Consolidating photos, catalogs after crash

[RobL]

I had a catastrophic failure on my PC. While I have backups of an old catalog and of the photos, I am unable to get copies of the files onto the new computer (a Mac) and preserve the metadata. I do not want to point the files to the old backup (because I want to preserve that as a backup and work with the files on my new computer, the Mac).

My photos exist on backed up hard drives on a 3rd computer (a PC, various hard drives, some DVD's). My catalog exists on a separate DVD recovered from my PC. Some copies of the photos are on a backup drive that I do not want to use as a primary drive. Some photos with more recent edits are on a DVD recovered from the old PC.

I was able to open a recent (not the latest) catalog, but obviously all file linkages have been lost. I wish to import copies of the photos into my new LR2 on the Mac computer, but don't see how I can do this: If I copy the files over (i.e. import from disk) but I believe I will lose the associations and all of the metadata tags or end up with duplicate files.

Thanks for following the intricacies of this... and perhaps offering a suggestion.

 

[Mark Sirota]

Welcome to Lightroom Forums. Glad you had backups!

If I'm understanding the problem, here's what I think you want to do:

(1) Copy your most recent catalog to the target computer. Put it wherever it's convenient.

(2) Copy your originals to the new computer. Ideally in the same file structure as on the failed computer, but it's not the end of the world if it's different.

(3) Double-click the catalog file to open it. As you say, your file linkages may be lost.

(4) Right-click on the highest level folder in your folder list and choose "Locate Missing Folder..." Navigate to the new location for that folder, and press Okay or Done or Choose or whatever the button says.

This should find everything located under that folder. If you have other "missing" top-level folders, repeat Step 4 for each.

Because all the metadata was stored in the catalog, this should put all the metadata together with the image files. Let us know whether that solves it...