Changing the root directory of Lightroom catalog

Help me!  On my new Dell computer, when I installed Lightroom 5 it put my destination as "My Pictures".  Is there anyway I can change that to "My Dell Computer".  I have thousands of photos in my pictures file stored on my computer.  Is it ok if I continue to put them in the destiation of "My Pictures"?

When I originally set up Lightroom on my computer, my photos were being stored in the My Pictures directory on my PC. So I currently have pictures on the same drive as my system files. I am going to upgrade my computer and upgrade to Lightroom 3 at the same time. in my new setup I will be moving the folder that contains my photos so that it is no longer on the same hard drive as my system files.So I am going to need to get Lightroom 3 to import the LIghtroom 2 folder ..

Wrong. You don't import anything. Never ever ever re-import stuff that is already in Lightroom.

What you need to do is to move the catalog file and (optionally) the previews to the new computer. Put them anywhere you want. Move the photos to the new computer; put them anywhere you want, as long as the folder hierarchy remains unchanged.

Launch Lightroom 3, then File->Open Catalog, point it to whereever you put the LR2 catalog file, and this will convert your LR2 catalog to a LR3 catalog. (Is the correct grammar "a LR3 catalog" or "an LR3 catalog"?)

Then, in the folder panel, right-click, select show parent folder, right-click on the parent folder and select Update folder location and point it to the new location of your photos.

Now, repeat after me ... never re-import. NEVER RE-IMPORT. I can't hear you ...

John,

DO NOT RE-IMPORT, you will be losing some (if not all, depending on your procedure) metadata information on the photos.

There are two things to keep mentally apart:

• The Lightroom Catalog
• Your photos, which are registered in the catalog

I would suggest the following procedure for what you want to achieve:

• On your "old" system, organize your photos so that they are all contained in one top-level folder (subfolders within that are OK). You should do this from within LR, to keep the links correct.
  
• Copy the folder containing your photos from the old system (My Pictures) to the new system (some other drive)
• Copy the LR2 catalog from your old system to your new system (any location is OK)
  
• Maybe copy your presets from the old system to the new system (location can be obtained under "Show Lightroom Presets Folder" in Preferences/Presets tab)
• Install LR3 on your new system (you might have to provide the LR2  Serial-No. also because it's a upgrade license)
• Start LR3 on your new system, and open the LR2 catalog copied before
  (this will start the catalog conversion)
• Your folders will show a question mark, because they point to the path that was used on the old system
• Use "Find Missing Folder ..." (right-click on top-level folder) to update the folder location to the new location on the other drive

Beat Gossweiler

Switzerland