Lightroom catalog move problem - Help please

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 Phil West 06 Dec 2019

Hi all, I'm hoping someone can help me. I've got a little stuck.

I've moved my photos and the Lr catalog a number of times in the past and I've never had a problem... until now.

I've just bought a new, larger capacity external HDD, the same make and model as the last one and I've copied the catalog and the image folder across so that the two drives are identical (one just has more free space).

My structure is as follows:

Hard drive

Photos (this is the folder name and contains all my raw files)

My Lr catalog is on the same hard drive and point to this 'Photos' folder.

I right-clicked on the top-most image folder in the folder structure in Lr and selected 'Update Folder Location' and navigated to the same folder on the new drive.

Then all my images had the dreaded exclamation mark in the corner so I looked back in the folder structure and Lr has created a second folder (which doesn't exist) so it now looks like this in Lr:

Hard drive

Photos

Photos?

I tried to remove the 'Photos?' folder but nothing happened. I reverted to the original folder on the original drive and that was fine but when I tried to update the folder location again I've now got in a pickle. Lr is looking at the catalog on my old hard drive but none of the images are really there. There's no metadata, edits, nothing, just the previews.

So I've got comfort in knowing I've still got all the original raw files in multiple locations (different hard drives) and I've got the Lr catalog with all my edits also in multiple locations but I don't know how to access them anymore.

Any help would be appreciated!

Phil

 ChrisJD 06 Dec 2019
In reply to Phil West:

Have you got identical copies of the LR cat on both drives?  Are the names of the LR cats both the same? - this might be causing LR an issue?

Also make a further backup copy of the 'original LR cat' and store that away somewhere. Rename this file (in File Explorer) with a prefix 'Backup'.

OP Phil West 06 Dec 2019
In reply to ChrisJD:

Thanks Chris,

No, both the same name, however I've sussed it out. I kept having breaks from it to keep stress down!

When I'd updated the folder location I thought it had actioned it but it hadn't. Lr didn't look as though it was doing anything so I assumed it had finished, however I noticed on the right hand side in the metadata box it said something like 'updating' or 'waiting' or similar. I hadn't noticed it at first because it was grey on grey! I left it for half an hour and when I went back to it the folder structure on the left was correct and all the images were as expected. I was just being impatient without knowing it

Anyway, all is good now - I've got my images in the new location, closed Lr, copied the catalogue (again) to the new location so that it brought with it the location of the images and then unmounted the old drive and opened the Lr catalog on the new drive.

Phew!

Thanks,

Phil

 ChrisJD 06 Dec 2019
In reply to Phil West:

Phew!


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