Changing external source hard drive

[Dave C Mitchell]

Hi Folks,

I currently run Lightroom CC with the catalogue and all my photos from an external hard drive. This has run fine for years with no issues. The hard drive however is showing signs of crashing and I want to start using a new one. I am petrified of making a mistake so I thought I would ask for advice here before trying anything.

I have already copied the master file ( with all the photos ) to the new drive by dragging them across from the existing drive ( so essentially the main folder is the same but on a different drive ).

If I simply import the new drive as a folder, will the catalogue with all the edits, keywording etc also be imported ?

Is this the correct method or have a missed something. The new drive will then be my main storage and I will back that up to another external drive.

Am I on the right track ? It's a vital issue for me.

Many thanks in advance.

Dave from Aus.

[Ian Lyons]

There is no need to import your images again, which you've indicated have already been copied to an external drive.

Hopefully, you copied the all of the photos in the exact same folder structure as you internal drive. If not, then I strongly recommend you do so. When you're satisfied that the the folder structure is identical on both drives, then the procedure for LrC to use the new disk rather than the old is fairly straightforward. See Part 2 of this tutorial http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

[dj_paige]

Just adding to the excellent reply from @Ian Lyons , not only is there "no need to import", but importing the photos is 100% wrong and will cause problems if you do that. DO NOT IMPORT.

[Dave C Mitchell]

Hi Ian,

Many thanks for your help. Unfortunately, I came across the reply from dj_paige below too late.

I am totally confused and bewildered. As I suspected, I have managed to totally screw this up. I followed the instructions as best I could, I thought that it had worked but no matter what I did, Lightroom kept taking me back to the old drive. I thought by removing that drive, it would use the new one. So in summary, I think I have managed to do just about everything that I should not. Giving my lack of understanding, I am hoping you or someone can guide me out of this mess.

The situation now is that I have imported the new drive main folder, Lightroom opens with this and from what I can best understand, the catalogue I was using before. The photos are all there but are not connected to anything else, no keywords, no edits, no nothing.

So, I still have the original drive. Should I try and reinstall that?

I really find it hard to understand how all the components work and am just so frustrated and despondent.

The system just worked fine for a long time and you tend to forget all the parameters that make it work.

None of the above explains why I wanted to change the drive location in the first place. Lightroom has got slower and slower to the point that it was almost unusable. I assumed that my old computer and hard drive were the reason so I have bought a new top end I-mac 24" with 16 Gb Ram and thought a new hard drive would solve the problem.

Even working through all my issues above, it is still glacially slow and I continually have the spinning wheel.

As you can probably tell by now, I am not a tech head. I find it all very hard to understand.

I just want Lightroom to work quickly and easily but I am now worried that I will have to start editing 20 years of photos again. I have about 40,000 in the catalogue.

I would really appreciate any help that you can offer to get me through this debacle. 

I feel like I have to somehow start again.

Many thanks again,

Dave Mitchell