uniqueharm Loc: New Jersey

Looking for info on how to move: 1. my Lightroom catalog from an old external hard drive to a new external hard drive. 2. move my photos from 2 old external hard drives to 2 new external hard drives. 3. how to have moved cataloge find the 2 new hard drives and the photos.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Keep the names the same and LR never knows the difference.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

As CHG CANON has stated, for LR it is about the naming of things, files, folders, drives. LR links by the names of things so if the names remain the same then it will simply link things up as they were.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Overall performance will be worse if you have your catalog files on an external drive. I suggest keeping the catalog files on a fast internal drive, and only moving the images - you can do that in Lightroom, or you can do it in Windows Explorer or Finder. But when you open LR after the move, the catalog folder view will show all the folders with question marks. If you right click on the parent folder that contains your images, a flyout menu will give you the option to "Find Missing Folder" and clicking on that will open a Windows Explorer session, where you can navigate to the new location. Select the folder and you'll be back in business.