Re-installing LrC

[geoffreyfarmer]

Lightroom Version Number

10.2

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Longish story.


C drive is a small SSD and doesn't have enough space to hold all my photos. They are all on another internal spinning disk drive labelled "Z". The location is Z/My Pictures and all he LRC files are on the same Z drive located at Z/My Pictures/Lightroom. That Lightroom folder holds all relevant sub folders like catalogues, backups, LR settings, LR helper data etc. The LrC app was located on the SSD C drive. Been this way for ages. All was well.

Then I had an issue with the C drive and as a result that drive was formatted. Unfortunately the repair shop decided to change the drive letter of the spinning disk from Z to "D". So there were two tasks for me to complete.

1. I reassigned D to Z in line with what LrC was used to seeing before the formatting and, of course it was pointed to the working catalogue which was on Z . In the process all my photos duly appeared in the Z/My Pictures folder. All good

2. Re-install LrC which I have done on the SSD "C" drive.

When I click on my catalogue file to kick LrC into action. LrC is seeing the correct folder structure. There are no query marks. It's asking me to import every file in every folder using the "Add" option - 25,000 images. I didn't expect that. I expected all the files and folders to appear automatically. I can look at images in each folder. All the images show the "edited" badge where editing did occur.

Any way I can avoid importing everything

 

[clee01l]

When you reinstalled Lightroom,it creates a new empty catalog file. You need to find your original master catalog file and open that with the newly installed Lightroom App.


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[Hal P Anderson]

If LRC shows you all your folders without question marks, there is no need to re-import anything. What do you see that makes you think otherwise? Could you show us a screen shot?

Also, you claimed that you are keeping your backups on the same disk as your catalogue. This is a bad idea. If you were to lose that disk, you would lose the catalogue and its backups. Click the "Choose" button on the Backup dialogue box:

 

[geoffreyfarmer]

Because LrC defaulted to the library module and the "import" button is at the bottom left and in the top bar it defaulted to "Add" which makes some sense because the photos are already on the hard disk and so don't have to be moved.

The catalogue is backed up to three EHD's.

 

[geoffreyfarmer]

As I said, I clicked on the latest catalogue file to invoke the last stage of the installation.

 

[clee01l]

Because LrC defaulted to the library module and the "import" button is at the bottom left and in the top bar it defaulted to "Add" which makes some sense because the photos are already on the hard disk and so don't have to be moved.

The catalogue is backed up to three EHD's.

You have to find your last copy of the master catalog file. If you open it with Lightroom Classic it will show all of your imported images and their location on the disk. If you do that, Lightroom Classic will not create an empty catalog and open the Import dialog.

If Lightroom Classic presents you with the Import dialog, then you are doing something wrong. Lightroom only present s the Import dialog on opening when the catalog file that it has opened is empty.


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