Today’s Question: You said it was possible to drag a folder of photos in Lightroom Classic from an internal hard drive to an external hard drive. However, in my experience it is not possible to drag a folder to a hard drive. Lightroom Classic only allows you to drag a folder or photos to a folder, not a hard drive. Is there a workaround?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can drag a folder to the top (root) level of a hard drive in Lightroom Classic by first exposing the hard drive as a folder using the “Show Parent Folder” command.
More Detail: At first glance it appears as though Lightroom Classic doesn’t enable you to move photos or folders to the top level (root) of a hard drive. You can see a heading representing the hard drive, and the folders that contain photos on that drive. If you attempt to drag-and-drop to the heading representing the hard drive, you won’t actually be able to move the files or folders you were dragging.
However, you can reveal the hard drive as a folder within the folder structure shown on the Folders list on the left panel in the Library module. Simply right-click on one of the top-level folders on the hard drive, and choose “Show Parent Folder” from the popup menu that appears. This command will reveal the folder that contains the folder you selected, which in the case of a top-level folder means the hard drive itself will be revealed.
When you use the “Show Parent Folder” command in this way, the hard drive will be represented as a folder above all of the other folders on the hard drive. You can then drag-and-drop folders (or photos) directly to that folder representing the hard drive.
Let’s assume, for example, you have a hard drive called “Photos”. On that hard drive you have a folder called “Italy” and within the “Italy” folder you have a folder called “Capri”. But you’ve decided you want the Capri folder to be a top-level folder, rather than a sub-folder under the Italy folder. By revealing the Photos drive as a folder using the “Show Parent Folder” command, you can then drag the Capri folder to the Photos folder (which represents the hard drive) and that Capri folder will then be a top-level folder on the hard drive.
When you’re finished making use of the hard drive as a parent folder, you can right-click on the folder and choose “Hide This Parent” to streamline the presentation of folders within the Folders list in Lightroom Classic.