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

[Flo]

Thanks a lot for all the answers!                                               
                                                                                
So if I use the same mount point (in my case /home/flo/Pictures) digikam will 
keep the database entries?
Or do I have to change the UUID manually and if so how to do that?              
                                                                                
Greetings,                                                                      
Flo

On Tuesday, March 24, 2015 09:50:36 AM cl at isbd.net wrote:
> 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!