A mostly easy move from one PC to Another, with one thing to be aware of

[bradbort]

Lightroom Version Number

Classic

Operating System

1. Windows 11

Just sharing an experience of a PC move.

I recently upgraded my desktop PC. I had all my lightroom photos, catalogues, etc. were on a second internal data hard drive. Originally, I was just going to move it, but instead I copied everything from the old 2nd hard drive to the new one. I then installed lightroom cc.

Since the 2nd hard drive's letter had changed from E to D, I thought there would be some issues. Surpisingly enough, however, clicking on the newest catalogue worked just fine. It found the photos and no changes were needed.

The strange error was when I started lightroom. It said something about not being able to save to the (missing) E drive. After I poked around for a bit, I found that was being driven by the synch function, which was trying to save cloud synched photos from my iPhone. Once I changed that, all was well.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

Are your photos folders in the same folder than your catalog ? In that case, after opening the catalog, LrC knows the new path and is automatically able to access the photo.
For that reason, it's the structure I recommand if you want/need to store the catalog and the photos on the same EHD. No more problem with a drive letter change.

 

[bradbort]

Well, they on the same hard drive, but they are in a file called "other pictures" and the photos are next to that folder in a folder called "real pictures." Why I did that is lost in the fogs of history...., but it still worked, perhaps because the relative names remained the same.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

My suspicion is that the photo file paths were relative to the catalog, but the sync preference was specific. Interesting scenario, and very nicely fixed!

 

[bradbort]

My suspicion is that the photo file paths were relative to the catalog, but the sync preference was specific. Interesting scenario, and very nicely fixed!

Exactly right. I was really trying to head off someone spending hours trying to chase down what ended up be a synch path error, since the message was not specific about synching. It's nice to know that the catalogue uses relative (to it) pathing.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

It's nice to know that the catalogue uses relative (to it) pathing.

The relative paths are fairly unusual- they’re usually a result of the photo folder being inside the same folder as the catalog. It’d be handy if Adobe made a bigger thing of them really.

 

[gwwinaz]

Glad that all worked for you. This is a little different scenario, switching back and forth between two systems.

All my photos and videos are on a NAS drive and I use two different laptops for Lightroom. I have a Lightroom folder on my "C" drive with the catalog, (and associated folders and files) and a Lightroom Plugins folder. I sync them and also sync on my "C" drive folders at user/name/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/CameraRaw, Creative Cloud Libraries, and Lightroom. The sync is from laptop to NAS, then on the other laptop from NAS to the same folders on that system.

The syncs run at night but if I'm moving from one laptop to the other then I run the syncs again on my "from" laptop then on my "to" laptop to be sure everything is current.

I use a physical token, a Buzz Lightyear pin, to remind me on which laptop I most recently ran Lightroom.

The only issue I've had is that monitor 1 and monitor 2 are reversed on the two systems. It always takes an adjustment for which monitor is 1 and which is 2.

This may sound complicated but once the syncs were setup, it all runs smoothly. I use Syncback SE to do my syncs.

 

[Paul McFarlane]

I use a physical token, a Buzz Lightyear pin, to remind me on which laptop I most recently ran Lightroom.

Love it, simple and fun!