Today’s Question: I recently moved my photo folders from the “D” drive to a new folder on the “C” drive, while maintaining the same folder structure. It did not go so well in Lightroom Classic! I am wondering how I should have handled this.
Tim’s Quick Answer: In this scenario you can copy the photos to the new drive, disconnect the old drive, and then use the “Find Missing Folder” command to reconnect the top-level folder in Lightroom Classic.
More Detail: When you want to migrate your storage for photos being managed by Lightroom Classic, there are two basic ways you can go about this. You can move the photos from within Lightroom Classic, or you can copy the photos outside of Lightroom Classic and then reconnect the missing folder structure.
While moving within Lightroom Classic is preferred at least in general concept, there can be some challenges involved when you’re moving a large number of photos. Therefore, it is often easier to copy the photos and then update the folder location in Lightroom Classic.
Let’s assume you are moving photos from a folder structure on an external hard drive to a dedicated location (the Pictures folder) on an internal hard drive. The first step would be to copy the full folder structure exactly as it is from the external hard drive to the Pictures folder.
Next, you want to make sure that the photos in their original location are not available. If the photos are on an external hard drive, you can simply disconnect that drive from the computer. If the photos are on an internal hard drive, you can rename the top-level folder outside of Lightroom Classic so the folders and photos will appear as missing.
You can then reconnect the top-level folder that Lightroom Classic is expecting with the new top-level folder. In this case, for example, you could right-click on one of the top-level folders in the Folders list in Lightroom Classic and choose “Show Parent Folder” so the parent folder is revealed, which in my example means revealing the external hard drive as though it were a folder at the top of the Folders list. Right-click on that folder and choose “Find Missing Folder”. In the dialog that appears, navigate to the updated location, such as the Pictures folder in this example. Click the Choose button once you’ve opened that folder, and Lightroom Classic will reconnect the source folders and photos. In this case that means that instead of looking for the folders on the external hard drive, Lightroom Classic would be looking for the same folder structure in the Pictures folder of the internal hard drive.
Note that you can learn more about resolving various issues and problems in Lightroom Classic in my recently updated video course “Cleaning Up Your Mess in Lightroom Classic”, which you can find on the GreyLearning website here:
https://www.greylearning.com/courses/cleaning-up-your-mess-in-lightroom-classic-2025
