External Libraries - best way to make changes after setting up

[maiden vortex]

Hi - I started by creating a New External Library and then adding multiple Import Paths to the single library. I realised that may get a bit difficult with changes and scanning as each time I force a full scan it will scan ALL paths.

So I started to break out the paths and create a library for each five years as an example (five paths - one for each year as I organise my photos in folders by year) but again, saw this could cause issues over time.

So my thinking now is one Library per Import path.

But to break out five individual paths in to five libraries will, based on experience, recreate ALL the thumbnails and duplication and face scanning and meta date etc etc all over again and once complete, I need to remove offline files and ignore the duplicates etc.

The simple question here is:

Can I move an import path from External Library A to External Library B and not have to go through all the re-processing and recreation of all the thumbnails, meta data, faces etc and then tidy everything up afterwards?

Is there a quick way?

In addition, is there any general guidance for External Libraries and import paths for best practice usage?

My photos are all on a NAS and organised in folders by years eg 2001, 2002, 2003 .... 2023, 2024 etc. so each import path is like this - /path/to/photos/folder/2023 for example

In total I would hazard a guess at around 200,000 photos so if I should be doing something fundamentally different it would be good to know before I get too far down the wrong road.

Thanks in advance.

[buoyant loom]

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[buoyant loom]

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[thin dust]

There’s no way to do what you’re describing, as far as I know

[limber inlet]

Does the library scan take too long?
I only have about 80k assets.. but the refresh is done pretty quickly.

May I ask why the need to force re-scan every single file?

[maiden vortex]

I will double check once the current job has finished and post back the results - ie how long a refresh on a library is with very few changes.

[maiden vortex]

Ok - so a refresh where multiple paths are in one library doesn't seem to add any additional overhead as I initially thought. I guess the big issue is if you needed to make any changes to the organisation or needed to do a FULL refresh then it would take a LOT longer if you only wanted one folder path to be fully rescanned as you can only do this at the library level and not the path level.

I think I will revert to my five years per library plan for now.

It would still be nice if there was a way to make changes to the organisation of paths and libraries - i.e. moving a path from library A to library B without having to regenerate all the metadata and thumbnails etc etc as this will have already been done once. I appreciate each library has a unique guid and it is seen as a "new" path even if the path is the same in two libraries.

Perhaps something for the future - even if it was to stop the same path being added to more than one library - as this would clearly not be desired and would just generate duplicates.

Thanks for the assistance - and again - if there is any best practice for External Library management be good know.