Consolidating photo drives with virtual files

[brucej7128428]

I want to consolidate several smaller drives in one new 8 TB drive. All the smaller files are catalogued in Lightroom. Is there any way I can move those images to the new drive without losing the virtual files?

[elie_dinur]

The Virtual Copies will always go together with the master rendering to the new catalog. Just as the master is nothing more than lines of text in the catalog database recording the preferred edit, so each VC is nothing more than a few more lines recording an alternate rendering.

[Bill Sprague]

Someone smarter may have a better suggestion. 

But, if it were me, I would consider creating an new catalog on the new drive.  Then I would use the Import From Catalog choice.  The procedure is commonly documented by or for people taking a small laptop on a trip and returning to home/office and wanting to move the work from the laptop to the primary computer. 

It might be slow if you have a lot of files.

[dj_paige]

Do not create a new catalog, there is no need to do this. The existing catalog can be used.

To move photos to a different drive and maintain the virtual copies, please follow the instructions in "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location" of this document: Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders

In essence, the procedure is:

1. Copy (not move) the photos (using your operating system) to the new drive, keeping folder hierarchy unchanged
2. Point LR to the new location of the photos using "Update Folder Location" command
3. When you are 100% sure this has worked properly, use your operating system to delete the originals from the original location.

[Bill Sprague]

dj_paige wrote:

Do not create a new catalog, there is no need to do this. The existing catalog can be used.

My read of the OP was that the existing multiple drives each had a separate catalog.  I was "seeing" three or four catalogs and a desire to combine to one catalog on one new drive.  Perhaps I didn't read well!

[dj_paige]

Actually, the OP isn't clear on this at all. He said:

All the smaller files are catalogued in Lightroom.

Implying the bigger files (???) are not cataloged? Not clear at all ...

[elie_dinur]

The location of the photo file is also a line of text in the database. When you change the location by doing the moving within LR you are doing two operations: sending a command to the OS to move the photo and updating the location text in the database. Everything else remains the same.