Painless way to replace external drive with LrC Photos

[RJS55]

I use LrC on an  iMac  running Sonoma.  I keep all of my photos on an external drive which is updated to the cloud hourly and backed up on a second drive at night.

The drive is getting long in the tooth and I am replacing it with a SSD.  I am using ChronoSync software to mirror the contents of the old drive to the new drive--the content should look the same on both drives, only the name of the drives will differ.

So how do I change out the old drive and replace it with the new and have it work seemlessly with my Lightroom catalog from the getgo?  

I am pretty ignorant of the technology, so please be clear on the steps.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Rob

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

After you unplug the old drive and won't be using it anymore, change the name of the new drive to be EXACTLY the same as the old drive.

[RJS55]

Wow, clear and easy answer.  Thank you so much.

[RJS55]

@dj_paige  a quick question: What is the most foolproof and fastest way to clone my SATA drives onto the SSDs?  I have been let to believe that copy/paste in Finder is the way to go, but it will take a while to move over ~2Tb of photos.  Thanks in advance.

[dj_paige]

What is the reason you would do this copying of files? To make backups? Or something else?

[RJS55]

I store all of my LrC photos on an external HD that is getting old.  Before it fails, I want to move my primary and backup drives to SSDs.  

Once moved I will name the SSDs exactly the same as the external HDs, as you recommended above.

[dj_paige]

Copy and paste works for the purpose of creating a new drive with your photos. It is NOT a good approach for making backups.

[RJS55]

Thank you.  Understood about backups--I use a backup software to do that and also BU to the cloud