Replacing drive that images are stored on

Question

I keep all my images on an external hard-drive but the LR catalogues on my PC. The hard drive is showing signs of problems so I have bought a new SSD which is also double the capacity and should giver me faster access. It is a Windows 11 PC.

I want to now move all the images to thd new drive. However, I'm told only the catalogue that is open at the time I move the images will update to the new location but I have three catalogues I use (I used to use an all images catalogue but by breaking it down into smaller catalogues considerably improved speed of loading and processing images).

I would normally do the move from LR. How can I update all the catalogues ratherr than just the one opoen when I make the move?

Alternatively, it has been suggested that I use File Explorer to move all the images and then simply rename the new drive to the drive letter of the old drive and the catalogues will then work without modification. Is that true?

Any advice is welcome

richardplondon · Accepted Answer

If the full file paths are the same, yes you can switch in different external hardware and provided that is seen under the same drive letter, your Catalogs will be unable to tell the difference.

Just to note, capitalisation of folder names is important - because even though Windows may regard "Files" and "files" as the same thing effectively, a LrC Catalog would not.

Of course it will be necessary to avoid any conflict of drive letters, so the first step will probably be to change the drive letter of the "donor" drive to something else. You'd want that drive letter freed up so that it can be assigned to the "recipient" drive going forward. This may require a restart to achieve.

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