Sportymonk
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4 August 2026 It's Lightroom update time again. There are some new features, as well as bug fixes, new cameras and lenses.
See What’s New in Lightroom Classic 15.5, Mobile & Desktop (August 2026)?
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dj_paige
Senior Member
Re: Can't copy Keywords to new drive
[quote author=Sportymonk link=topic=8747.msg58875#msg58875 date=1262'24916]
Probably easy for some but its not working for me. I got a new 1TB Ext HD for Christmas (2''3 Powerbook 8' GB beyond full and other external drives filling up). So I copied the folder with my LR2 photos to the new HD and then copied the folder with the ircat data etc to the new hard drive. When I open up LR2 at the new location, everything is ok, edits, crops, etc all ok BUT I have 4182 photos with no keywords in my Smartfolder for that and when I checked, none of the photos show any keywords. When I go to Library and check the keyword catalog, everything (keyword lists,recent keywords etc.) is there, just no applied to the photos. Any ideas? ???
[/quote]
First, you don't need to copy your catalog to the new disk. (You can if you want to, but normally you want the catalog on the fastest disk, which is the internal HD)
Also, to move folders, it is better to do that in the Lightroom Folder panel. Moving things in Lightroom keeps all your photos connected. If you move them in the operating system, you have to tell Lightroom to reconnect the folders.
It sounds as if you think that the keywords (and other metadata) are written to the photo files themselves (or associated sidecar files if you shoot Raw). This is not the default operation of Lightroom, where the keywords exist only in the catalog file. You can change this behavior by selecting photos of interest and then Ctrl-S to write the metadata to the files; or you can turn on the global option via Edit->Catalog Settings->Metadata and check Automatically Write Changes to XMP
[quote author=Sportymonk link=topic=8747.msg58875#msg58875 date=1262'24916]
Probably easy for some but its not working for me. I got a new 1TB Ext HD for Christmas (2''3 Powerbook 8' GB beyond full and other external drives filling up). So I copied the folder with my LR2 photos to the new HD and then copied the folder with the ircat data etc to the new hard drive. When I open up LR2 at the new location, everything is ok, edits, crops, etc all ok BUT I have 4182 photos with no keywords in my Smartfolder for that and when I checked, none of the photos show any keywords. When I go to Library and check the keyword catalog, everything (keyword lists,recent keywords etc.) is there, just no applied to the photos. Any ideas? ???
[/quote]
First, you don't need to copy your catalog to the new disk. (You can if you want to, but normally you want the catalog on the fastest disk, which is the internal HD)
Also, to move folders, it is better to do that in the Lightroom Folder panel. Moving things in Lightroom keeps all your photos connected. If you move them in the operating system, you have to tell Lightroom to reconnect the folders.
It sounds as if you think that the keywords (and other metadata) are written to the photo files themselves (or associated sidecar files if you shoot Raw). This is not the default operation of Lightroom, where the keywords exist only in the catalog file. You can change this behavior by selecting photos of interest and then Ctrl-S to write the metadata to the files; or you can turn on the global option via Edit->Catalog Settings->Metadata and check Automatically Write Changes to XMP
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