Moving Lightroom to a new laptop.

[virginislandsvet]

I am new to this group/forum so please excuse any unintended goofs!

I subscribe to CC's Photography module. I currently have about 20K images on an old PC. My folder hierarchy is good but has several layers of child folders within many parent folders that are themselves within quite a few top level folders.
I have followed Victoria's plan for moving Lightroom to a new PC but I am not sure how far down the family tree I need to go with my folder hierarchy to ensure a smooth transfer. I have read the Book and searched this website but have missed this issue somehow.
If all my top level folders are identical on both PCs does dragging one of them to an external drive and from there to my new PC bring all that top level drive's sub-folders with it or do I need to move one parent or even one child at a time?
Basically can I create a folder hierarchy of only top level folders on my new PC or do I need a much larger but identical hierarchy to the one from which my images will be drawn?

 

[virginislandsvet]

4th line from the bottom of the text above should read "top level FOLDER'S sub-folders" not "drive's"! Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

If you drag a folder to another disk, the entire contents of that folder copied to that disk. That means all subfolders, no matter how deep the hierarchy goes, are copied.

 

[virginislandsvet]

If you drag a folder to another disk, the entire contents of that folder copied to that disk. That means all subfolders, no matter how deep the hierarchy goes, are copied.

Yes! Thank you. But does the new Lightroom App on the new computer recognize a top level folder as a top level folder that contains sub-foldrs and copies it and all its sub-folders even if the sub-folders are not defined.

Do I need to create a complete copy of the original folder system or will just the top level folders alone work?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Yes! Thank you. But does the new Lightroom App on the new computer recognize a top level folder as a top level folder that contains sub-foldrs and copies it and all its sub-folders even if the sub-folders are not defined.

Do I need to create a complete copy of the original folder system or will just the top level folders alone work?

I'm not sure that I understand the question. If you copied the top level folder to the new disk, you copied everything inside it to the new disk. If you point Lightroom to this new top level folder, Lightroom will automatically find and 'reconnect' to all the subfolders. You don't have to do this one by one. Is that what you are asking?