managing iPhoto

As my hard drive was getting clogged with too many photos on iPhoto, I have had to use an external drive to archive my shots, leaving only my favorites on the hard drive in my albums. However, since the file numbers given to each picture by the camera are repeating, as they've gone thru the available ones (presumably 10,000), that means that I have to manually modify each so that the original pictures with the same number aren't deleted. There's got to be an easier way. Any suggestions on how to get it to not overwrite and older version of the same file name and just get it to add "-2" or whatever to the name so that I can save all of them?

There are two names for any photo in iPhoto:

1. The title you gave it (or the default title from the EXIF data)
2. The actual filename of the file.

These are only sometimes the same thing.

Are you actually getting a warning that you will overwrite files when you import pictures? If not, you're not overwriting files.

If you are organising your photos into separate folder the numbering won't be an issue. Please don't tell us you are just lumping them altogether in one folder.