How to keep my collections while moving photos to new HD?

Question

Hello folks. I have a question that I couldn't find the answer anywhere:

The old external HD with all my photos is bad and needs to be formatted.

All photos have been copied to my new HD (by using Explorer). All copies have been imported into lightroom. (I have two HDs with the same photos in my Lightroom now). After that my catalog was saved.

The next step would be to format the old HD, erasing all photos that are there. How to do this without also losing the hundreds of folders with thousands of photos in my collections created over the years? (I can't believe we have to create new collections from scratch every time we change HDs).

I'm still using Lightroom 4, which works perfectly on my old Windows 7 on a Dell tower.

Thanks a lot
Ricardo

JohanElzenga · Accepted Answer

You should not have imported the copies, because that means you now have duplicates. Do you make catalog backups? If so, replace your catalog file with a backup copy from before you imported. Then you can do this the correct way. The correct way is that you right-click on a top folder in the folder panel and choose 'Update Folder Location'. In the dialog that follows navigate to the same folder on the new disk. That will 'relink' this folder and all its subfolders to the new disk. Repeat this if necessary with your other topfolders, until all folders are now shown on the new disk. That is all.

P.S. If you do not have a catalog backup then you can still solve this by removing all the folders of the new disk from the catalog again, and then follow the same procedure to 'relink' the old folders. Do make several catalog backups in the process, because a mistake is easily made!

dj_paige · Answer

All copies have been imported into lightroom. (I have two HDs with the same photos in my Lightroom now).  Importing is a mistake, your collections will never come across that way. Here are instructions on moving your Lightroom 4 to a new computer: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-move-lightroom-to-new-computer/

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