Moving Photolab to a new computer

[BHAYT (Bryan [WIN10, PL8, VP4, FP7, G9 & EM1 Mkii, RTX 3060])]

@bjnelson This is not a trivial topic and this is not an easy response because there are or could be many caveats. I believe that your “best” course of action is to copy the files and DOPs to the new SSD and introduce that to the new machine but you will lose certain things (some of which may have been “lost” already)!!

Having posted this, it is way too long @bjnelson please DM me so that I can direct you to the bits that might fit you scenario or help evolve a suitable scenario!!

@bjnelson

They said my only recourse was to import the sidecar files, one by one

I believe that is utter rubbish, in the worst case “just” “discovering” your old directories on the new machine, with the new DxPL release and a new database, directory by directory should resolve things essentially as you go iff (if and only if) you have AS(OFF) (‘Auto Sync’ = “unselected”! see the following for an explanation

@bjnelson

I’m horrified. I said, what about installing DPL 6 on the old machine, backing up the database, and then restoring that database on the new machine (the exact procedure other software uses for this sort of thing)? They said other customers have tried this and not been happy with the results.

Hmm!?

@bjnelson

When I said I was very unhappy with this, and that I was considering moving to other software because of it, the support person simply replied they’d pass along my feedback. I didn’t get any sense that they cared, at all. I even said I’d be happy with something as crude as pointing DPL at my top level folder, and having it search recursively for the sidecar files and import them automatically as it found them.

Because the import process is tied to the image discovery process then just opening a high level directory does not initiate an import of all the sub-directories, otherwise users might never be able to start using the product while it imports every image (431,301) images in my case!!

In fact having an empty database and directories full of image files with DOPs is fine. When you are interested in editing a directory opening it will populate the database but only to the extent of the contents of that directory!

@Musashi It should be unnecessary for a user to come to the Forum because there is no written procedure for executing the move to a new computer or a change of hard drive albeit one set of instructions for each platform please!! That written procedure would then be available to the DxO support team who would be able to guide the user appropriately! Instead of some “half-truths” that are based on anecdotal “evidence” of what users have or have not or might have experienced in the past.

I am fairly aware of the issues surrounding elements of this process on my Windows machines but do not own a Mac (or two) to test out the correct strategy and there is no-one from DxO present in the forum any more. I want to be able to throw facts back at @JoJu instead of “listening” to his remarks, which sadly have an element of truth in them, and not be able to adequately rebut his claims.

Plus I feel the strain of writing this document without any form of backup from DxO personnel whatsoever!!

Back to the Task at hand!

One problem is that if you have already installed PL6 on the new machine then some of the automatic migration actions cannot occur. the opportunity has come and gone!

I have discussed these in greater detail below and it depends what you want (or need) to preserve and what you are prepared to “recover” by manual intervention!?

“At risk” are

1. The edits (not really at risk)
2. The export presets (may already be lost! Uninstalling PL6, copying the correct directories to the new machine (you might need help from the Mac experts) and re-installing PL6 might resolve that!? )
3. ‘Projects’ if you have any they should be recoverable by loading an old copy of the database in PL6 but they will be pointing to images located on the old drive what will happen when you move drives is …!
4. ‘Presets’ would have been carried over if PL6 had been installed on the PL5 machine or it might have been possible to copy PL5 data to the PL6 machine and then install PL6!
5. Metadata should have come along with the DOP “for the ride” and will be loaded automatically when directories are discovered or when the PL5 database is loaded into PL6 see earlier chart for details
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Please note @platypus’s comment

@platypus

I’ve restored backups of databases across machines and as far as I remember, things worked as expected…which does not mean that it will do so in any and every case. You can’t lose trying it though.

I believe but cannot be sure that the biggest “problem” will be moving the data to the new drive which would certainly cause an issue with Windows!

More details:-

I can only comment on what I have found “playing” with DxPL(Win) but, hopefully the Mac experts can add to what I write and put the Mac slant on things, i.e. correct things which are different on the Mac.

Arguably regardless of which platform you are using the following are the things that might be most “precious” and which it would be good to have carried over and/or be able to recover:-

The edits:-

Which are contained in the database and should be up-to-date in the DOP.

But while later releases can read earlier DOPs it doesn’t work the other way around! So, arguably, once PL6 reads a PL5 DOP then that DOP is “suitable” only for that PL6 release.

In truth, on DxPL(Win) the urgent “need” to update all DOPs appears to have “vanished” in later releases and they seem to be left alone until an edit or a metadata change is made in PL6.

So if you are going to move to a bigger SSD it might be worth copying all your “old” DOPs to the new drive and

1. Either use the new drive with PL6 (keeping the old drive as backup), I believe that there will be problems with the new drive that I will address in a minute.

2. Or use the old drive with PL6 (keeping the new drive as backup initially but there may be problems with Volume Id when it comes into use!)

3. Or simply abandon any use of the old database and the old drive and copy the files to the new drive and use that to populate the PL6 database from scratch

and please note

@John-M

Before you do so, tho, I suggest you switch the first of these options (Save settings …) to OFF;

• just in case PLv6 decides to update your sidecar/.dop files in some way that you do not expect or want
• switch it back ON (assuming that’s how you normally work) when you’ve confirmed all is good.

The export “presets”:-

Which on DxPL(Win) are kept in the Config file and each new release (including interim releases) reads the old config and creates a new one. Without an old config when you install a new release the export “presets”, amongst other things, are lost and DxPL will revert to the standard default exports.

‘Projects’:-

‘Projects’ have no external existence, their only home is the database and without a database to use when installing the upgrade release the automatic upgrade will not occur. However I believe that a database backup can be “imported” at any time (it can on Windows) and DxPL will undertake any “conversion” automatically!?

Presets:-

‘Presets’ are automatically copied by the installation process from the PL5 location to the PL6 location (and converted?). If the presets are not available during an upgrade then this will not happen!

I compared my PL5 presets with my PL6 presets and almost all (in fact I believe it was all) had been copied over without change. But you would need software to be able to merge the old presets with the new, which in this case will only be those supplied by DxO!

DxPL(Win) will detect all the presets when restarted and they should then all be available for use!?

Metadata:-

‘Metadata’ can reside in the database and (optionally) also be written back to the image. If it is in the database it will also be in the DOP. If AS(OFF) is “set” then all new “discoveries” of image data and DOPs will use both the edit data AND the metadata from the DOP as per the chart earlier.

Volume Id.:-

‘Volume Id.’ may only be a Windows “thing” and is “explained” here Fresh new database and project start - #3 by BHAYT but the DxPL(Win) database contains a ‘Folders’ structure (table) that holds the details for a Volume.

This Volume Id. is assigned when a directory is formatted on Windows and stays the same on the drive/partition/directory unless deliberately changed by the user with “special” software!

This issue with the Volume Identifier means that the current drive should be fine when presented to the current database in PL5 or PL6, or so I “guess” and have verified in testing with DxPL(Win).

However, when the contents of the drive are copied to a newer drive, which on Windows would have a new Volume Id. then it would not match the “Volume id” in the ‘Folders’ structure and DxPL(Win) will treat it as a new drive!

The existing database entries will be left (“impatiently”) “waiting” for the “old” drive to return but new entries will be created for the ALL the images on the new drive. Any ‘Projects’ would be relevant only to images from the old drive, i.e. essentially none at all and all data used to populate the database would come from the image files and their accompanying DOP as follows

1. Edit data is always taken from the DOP regardless of any ‘Preference’ settings

2. Metadata will be taken from the DOP only if there was any previously and then only if AS(OFF) (please see above!) or if the ‘Import’ command is executed but this should be unnecessary.