Upgrading from LR6 to LR Classic; building 1:1 previews taking more than 24 hours?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
September 7, 2021
4 replies
691 views

I am desparate for help please! I am in the process of upgrading from LR6 on a old Windows 8 laptop to LR Classic on a new Windows 10 laptop. LR6 quit working suddenly, and entirely, on my old laptop in July (would not open and instead got message that both Photoshop and LR6 could not work on outdated operating system), but I already had been keeping all my photos, backups, and catalog on a huge external drive. When I tried to open the old catalog in the new LR Classic on my new Windows 10 laptop, it upgraded the catalog and even duplicated quite a few of the existing folders. Now, for more than 24 hours, LR Classic has been building 1:1 previews. I have tens of thousands of photos on my external drive and in the old catalog, but should it really be taking this long? I found the old preview folders; can I stop this building preview process and merely copy the old previews?

Windows

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GoldingD

Legend

And see (ref 1).

(ref 1): Computer Darkroom | Lightroom Classic Find missing or moved folders by Ian Lyons

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daegellmAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you, but my new laptop will not let me open this link?

Sean McCormack

Community Expert

As with @dj_paige's comment, Lightroom can build these on the fly. The preview file has undergone some changes since LR6, but the catalog upgrade process should have upgraded the previews as well. You don't need the 1:1 previews strictly speaking. Standard sized is more than enough but as established, you don't even need these to start working. Yes, you'll have grey thumbnails, but Lightroom should start generating these as you use it.

Sean McCormack. Author of 'Essential Development 3'. Magazine Writer. Former Official Fuji X-Photographer.

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daegellmAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you! I accidently closed LR Classic on 7 Sep, and didn't get a chance to reopen it until a little while ago. I am afraid that I have totally messed this up. The catalog upgrade appears to have duplicated many of the folders and has almost doubled the size of the catalog. Although the catalog is on an external drive, it has also put grayed out folders on the C and D drives, and has also added drives F through L with grayed out folders in them. I am wondering if it would be better if I uninstalled LR Classic, deleted all of the new catalogs and previews and other files, and completely started over, copying the previews from the old Lightroom rather than letting the second attempt at installation build new previews?

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

I would first try opening the old catalog file in the new Lightroom Classic again. No need to reinstall it. That never actually does anything. The catalog upgrade should just move the previews into the new catalog although I have never upgraded a LR 6 catalog to the current lightroom Classic version so this might not be true for the current version anymore. You can halt the preview generation process and simply start working as mentioned above. You will have many greyed out images in that case. Also, make sure to not set up your catalog with 1:1 previews standard. Just choose standard sized previews.

Lastly, the greyed out F: through L: folders are probably caused by the drive letters being different on this new machine. They should disappear by themselves when Classic has found all the images that were on the old drive letters.