Re-installing Lightroom - avoiding re-download of all local copies

Hello,

when I need to reinstall Lightroom on my Windows system, for example after upgrading the HDD or reinstalling Windows, there is NO option to avoiding a complete re-download of all local copies of my photos - even though they are already present on a data drive.

I am NOT asking how to turn off keeping local copies - I keep local copies so I can backup my files (as I would expect 90-100% of all photographers semi-serious and above do).

The issue is that it is currently impossible to re-install Lightroom, and point the new install towards the storage drive of the local copies. If you do, it just creates a parallel folder (with the new cryptic hash for the new install), and starts downloading (not copying or moving from the existing local copies) ALL copies of files held online.

It is pretty straight forward to compare hashes of local copies to the hashes of the cloud storage photos, and worst-case move the local copies to the new folder. I assume most of that functionality is already present in order to check online-offline consistency.

I am suggesting to include an option when (re-)installing Lightroom to check a local folder to avoid re-downloading.

This is not a "small" issue. It takes me about a week (!!) to redownload my photo collection after a re-install.

Has anyone figured this out?