Operating from an external hard drive

[Sveinn í Felli]

Hi Mark,

The best way to transfer those images back over to D:// with all their 
metadata intact, is to create (or use an existing) folder on the 
D:-drive, named something like 'Pictures' or 'Photos'.
Then you open Digikam, go to 'Settings -> Configure Digikam' then select 
the 'Collections' tab. There you'd select 'Local Collections' and choose 
'Add Collection', in the selection window you should browse to this 
D://Pictures folder (or whatever you named it).

It's important not to choose 'Local Collections' but rather 'Collections 
on Removable Media' or 'Collections on Network Shares' if the drive is 
of such origin.

Now you have a new collection on the D:-drive; in Digikam you can select 
all the necessary photos from your older collection (on the C:-drive) 
and drag them over to the new collection - Digikam will ask whether to 
copy them or move. It will also respect any folder structure you may 
have created. And all tags will move along, whether embedded in the 
files or database-only.

Once the transfer is finished (can take ages, depending on throughput), 
you can check if things are correct, and then revisit 'Settings -> 
Configure Digikam -> Collections' and delete the old collection on the 
C:-drive (there's a tiny thrashbin-icon).

Thing is, that Digikam does not have/own/keep your photos in some 
virtual container of its own, it only shows existing file structure in a 
filesystem on some disk. For convenience it presents a folder as a named 
'Collection' with some defined root; say like 
'C://ApplicationData/Users/XXXX/MyPhotos' would probably be the default 
root for your original collection in Digikam (please forgive me any path 
imprecisions, haven't used Windows since Win2k).

Best regards and good luck,
Sveinn í Felli


Þann 3.7.2024 14:24, skrifaði Mark Dirksen:
> I have installed DigiKam 3.0 on my C:// hard drive and have now imported
> some 2,500 pictures over to it from my D:// drive.  Looking ahead, however,
> I'm concerned that I'm making unnecessary work.
> 
> Can one run DigiKam on / from an external hard drive, meaning that all the
> tags and metadata changes are registered THERE?  Or must it run on the
> primary operating system.  I see it can't run both places!
> 
> If so, hooray!  But if so, how can I transfer those 2,500 pix back over to
> D:// with all their metadata intact?
> 
> Thanks for your assistance and best practice thoughts.
> Mark Dirksen
>