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Relocating the entire Lightroom 6.14 system to a different local disk

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angelom

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Joined
Dec 28, 2022
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Lightroom Version
Lightroom 6.14 Nothing to do with the Cloud. It's all on my computer.
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Greetings: I'm new to this forum and joined this group because google seems to bring up many answers to Lightroom 6 issues.

Here is what I want to accomplish, what I've done thus far and what didn't work.
1. Why do I want to duplicate (not move) my complete and total Lightroom system to a different drive?
Because the current drive is FULL. Once the task is completed the old drive will be archived; NOT DELETED.
My current database has 57 thousand images and my catalog is 1.2 GB and I've been using it since Lightroom V2.
2. The current active database and images are at drive letter D:\Pictures and the new drive is at H:\Pictures
3. I made a mirror image of D:\Pictures on H:\Pictures using the RoboCopy command:
robocopy D:\Pictures H:\Pictures /copyall /dcopy:T /e
4. I opened the relocated catalog and RESCANED H:\Pictures and that gave me everything I wanted except none of my COLLECTIONS and SAVED PRINTS show up in the catalog at the new location. The only Collections are the 6 default smart collections that a brand new Lightroom installation comes with.

This is a snapshot of what my collection list looks like when opening the catalog at the D:\pictures location.
1672244582149.png


I've read in this forum several solutions that just seem to be elaborate and confusing.
Exporting each individual collection as a catalog and importing them into the new catalog makes no sense to me at all. It might import the images used but doesn't create the collection. Selecting all of the collections and exporting them does not work in Lightroom 6.14.

Having Lightroom MOVE all the images to the new location is way to dangerous.
MOVE deletes everything from the original location; not a process I'm willing to trust my entire photographic collection to. What happens if there is some unrecoverable error or a power outage my APC fails to survive?

I haven't tried re-mapping the drive's letters yet. Doing that might fool Lightroom into thinking the new drive is actually the old drive. Hmm. Perhaps that is the solution.

There has to be an easier way and I'm hoping someone will enlighten me on how to accomplish my task.
 
Joined
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Netherlands
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I haven't tried re-mapping the drive's letters yet. Doing that might fool Lightroom into thinking the new drive is actually the old drive. Hmm. Perhaps that is the solution.
It's not the only solution, but it is definitely the easiest. Just copy all the images to the new drive (not in Lightroom, in Windows Explorer), then disconnect the old drive and remap the new drive so it gets the drive letter of the old drive. Alternatively, disconnect the old drive after you copied the images, start Lightroom and 'relink' the folders: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/
 
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