# New laptop HD going bad, help with transfer of catalog & images to EHD



## kgilby (Mar 13, 2012)

I have been told by tech support people that my new laptop's hd is going bad - Carbonite tech support found tons of 'drive errors' somewhere on the drive - and I'd like to move my LR catalog and image files from the laptop hd to an external drive to prevent any losses.  Is this done as easily as 'File - Export as Catalog' is 3.6?
Ken


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 13, 2012)

Ken, the problem with "Export as Catalog" is that in this case you'll want to 'include negatives' which will move the images off the laptop HD, but it will also move the rest of the images in your catalog that are on the external HD.

Just do me a screenshot of the folders panel, and we'll work out the best method to use.


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## kgilby (Mar 13, 2012)

Hi Jim.  Thanks.  Here's the screenshot.  I created a folder on the B drive for the LR catalog and image files to go to.  I am not sure I want to move it to the 'Z' drive, which is where all of the rest of my images are stored.  Any reason to keep them separate?


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 13, 2012)

Personally I like to keep all my image files on the one drive under the one top level folder (makes backup much simpler). Ideally you would have the catalog on a different drive for performance reasons, but also ideally that different drive would be an internal HD. For now, until you get your laptop HD sorted out, it might be simpler to have everything on the one drive, you can reorganise again later. Your choice of course, which way do you want to arrange things? And do you want a Teamviewer session to make the switch?


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## kgilby (Mar 13, 2012)

Jim, I just created a new folder on the Z drive, which is the same drive that the rest of my images are on.  So, I'd like to move the LR catalog and the images that all reside on the laptop to the Z drive.  This makes sense, as I will only have to move files within the same EHD.  Here's the NEW screenshot.


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## kgilby (Mar 13, 2012)

We can do the teamviewer, sure.


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## kgilby (Mar 13, 2012)

PM sent


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## kgilby (Mar 14, 2012)

Are presets included with the move to the ehd, or is there something else that needs to be done to get them over?
Ken


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 14, 2012)

Ken, it depends on whether "Store presets with catalog" is *checked* in the Preferences>Presets Tab.....if it was there would have been a 'Lightroom Settings' folder alongside the catalog when we moved the catalog folder over to the EHD last night....but as we moved the entire folder, I'm pretty sure that a 'Lightroom Settings' didn't exist, so that would imply that the option is *unchecked* (which is the default position).

That would mean that Lightroom would source your user presets from the default location (c:\users\ken\appdata\roaming\adobe\lightroom), and that should be the case no matter where the catalog is stored.

Was your question based on an actual problem (i.e. your user presets have gone missing), or are you just confirming the process?


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## kgilby (Mar 14, 2012)

All of my User Presets are there when I am in LR, so they were moved OK.  Trying to see if I can actually learn something about LR after doing this several times with your help...


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 14, 2012)

OK, that's fine....as I said, the presets didn't actually move, they stayed in the default location, but because that "Store Presets with Catalog" option is unchecked, you'll always see your presets no matter where you put the catalog.

If you want to understand that option a bit more, have a read of this post from our Tips & Tricks forum.


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## kgilby (Mar 14, 2012)

TNG said:


> OK, that's fine....as I said, the presets didn't actually move, they stayed in the default location, but because that "Store Presets with Catalog" option is unchecked, you'll always see your presets no matter where you put the catalog.
> 
> If you want to understand that option a bit more, have a read of this post from our Tips & Tricks forum.



Oh.  I will take a look at the linked post then, as I want to get the Presets moved off of the laptop HD onto the EHD.  Thanks.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 14, 2012)

Ken, there's a whole raft of settings stuff in the default location. See this screenshot of mine:



The thing is, using that "Store Presets with catalog" option doesn't swap ALL of these settings over to be alongside the catalog, many will only ever b e referenced from the default location. Personally I would leave that setting alone, but I would (in fact I do) include that folder in your regular backup routine. Because of the potential immediacy of the laptop HD issue, why not simply copy that folder to anywhere on the EHD for now? Then when/if the laptop gets replaced, you can restore them when Lightroom gets re-installed.


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## kgilby (Mar 14, 2012)

Thanks Jim, that's what I'll do - copy the entire Lightroom folder/sub-folders to the EHD.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 14, 2012)

Sounds like a plan....presumably with Carbonite you'll be able to have your entire AppData folder backed up as well? That way settings for other programs would be backed up as well....


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## kgilby (Mar 14, 2012)

The people at Carbonite are the ones telling me that there's problems with my HD.  Carbonite won't complete the initial backup - it tells me the backup is complete, and at the same time shows 512GB still awaiting backup.  It just keeps looping, without backing anything up.  I've run CHKDSK without any errors, but in the Windows Event Viewer logs there are tons of warnings and error messages going all the way back to before I bought the computer!  Once I get all of my data moved to the EHD, I think I'll be taking the laptop back to where I bought it to see what they can do.  What a major mess...  I have (as you know) moved all image files, backed up my Windows Live Mail emails and contacts, all music files, all documents to the EHD.  Are there other common data files to look for that you are aware of?


