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Migrating Lightroom catalog


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Hi all,

 

I'm going to be migrating my Lightroom Classic catalog of 360,000+ photos to a fresh Windows installation. My question is—that's a lot of previews to re-build, can I migrate the previews.lrdata folders too? Or is that a recipe for corrupting something? Is it better to let the catalog re-build them all on the new drive from scratch?

 

Thanks

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I have nowhere near the number of images that you do, but I let my new computer rebuild the previews. It is a one time effort.

 

Among other things, the time it takes will depend upon how fast your CPU, memory, and storage are. My "new" computer (it was new at this time last year), is an AMD Ryzen 7 3800x, with 32 GB of Corsair 3200 memory, and a PCIe 3 Samsung 970 EVO SSD. I barely noticed the previews being rebuilt. Of course, I generate 1:1 previews only on demand.

 

If you think it may be a problem, set your system sleep to NEVER, start Lightroom and go to sleep. The next morning all your previews should be generated, If you do it on a weekday, you can go to work the next morning and they will be finished by the time you get home.

 

If you backup your previews (I do not), be sure to backup after the previews have been rebuilt.

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Yes, simply move the catalog, and the lrdata documents from one to the other drive. No need to rebuild anything.

IF you haven't used the "Store Presets with Catalog" option (recommended), you'll have to find them and copy them over too. Where on Windows? I'm a Mac guy. But if you select this option first, they will reside with the catalog. Then copy over.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management" (pluralsight.com)

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