Migrating Lightroom photos to new PC

I see quite a few articles and videos showing how to move photographs from one drive to another in preparation to use a new PC. Typically the move is from an internal hard drive to an external hard drive. But, I do not see anyone mentioning what would seem like a good option for those who's current storage drive is perfectly fine. My internal HDD (self built PC) consists of over 4TB of photographs and it seems I will save a lot of time if I just move the drive to an external closure, making it an external drive. I can't even imagine how long it will take to move 200,000+ photos, when I can just move the drive. I would essentially save time and money. Am I missing something?

Moving from a desktop LR 6.14 to a Laptop LR subscription

Thank you

Should be pretty simple. Put it in an enclosure, bring it up on the new system and import the catalog. You may have to tell it where they are as the drive letter may change.

Yeah, LR is pretty flexible when it comes to where the pictures live. If your catalog is on the same drive as your pictures, there's nothing to do. Plug in the drive and start working.

If you keep your photos and catalog on different drives (say your catalog is on the C: drive), make sure you make a good, handy backup of that folder so you can replicate it on your new machine. If you give the 4Tb drive the same drive letter as on the old machine, the catalog will probably just find them. If it doesn't, or the absolute drive path changes, from the catalog, pick an image that LR can't find, show LR where the new location is, and, based on that, LR should be able to figure out where all your images live.

I'm a bit of a drive head, always moving stuff around, and LR never gives me any headaches.

Do a backup of the entire file system before disconnecting and moving data drives.

MCAsan wrote in post #19315782
Do a backup of the entire file system before disconnecting and moving data drives.

Lol, also if you don't disconnect and move data drives.

JJD.Photography wrote in post #19315762
Moving from a desktop LR 6.14 to a Laptop LR subscription

Thank you

Don't upgrade LR and move the images at the same time. Too much potential for trouble.

Move the images first in LR6.... then when that is sorted... and you have abackup of the catalog... then do the upgrade to LR

If LR is currently installed on C:, and your external harddrive goes by G:

1. On current PC, export Catalog to G:
   
2. Start up new PC, load Lightroom onto new PC, then import the exported Catalog file from G:
   
3. Assuming G: is now known as F: on the new PC when it is plugged in, when LR is looking for G: (because the Catalog says that is where the RAW files are located) simply point LR to the folder on F: which now is the current location of all the RAW files.
   

1. After loading LR onto the new PC, and it creates a new (empty) catalog file...
   
2. simply copy the LR Catalog file from the old PC to the new PC, making sure the copied Catalog file's name matches what LR assumes its (empty) Catalog file name to be.