Lightroom Mess

[mom2rtk]

First off, thanks to those who helped me this summer figure out how to move my lightoom files from in internal hard drive to an external hard drive.

Now I have a new challenge I need help with.

My computer crashed a couple weeks ago. I basically have a completely rebuilt computer now. My repair guy had hoped that replacing the motherboard and CPU would allow me to maintain everything the way it was. It didn't pan out. He said too much was corrupted.

He also said the internal hard drive was quite a ways past its expected lifespan, so we replaced that. He transferred a lot of stuff over for me, but honestly I have no idea what's there and what isn't.

All those years of lightroom files are on the external drive so should be fine. But I need to reinstall Lightroom (from the CD I had purchased previously) and have no idea how it will interact with that external drive now. Is there any hope that those paths will be maintained? Or am I just starting from scratch at this point?

 

[havoc315]

First off, thanks to those who helped me this summer figure out how to move my lightoom files from in internal hard drive to an external hard drive.

Now I have a new challenge I need help with.

My computer crashed a couple weeks ago. I basically have a completely rebuilt computer now. My repair guy had hoped that replacing the motherboard and CPU would allow me to maintain everything the way it was. It didn't pan out. He said too much was corrupted.

He also said the internal hard drive was quite a ways past its expected lifespan, so we replaced that. He transferred a lot of stuff over for me, but honestly I have no idea what's there and what isn't.

All those years of lightroom files are on the external drive so should be fine. But I need to reinstall Lightroom (from the CD I had purchased previously) and have no idea how it will interact with that external drive now. Is there any hope that those paths will be maintained? Or am I just starting from scratch at this point?

Google how to transfer your lightroom catalog... you'll be fine IF you backed up your lightroom catalog and you saved the catalog file.

 

[mom2rtk]

Google how to transfer your lightroom catalog... you'll be fine IF you backed up your lightroom catalog and you saved the catalog file.

Well, that answer sort of scared me. I'm not sure if I ever actually backed up my catalog, except to copy my catalog over from my internal C drive to the new external drive a while back. So I gulped hard and just went ahead and reinstalled Lightroom 5 and hoped for the best.

I'm happy to report that it appears all my work path information remained intact.

Time to exhale and move forward!