Opening a new Ircat from a new drive.

Report · Sep 30, 2025

I have a new reformated SSD on which I have labouriously edited and rearranged my stock of photos into folders which group the photos into groupps and sub groups which are meanigful in the context of the photo locations etc. All the folders are grouped under a single "master folder" which is the only folder in the root of the drive. All good!

The photos are a mix of CR2, tif, jpeg, psd, and mov. There are approximately 23000 and take a fraction over 1TB of drive space.

Now the question! I want to introduce these the Lightroom as I have done in the past with no trouble. However this time I am baffled or I am completely insane.

1) I select the file option "Import photo & video"

2)I am offered all the drives on my PC as sources including the one I want. The file count confirms there are 24000. Include subfolders is checked..

3) Copy as DNG is selected.

4)Build smart previews is selected with the target on another drive (also reformatted) call "Backup ****". It to has a 2TB capacity.

5) I press "import"

The program then runs for several hours and eventually reports that with a few errors it has copied everything and convrted the relavent files to DNG.

Here liies the problem the Ircat for the drive is not found. and the copied files have not been converted. Files have been backed up to the target backup drive but not converted. In other words the situation has not changed and LR can't be used on these files.

On other files LR is working as it should. What have I done wrong?

Report · Sep 30, 2025

The catalog you are importing these files into can be on ANY drive you have available. Are you sure you created the catalog on the new SSD?

In addition, when you import files, they can be imported and stored on ANY drive you have available. You have to set the proper options in the Import dialog box to get them to import and remain on the new SSD. Where did you tell LrC to store these photos?

What happens if you go into any LrC catalog and select File->Open Recent? Is your new catalog shown in there?

Report · Sep 30, 2025

Thanks for your reply. The photo files in question are already on the drive (used the usual explorer functions to sort and rename etc) so what I want is for LR to recognise that drive and the files it contains so that I can use LR for editing etc. Now it does "know they are there because in steps 1 & 2 of my question all the drives are visible. It doesn't need to import the original files just the links to LR and the smart previews. I don't ever recall naming a Ircat file as LR has apparently done that for me. How do I "force" a Ircat file into the system ? (Step by step please)

Thanks

Sent from Outlook<>

Report · Sep 30, 2025

There's no need to "force" anything here, you just have to find out where the catalog file is. It is most likely not on the disk you thought it was on.

As I said above, please open any catalog in LrC and then use File->Open Recent and see if your new catalog is shown there. If it is shown there, please select it to open it.