Missing Metadata and backup files.

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Mazaru

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Hello All
I'm an IT tech, and while moving a user from an old machine to a new one, I've encountered an issue with Lightroom.
The user has found that in the move, his lightroom photos were correctly moved, however his metadata is missing, and so are his backups.
If someone could be so kind as to give me a run-through of what files would be necessary to move from the old computer to the new one to 'clone' the previous environment and bring this data across I would be very grateful.
If you need any more details, I'll provide whatever I can that might be helpful.

Regards
mazaru
 
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mazaru, welcome to the forums.

You'll need to move 3 primary classes of files.

1) the original image files, which are generally a folder hierarchy of raw (CR2, NEF, etc.) and JPG files, also possible, but less likely, TIFs and PSDs,
2) the Lr catalog database file(s). These are files of type *.lrcat (that's a lower case 'L'). The user may create one to arbitrarily many of these files.
3) the Lr preferences, presets and templates folders.

As background, Lr is fundamentally a SQLite database with photoprocessing functions grafted on. As such it consists of a database which tracks the locations of the original image files, certain metadata concerning the files, and parametric image adjustment data. This gives it the property of being non-destructive, i.e. the original straight from camera pixels are never manipulated. Of course the desired end result actually is manipulated pixels, so these files are newly created and 'exported' at need.

The default locations of the aforementioned files vary by OS, so that'll info will be a help. It's also possible for the some of the files to be moved to non-default locations.

You will also see folders/packages with the extension *.lrdata, these function as a thumbnail/preview cache and while necessary to Lr's operation, can be ignored/discarded, as they will be rebuilt on the fly (with some initial performance loss, while the build out progresses.)
 
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