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Thread: Moving Lightroom to new larger HD is not as difficult as the Blogfog will make you think

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    BPN Member Steve Uffman's Avatar
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    Default Moving Lightroom to new larger HD is not as difficult as the Blogfog will make you think

    Not sure if this is appropriate or of interest but thought I would share a lesson learned. Recently, I attempted to move my Lightroom files and images to a new 2tb HDD and succumbed to much of the blogfog scattered about the Internet. Interestingly, there is an abundant amount of techniques offered in response to the great amount of frustration that many have felt doing this tasks. Well we have spent 3 days doing various techniques of varying difficulty and even the suggested by Adobe support, exporting a catalog....All failed until, I finally posted on Adobe support forum whining about why it was so unnecessarily hard and why were there so many techniques discussed.

    A couple of folks on the froum quickly explained that it was not hard and gave me instructions that seemed so simple they could not be right. Well they were right that it is not nearly so onerous of a task as it seemed...a little drag and dropping the right way and its done.

    So when faced with this remember KISS is the way to go. and you can find it on the Adobe Support forum

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    Steve,
    How about a link describing the procedure, or post the procedure here?

    Thanks,
    Roger

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    BPN Member Steve Uffman's Avatar
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    will do...I will do a quick write up and see if I can get Chas Glatzer to double check it. anything to save some folks some pain

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    I had some trouble so I would appreciate knowing. I lost presets and all my flagged as picked on all images. I thought it would just be handled automatically. Oops!

    Also, had some folder issues. Lightroom seems to make it more difficult than needed on keeping track of what is in what folder.

    Don't get me wrong, I love Lightroom 3 and think it is the best thing since sliced bread.

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    BPN Member Steve Uffman's Avatar
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    Default It took a Brit to help me see clearly through the BlogFog!

    Here is the gist of the forum thread that led to success. The poster is a gentleman from England who quite clearly knows what he is doing and gets to the point very quickly...Frankly it was a refreshing exchange that made me chuckle after all the garbage and wasted time I went through to find a solution. Ironically, we went through the same thing one year ago and got a totally different response from Adobe support that made it almost a manual function doing the links (you know the ? link drill)..so we double checked everything to have a better experience...What we learned was there is a lot of BlogFog out there...It is amazing how many nicely done videos and blog posts that are out there pontificating how to do this but they are often complex, take lots of unnecessary time and mostly don't work. The approach is simple and works...I think it also is how Chas Glatzer does this task as well and hopefully he will comment



    Here is my post and the series of answers I got from this very helpful and direct British gentleman s


    1. Jul 24, 2011 93 AM ]in response to: ruffnready
    Re: Why is moving Lightroom to new HDD so difficult?

    "Probably because those people don't read the sensible advice that is equally available?
    Start by emptying this new drive and clearing up whatever mess you've already made. Also review your backups - if everything did go wrong, would you be able to restore it?
    OK, in your LR3 catalogue, in Folders, click the + and add a new folder on the new drive. Now drag folders from your existing hard drive and drop them on the new drive. All done in Lightroom.
    Too many ways to get to the final destination and and too many people saying all ways are equally valid? I'm telling you the best way to do it, which cuts through the crap. It moves your pictures. All your editing work or "the edits" is recorded in the catalogue file which is usually in a Lightroom folder. If you don't understand this last point, you need to step back a little and make sure you understand the difference between the catalogue (*.lrcat file), the previews, and your originals. Follow the instructions I provided in my first post. Just don't waste time on export.
    It may help if I explain that File > Export as Catalog is mainly meant for roundtripping to another computer. So imagine I want to take some work onto my laptop, I'd use Export as Catalog to get those images onto it, then when I return I can use Import from Catalog to bring the work back onto my main computer
    I don't care what Adobe support told you, but what Pete says will work. I could give you a few other ways too, but I'm telling you the easiest way. If you'd followed the clear instructions in my first post, you'd be done by now"

    A big hearty Amen to that!!!!

    In summation, I wasted time on the export as a catalog because that was some of the advice I got...caused all sorts of problems on roughly 40K images that I had. Works fine when I do laptop transfers but not on big files ..It goes all squirrely...trust me I tried it 3Xs with slightly different approaches I had been given.... and if I would have followed his instructions the first time rather than all the other advice, I was given I would have been done then!

    Anyway good luck and let me know if I can help further

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    BPN Viewer Charles Glatzer's Avatar
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    Steve,

    As we discussed in e mail... the best method of moving your LR images with all info intact from one drive to another is best done within in your LR3 catalogue

    Library Module > In Folders, click the + and add a new folder on the new drive. Now drag folders from your existing hard drive and drop them on the new drive. All done in Lightroom.

    Best,

    Chas

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    BPN Member Steve Uffman's Avatar
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    Default It really is as simple as that

    Quote Originally Posted by Charles Glatzer View Post
    Steve,

    As we discussed in e mail... the best method of moving your LR images with all info intact from one drive to another is best done within in your LR3 catalogue

    Library Module > In Folders, click the + and add a new folder on the new drive. Now drag folders from your existing hard drive and drop them on the new drive. All done in Lightroom.

    Best,

    Chas
    It really is that simple if you get the right info up front. I wish I could have avoided he headaches and been out taking images and/or fishing!..thanks

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