Lightroom classic, 14.0.1 on Mac, how to associate catalogue with pictures?

[image229]

Lightroom classic, 14.0.1 on Mac.  I dragged and dropped my pictures (around 89,000 pictures) which are in an old external drive, into a new external drive using the finder method.  I did not do this "inside LR" as I had read this could be prone to errors. I opened lightroom, added the new drive to the folders panel in Lightroom.  How do I tell light room that the catalogue, on the computer hard drive and in the original location, needs to associate with the photos on the new drive?  Thank you in advance.

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community">

[KR Seals]

I strongly suggest that you verify that every one of those ~89,000 photo image files were actually copied over to the new drive by Finder. I recently had an experience copying thousands of photo files from small external drives to a single large external drive. We found that many of the files did not copy over and had to manually compare each folder on the drives to the target to be sure they all got copied. Googling the issue revealed that it's a finder issue.

[image229]

Thanks KR Seals.  One thing I did to verify was to look at the total number of images in the original parent file and compared that to the number in the new drive file.  They match.  Is this enough verification or are you suggesting something else needs to be done?

[KR Seals]

I would be satisfied if the total numbers of images matches. If any are missing they will show up as missing as you work on processing them.

[image229]

Thanks kglad.  That's true that as I was figuring out how to post, I didn't see any reference to topics, like lightroom for example.  Thank for redirecting my inquiry.

[Bill Sprague]

Does the new drive have exactly the same folder structure as the old?

[image229]

Thanks so much for your reply. Briefly, yes. To hopefully answer your question thoroughly, I highlighted the parent folder “my pictures” inside the first external drive which was operating normally with lightroom and then dragged that folder over to the new drive. In checking the new drive I see the same structure and that all the pictures have been copied over.
Thank you!

[Bill Sprague]

You probably have the answer in the instructions linked by dj_paige.   Hopefully adding to that, you might be able to change the drive name.   On a Windows computer you can copy the files from an older, smaller drive to a new one but the drive letter will be different.  Using windows tools, you can change the new drive letter to match the old and Lightroom Classic won't know the difference.

[dj_paige]

See the instructions here: www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm