstruct the database when
> > you restore from backup.  Backing up the database file doesn't help
> > because it won't work on a new disk drive, Digikam rebuilds it. (Well
> > it might work if you restore to exactly the same place on the same
> > disk drive but that assumes the disk drive hasn't failed)
> >
> > There needs to be a way to copy a collection of Digikam images and its
> > database in a way that allows copying the metadata from one database
> > file to another.  At present I think the only way to copy is to write
> > all the metadata to file, then copy all the image files, then recreate
> > the database from the metadata in the files.
> >
> 
> Not at all..
> 
> digiKam identify collection from disk using UUID. This ID is stored in DB.
> 
Which is why, by default, if you move a digikam hierarchy it rebuilds
the database.


> If you change disk where collection are stored, at next startup
> digiKam will not find old disk and will ask to rellocate collection to
> new disk. If you use same path than older disk mount point, digiKam
> will found it quickly. You just need to validate. It take 10 s to
> review whole collection storage.
> 
I've not seen this happen when I have copied a digikam hierarchy.
When I copied mine from one place to another (everything including the
database) digikam *always* rebuilt the database.

In my case I was copying digikam from /home/chris/pictures on one
computer to /home/chris/pictures on another computer.  I actually
wanted to mirror the collection but, as I said, digikam always
insisted on rebuilding the database (which took several hours).

If there is a way of doing this I'd love to know because it would make
my life a whole lot easier!

-- 
Chris Green
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