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Participant
December 28, 2022
Question

Pointing my catalog to my backup RAW files

  • December 28, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 131 views

Hello all,

I've had my Lightroom images and catalog files on on external drive, and today mid-edit, the external drive corrupted. It has become read-only and basically made my catalog unuseable. Luckily, all my RAW photos are backed up on another drive. Also luckily, I've been able to copy the .LRCAT file from the old now-read-only external drive, to the new hard drive as well.

 

Now, when I open the copied .LRCAT file, Lightroom opens just fine and shows my edits all the way up until the external drive locked itself down. However, that LRCAT file is still looking at all the files on the now unuseable read-only drive. How do I tell my catalog that I'd like it to keep all my edits, but reference the exact same RAW files that I had backed up to a different external drive?

 

I'm not sure this makes sense. But it comes down to the idea that I need to tell my Ligthrooom that I've basically moved my RAW files to a new location. Can anyone give me a hand?

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2 replies

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 28, 2022

The by far easiest method is to simply rename the backup disk so it has the exact same name as the corrupted disk had. That's all. Lightroom won't know the difference.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
Rob_Cullen
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 28, 2022

Read this blog article by the Lightroom Queen first-

MISSING FILES & FOLDERS (Lightroom Queen)

If all your files on the 'new' drive are in the exact same folder heirarchy as the corrupted drive- so much the better. And if you have a 'Parent' folder that has all your photos in sub-folders, even better again.

Then you would select the 'Parent' folder, [Right-Click], and [Find Missing Folder] as in Step#4 of the linked article.

DO NOT IMPORT ANY PHOTOS from the new drive!

DO NOT 'SYNCHRONIZE' any Folders in your catalog!

 

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .