It would be better to use the Backup and Restore feature of the Organizer to move all of your files to your external hard drive. I thought "back up and restore" was used to move files stored in back up on the external hard drive and restore them back to my laptop? his will allow you to preserve your current folder structure and will also maintain your tags, face recognition, Albums, and similar features of your current catalog. How do you back up and restore to an external hard drive with albums, structure, etc. ? Once the catalog has been restored on your new hard drive, [By new hard drive, do you mean my current external hard drive or a third hard drive I should purchase. I believe you mean my current ext hard drive. ]you can use the restored catalog which uses the files on your external hard drive and you can then delete the files from your laptop. If there is enough room on your external drive, you can do this now. Otherwise, I would delete the files from your external HD and start the Backup/Restore with a clean drive. Let's assume I delete all the photos