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 14, 2012)

My weekly (or more frequent) backup run is split into 8 sections:

1. My Documents - in here I keep all my Outlook *.pst files, my financial data files, all my current and historical "Office" documents (Word, Excel, etc).
2. My Music
3. My Pictures - all my exported derivatives, though these are much less since I use Publish Services quite a lot. Still have jpegs for iTunes sync, photo frames, etc.
4. The Lightroom Catalogs folder (sub-folders of which contain my LR2, LR3 and LR4 Masters).
5. The Lightroom Settings folder as we discussed earlier.
6. My original image files.
7. My Firefox settings (profile, bookmarks, add-ons, etc.)
8. Downloaded software (e.g. Lightroom!), which I keep in a folder at the root level of my system drive (could go in My Documents I suppose, but I like it where it is).

All of these are incrementally backed up to various external drives, some cycled off-site. With this data I'm quite happy that I can restore my system back to the way it was with no loss.


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## kgilby (Mar 14, 2012)

OK.  I feel like I'm covered pretty well then.  I believe my Firefox Sync account will preserve all of my bookmarks, etc.  Where is the Lightroom Catalogs folder usually kept?  I don't think I've copied that over to the EHD.
Thanks


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 14, 2012)

The catalogs folder is just my name for the folder that houses all my catalogs in various sub-folders. You only have the one catalog folder, which we copied to the EHD last night (into the ASUS folder on Z). You're covered, but of course you need to be thinking about backups of that Z drive if Carbonite isn't doing it...


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## kgilby (Mar 14, 2012)

Right...  Would a simple replication of the file/folder structure from the Z drive to the 'X' drive be sufficient?


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 14, 2012)

That'd be OK for a temporary fix, but longer term you either need to get Carbonite working properly, or put an incremental backup routine in place...you don't want to keep copying the whole of the Z drive, you only want to copy the changes.


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## kgilby (Mar 15, 2012)

TNG said:


> That'd be OK for a temporary fix, but longer term you either need to get Carbonite working properly, or put an incremental backup routine in place...you don't want to keep copying the whole of the Z drive, you only want to copy the changes.



What do you use for incrementals?


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 15, 2012)

For the last couple of years I've been using Microsoft's free SyncToy.....does the job that I want, though there are doubtless other (pay or free) utilities that will do as good or better. Depends on whether you want things like version control (which I don't).

It'd be worth a look at least until you get Carbonite up and running.


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## kgilby (Mar 15, 2012)

Thanks Jim, I will have to do that soon as there are multiple disk errors occuring on this new internal HD.  I suppose if something IS going to go wrong with electronics, now is when it will likely happen.


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## kgilby (Mar 15, 2012)

Well, I seems the my brand new 3TB EHD may be the problem.  The Disk Error message refers to 'harddisk1', which I now understand means the 2nd physical HD that Windows sees.  I will look at more of the Disk Error messages in the Windows Event Viewer to see if all of them refer to 'harddisk1'.  Now I have to hope I can get all of my images off of that EHD before it crashes.


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## kgilby (Mar 13, 2012)

I have been told by tech support people that my new laptop's hd is going bad - Carbonite tech support found tons of 'drive errors' somewhere on the drive - and I'd like to move my LR catalog and image files from the laptop hd to an external drive to prevent any losses.  Is this done as easily as 'File - Export as Catalog' is 3.6?
Ken


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 15, 2012)

Are you OK with doing that, or do you need any help?


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## kgilby (Mar 15, 2012)

I should be able to get the files moved OK.  I first need to verify which of these HD's is in trouble - I'm not yet sure that Harddisk1 is referring to the 3TB EHD, since the event log showed an error on Harddisk1 on a day that we were in Hawaii with just the laptop.  So, Harddisk1 may be the internal HD.  The problem is that there are also Error messages showing up for Harddisk2 and Harddisk3, which would be EHD's.  I have not been able to find an Error that refers to Harddisk0, which is what someone has said the laptop's internal drive would show as (although I am beginning to think the internal HD is really Harddisk1).  It would be just my luck to have ALL of my HD's go bad at once, although that certainly seems unlikely.  But, that IS what the Event Log shows...  My gut says to just go get another new 3TB EHD and get the files moved before I do anything else.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 15, 2012)

If the event log is showing errors across all drives, there's always the possibility the problem's not the drives, but the laptop itself. Do you still have the old laptop? Can you connect the EHD's to it and run something like Chkdsk on it?


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## kgilby (Mar 15, 2012)

I do still have the old laptop, and will try running chkdsk.  I have another huge problem - I just went into Lightroom and there is NO catalog showing, no images, nothing.  The 3TB is attached and shows up in Windows Explorer...


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## kgilby (Mar 15, 2012)

The catalog shows as being back on the C drive, so I may be able to point LR in the right direction.  But why would it revert to the C drive?


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 15, 2012)

Not good....want to fire up Teamviewer so I can have a quick look?


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## kgilby (Mar 15, 2012)

Sure, I will start it now.  I did point LR back to the Z drive, though, and it sees the images.  But I'll fire up TeamViewer and pm you.  Thanks.


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