mass file name-changing

I'm sure this has been discussed previously but there is just so much to get through..

I bought an external hard-drive recently and i want to back up my music and photos should anything happen my wee little mac. I only use film for my photos (i know, i know.. let's not get into it) so i have the films scanned and the photos come back on a CD as CV0001 and CV0002 etc.. iPhoto has no problem with the fact that therefore have about 100 different photos named CV0001 and so on.

However, when i try to transfere them onto the ext HD it has an problem with the fact that there are multiple files with the same nomenclature.

So.. is there some setting i can change so that the HD accepts muliple idenical file names? The most obvious solutiion i can see is just change all the file names to CV0001_1, CV0001_2, CV0001_3 etc.. but with just under 3000 photos, this will take some time and be hidiously tedious.

Does anyone know of any way to rename batches of files? is there a program i can use? anyone's help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

automator will do it, but may mess up the order of the files.

the best tool i've found is renamer4mac. very nice robust but simple program.

sweet, cheers!

Also, turn on AppleScript and then check under Finder Scripts. There are several that will do bulk name changes.

To enable Applescript, just execute the AppleScript utility and check the box for show Script Menu in menu bar". You will see a scroll like icon show up on your menu bar. Click that and a large selection of Script menus appears, one of which is "Finder Scripts".

Why not just copy/clone your entire iPhoto library to the external. Then everything will be there in case of emergency and ready to pull back onto the internal. Also eliminates the problem of duplicate names not being accepted.