# Moving my whole Lightroom catalogue from one hard drive to another



## jwajwa (Feb 24, 2012)

Hi

I have searched the internet for solutions for this but I cannot fathom it out! My internal drive was nearly full so I have purchased a new much bigger internal hard drive. I would like to transfer all my images that I have (all catalogued on LR) from my current hard drive to my big empty new one. Ideally so I can just start off from where I left off but on the new drive. I would be very grateful if someone could explain this in a fairly foolproof way!!! Thanks,

John


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## Jim Wilde (Feb 24, 2012)

Hi, welcome to the forum.

This is a fairly simple thing to do (once you know how!), in fact there are a couple of ways of doing it. If you could post a screenshot of the Folders Panel (top level folders only) in the Library Module, that'll help us advise you of the best way to do it.


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## clee01l (Feb 24, 2012)

John, Welcome to the forum.  Here's a link that will help you locate all of your critical LR files kb2.adobe.com
The biggest problem that you will need to resolve is the change in drive letter for the location of your master images.  If you have a single top level (parent) folder showing in the LR folder panel, it will be easy to redirect LR to the new location of that folder by right clicking and choosing {Find Missing Folder...} in the context menu.


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## jwajwa (Feb 26, 2012)

jwajwa said:


> Hi
> 
> I have searched the internet for solutions for this but I cannot fathom it out! My internal drive was nearly full so I have purchased a new much bigger internal hard drive. I would like to transfer all my images that I have (all catalogued on LR) from my current hard drive to my big empty new one. Ideally so I can just start off from where I left off but on the new drive. I would be very grateful if someone could explain this in a fairly foolproof way!!! Thanks,
> 
> John




Hi - hope this is usable and what you meant?


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## jwajwa (Mar 1, 2012)

jwajwa said:


> View attachment 1894
> 
> 
> Hi - hope this is usable and what you meant?





Can anyone please help still???


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 1, 2012)

Sorry, must have missed you first reply.

There are a few ways of doing this, but given the fairly large number of pictures involved my own preferred way would be:

1. Using Explorer, create a new root-level folder on the new hard drive, e.g. My Images.
2. Close down Lightroom, then *copy* all the 7 year folders from the D drive into the new root-level folder on the new hard drive.
3. I have a query about why you have a 'desktop' folder on your D drive. As you also have an image in the catalog on your C drive 'Desktop', I assume the one on the D drive can safely be copied to the new hard drive folder as well? If so, do that.
4. Start Lightroom, then in turn *right-click* on each of the 8 top-level folders on the D drive and select "Update Folder Location"....this will pop up a file browser, use this to browse to and selct the corresponding folder on the new hard drive and click OK. This will relink the catalog to the new hard drive.
5. When all 8 are done, the D drive should show no folders in the catalog, and the new hard drive should be present in the Folders Panel and showing all your images.
6. Give it a day or two to check all is OK (it should be), then at your leisure you can remove the folders from the D drive.

If any of that isn't clear, get back to us.


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## jwajwa (Mar 6, 2012)

TNG said:


> Sorry, must have missed you first reply.
> 
> There are a few ways of doing this, but given the fairly large number of pictures involved my own preferred way would be:
> 
> ...



Thank you very much for this - indeed it seems very easy (now I know)!!

Just one quick query on my (now mostly deleted d drive there are a couple of folders called "Previews -irdata" and another called "LR Catfile". Can I get get rid of these?? Thanks,

John


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 6, 2012)

jwajwa said:


> Just one quick query on my (now mostly deleted d drive there are a couple of folders called "Previews -irdata" and another called "LR Catfile". Can I get get rid of these?? Thanks,



Before I say "Yes", can you tell me exactly where your catalog file is located? If you're not sure, go to Edit>Catalog Settings>General Tab and post a screenshot of the result? The reason for my caution is that alongside your catalog file will be the associated previews folder, which will be named"*yourcatalogname Previews.lrdata*" (note, that's a lower case "L", not an upper-case "i"). So that Previews.lrdata folder on the D drive 'belongs' to a Lightroom catalog, and we need to find out if it is current or redundant.

The "LR Catfile" folder sounds like it could contain a Lightroom Catalog.....so I think we need to make sure these are no longer in use before doing any deletions, don't you? That screenshot will help.....


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## jwajwa (Mar 9, 2012)

Here it is - thank you....


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 9, 2012)

OK, well obviously you can see from the screenshot that your current catalog is on the D drive, in a root-level folder called "LR - D Drive". Inside that folder you will find as a minimum your catalog file, which is called "LR - D Drive.lrcat", and adjacent to that will be the associated previews folder called "LR - D Drive Previews.lrdata".

So....if the 'Previews.lrdata' folder you want to delete is the same one, then obviously bad idea (not catastrophic, LR would rebuild the previews, but bad idea nonetheless). If the folder is in a different location on the D drive, it may be OK to go ahead and delete it....but if you're not sure, why not simply move it to a different location for a while until you find out for sure whether you need it or not? Same applies for the LR Catfile folder....it doesn't seem related to your current catalog in any way, so why not do the same thing with that.

If your intention is to totally take the D drive out of service, you'll obviously need to move your current catalog folder elsewhere first.

I also see from the screenshot that you have your backup option set to 'Never'....can I ask if you have an alternative backup strategy in place? If not, you're taking an awfully big risk....


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