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J
JRCpht123
Participant
September 22, 2023
Question

Moving lightroom catalog to a new drive - all photos present, but without any folder structure

  • September 22, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 363 views

I've moved my lightroom catalog from my current external drive (drive D) to my new and larger one (drive F). Before this I've moved all my RAW files by copying them over, so right now I have everything doubly backed up.

I exported the catalog choosing the "export as catalog", and after over 24hrs it was exported with a warning that it couldnt find the preview for 900-ish photos. As ive understood this isnt a problem. 

When opening the catalog in drive F, all my photos (48.000 something) turned up in lightroom, edits and all, but with none of the folder structure. Right before moving the catalog i cleaned it up in drive D by sorting the images under LIGHTROOM -> *year* (ex 2022), -> the individual folders for the date of each shoot. 

As of now, all the photos turn up together without any folder at all. What have happened here? Is it because i changed the folder structure before exporting the new catalog, and that the RAW folder structure isnt the same? 

Also, when opening the original lightroom catalog on drive D i need to find missing folder for all the folders in lightroom. I did not get this before exporting. All the RAWs are still there. Any ideas as to what have caused this? 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
September 22, 2023

I exported the catalog choosing the "export as catalog", and after over 24hrs it was exported with a warning that it couldnt find the preview for 900-ish photos. As ive understood this isnt a problem.

 

Not a necessary step.

 

When opening the catalog in drive F, all my photos (48.000 something) turned up in lightroom, edits and all, but with none of the folder structure. 

 

I am somewhat confused by this, it is unclear to me exactly what you did. The part about "opening the catalog in drive F" is clear, although once you start talking about "none of the folder structure" ... I feel like either I don't understand what you mean, or you have left out steps from your description that could cause this. LrC will not do this on its own.

 

Question: did you, after opening the catalog in drive F, import the PHOTOS (not import the catalog using File->Import from Another Catalog) into LrC?

 

Right before moving the catalog i cleaned it up in drive D by sorting the images under LIGHTROOM -> *year* (ex 2022), -> the individual folders for the date of each shoot.

 

Again, I am confused. What does "cleaned it up in drive D" mean, what are the exact steps, in detail, that you did. "Sorting images under Lightroom -> " Perhaps your meaning of the word "sorting" is different than the way I understand this word, but the way I understand the word "sorting", the folder locations and file names remain unchanged, only the order the files are displayed changes. But you tell me ... what exact steps did you follow to do this sorting?

J
JRCpht123Author
Participant
September 22, 2023

First question: I double clicked the lrcat-file, which opened up lightroom. All the photos were there in the "all photos" folder when lightroom started up. I did not import anything. 

Second question: dragged and dropped the photos and folders into this structure: Main folder "Lightroom" -> Subfolders *year* which are then again divided into subfolders for individual dates. This also changed the position of the rawfiles, as they are now sorted in the same manner, which is way more clean than what I used to have. 

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
September 22, 2023

dragged and dropped the photos and folders into this structure: Main folder "Lightroom" -> Subfolders *year* which are then again divided into subfolders for individual dates. This also changed the position of the rawfiles, as they are now sorted in the same manner, which is way more clean than what I used to have.

 

So you have moved the files to a new location. To me, this is not sorting, but anyway, I think I understand what you did. However, this should not cause the symptoms you describe in LrC, where all photos have "none of the folder structure"; but again your words may mean one thing to you and another thing to me. By doing this moving of files into folders using your operating system, LrC will not display the files in their new folders. Does LrC show the files in the old folders, in other words, whatever the folder arrangement of the files was before you did this???

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