Lightroom and a new hard drive

[RandallC]

I've done some searching and looked through the stickies, but I can't quite find the answer to my question.

I just purchased a new internal HD and want to move all my photos there. I'm running Vista and was planning on just right-clicking the "Photos" directory in explorer and changing the location to the new drive. This should redirect the folder to the new drive, and move all my photos. So far so good.

But, what will happen with LR? My LR library is in the Photo folder too so this will move to the new drive (which should be a plus since the new drive is faster). But that probably means I'll need to point LR to the new location the first time I open it. Correct? And point LR to the new photo locations too?

I'm assuming the process will look like this:

1. Redirect my Photos directory to the new drive. Let Vista move my photos.
2. Open LR and point it to the new location of my LR catalog
3. Point LR to the new location of my photos

Will this work? Is there an easier way to do this? Just want to make sure I don't do something that will cause me hours of work to fix, or cause me to lose my Lightroom edits.

[In2Photos]

That will work just fine.

Since you are moving the catalog there is not an easier way to do that from within LR. You could move your photos from within LR, but the way you have described it should work just as well.

[RandallC]

Great. Thanks for the quick reply.

I sat there for 20 minutes last night and couldn't quite pull the trigger to start the project. I just needed a sanity check to make sure I was on the right track.

[tonylong]

You know, I would personally do it like this: move the photos in Lightroom -- if you go to the Library module and click on All Photos, then right click on the + sign next to the Library label you can go to the new drive, create a parent folder and move the files that way (or just move the files and folders into an existing folder or whatever). That would keep all the library information intact and you wouldn't have to do an extensive Lightroom search to re-synch. But that's just me.

[RandallC]

Thanks, Tony.

But how would that work when I redirect my old photo directory (which is in C:\Users) to the new location (on G:\)? Not all of my photos are in LR, so I'd still need to manually move other photos too. Would moving some photos from LR and some from the OS mess things up? Plus my LR catalog (in C:\Users\...\My photos\Lightroom) would need to be moved too.

I'm sure I'll be able to put it all back together no matter what. But just trying to make it as easy as possible. I made a similar move with music files a few months back and it took me hours and hours to get everything back to the way it was. Not an experience I want to go through with my photos..

[tonylong]

Well, if you start by moving your Lightroom photos using Lightroom, then you preserve your catalog, and then you can move the rest of the photos wherever and however you want. That way, nothing gets confused and you don't run the possibility of messing up your catalog data.

You can also try the File/Export as Catalog routine, but I've never messed with that, so I can't comment on how messy that might be.

So, back to moving the folders/files first:

Once you do that, the other question will be in how to move your catalog. I think you will need to copy it over, then there are two ways to switch to the catalog: there is a shortcut when you are starting Lightroom to allow you to choose a catalog, but I don't recall what it is. There is also a File/Open Catalog command. Try that, and see how it handles all the moved files, and best of luck!

[In2Photos]

In this case Tony I disagree. He is trying to move the "Pictures" folder for Vista. If he moves the images from within LR and then tries to move the "Pictures" folder he could end up with a mess (been there done that).

[RandallC]

Ok, I just finished... and all is well

I decided to go with my original plan of moving the directory outside of LR. As I thought through the process I realized that if something got messed up I could easily point the Photos directory back to the original location and essentially undo the entire process. Wasn't sure if I could undo as easily from within LR, so decided to wait to try that if Plan A went awry.

So, from Explorer I right-clicked on my "Pictures" directory, selected the Location tab and moved it to the new drive. Vista moved all my files with no problems (although it took a while).

When it was done I found my Lightroom Catalog file in the new location and opened it. Viola! All my photos were there. The surprising thing is that I didn't even need to tell LR to look in a new location -- all my folders point to the G: drive instead of the C: drive. Not sure how LR did that, but I was glad it did.

Thanks everyone for your help.

[tonylong]

Hey, glad it worked! Fortunately there are more than one way to "skin a cat" and it looked like yours worked seemlessly -- it sounds like Lightroom is using a "relative" pointing system rather than an absolute path, so it did good!