# Move your photos to a new PC (without losing any) > Find every folder your photos live in, make cloud placeholders local, copy whole folders to an external drive, then compare counts and sizes before you wipe the old PC. Source: https://firelet.media/blog/move-photos-to-new-pc Published: 2026-10-13 · Updated: 2026-10-13 Applies to: Windows To move your photos to a new PC without losing any, first find every place they live on the old one, make sure files in cloud folders are really on the disk, then copy whole folders to an external drive and from there to the new PC. Before you wipe, sell or recycle the old computer, compare the file count and total size on both sides and open a sample of photos. An external drive is the fastest and most dependable route for most people. A home network or a cloud service also works, with trade-offs. ## Step 1: find every place your photos live The photos people lose in a move are rarely the ones in Pictures. Check each of these on the old PC before you copy anything: - **Pictures**, including Camera Roll, Screenshots and Saved Pictures. - **Desktop and Downloads.** Photos saved from email, chat apps and websites land here and tend to stay. - **Old photo programs.** Picasa left your photos in your own folders, but it kept its stars, faces and albums in a hidden `.picasa.ini` file inside each folder, and its list of people in `contacts.xml` under `%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Picasa2\contacts`. If you used another photo program, check its settings for where it keeps its library. - **External drives, USB sticks and memory cards**, including the ones in a drawer. - **Your phone.** It gets its own step below. - **Cloud sync folders**: OneDrive, Google Drive for desktop, Dropbox or iCloud for Windows. If OneDrive backs up your Pictures folder, your Pictures may actually be inside the OneDrive folder. To catch strays, open **This PC** in File Explorer and type `kind:picture` into the search box (and `kind:video` for videos). It's slow, but it turns up forgotten places. ### Make cloud placeholders local first OneDrive's Files On-Demand, and the similar options in Google Drive for desktop, Dropbox and iCloud for Windows, can keep files "online only". The name and a thumbnail are on your PC, but the picture itself is still in the cloud. Copying such a file makes Windows download it first, which is slow and fails if the PC is offline, and some backup tools skip placeholders altogether. 1. In File Explorer, look at the **Status** column of the cloud folder. A cloud icon means online only; a green tick means the file is on this PC. 2. Right-click the photo folder and choose **Always keep on this device** (OneDrive and iCloud for Windows). Google Drive for desktop and Dropbox have the same kind of option in their right-click menus. 3. Wait for the sync app to finish, then right-click the folder and choose **Properties**. If **Size on disk** is far smaller than **Size**, some files are still online only. You need enough free space on the old PC for this. If you don't have it, sign in to the same cloud account on the new PC and make the folders available there instead. ## Step 2: choose how to move them | Method | Speed | Cost | Best for | |---|---|---|---| | External drive | Fast | A drive, if you don't have one | Most people, any library size | | Home network | Fast wired, often slow on Wi-Fi | Nothing | Both PCs in the same house, a network cable to hand | | Cloud sync | Limited by your upload speed | Usually a paid plan | Small libraries, or PCs in different places | ### An external drive (best for most people) Use a drive with more free space than all your photo folders together. 1. Plug the drive into the old PC and **copy** (not cut) each photo folder onto it, whole. Copying whole folders keeps the structure, and it brings hidden files such as `.picasa.ini` along. 2. Plug the drive into the new PC and copy the folders to where you want them, for example into Pictures. Or keep them on a large external drive and work from there. 3. Leave everything on the drive for now. Once you've checked the copy, it becomes your first backup. A USB 3 drive copies a typical family library in an hour or two. A USB 2 port or an old stick is many times slower. One trap: drives formatted as FAT32 can't hold a file larger than 4 GB, which some long videos are. Format the drive as exFAT or NTFS before you start. > [!TIP] > For a big copy, `robocopy` in a Command Prompt is sturdier than dragging folders: `robocopy "C:\Users\You\Pictures" "E:\Pictures" /E`. If the copy is interrupted, run the same line again and it skips the files that are already there. ### Your home network Turn on sharing for the photo folder on the old PC (right-click it, then **Properties → Sharing**), then open `\\OLD-PC-NAME` in File Explorer on the new one and copy from there. Over a network cable this can be as fast as a slow external drive. Over Wi-Fi it is often much slower, and a dropped connection halfway through a long copy is common. Windows' nearby sharing is fine for a few photos, but it isn't meant for a whole library. ### Cloud sync Let OneDrive or another sync app upload everything from the old PC, sign in on the new one and let it download. It needs no hardware and works when the computers are in different places. But home connections usually upload far slower than they download, so a large library can take days. Free plans are small (OneDrive and iCloud start at 5 GB, Google's 15 GB is shared with Gmail), so most photo libraries need a paid plan. And on the new PC the files may arrive as online-only placeholders again. ### Moving from Windows 10 to Windows 11 The photos themselves don't care. A JPEG, HEIC or video file is the same file on both. Windows Backup can carry settings and some folders across, but it does so through OneDrive, so your photos count against your OneDrive storage. If HEIC photos from an iPhone don't open on the new PC, see [why HEIC photos won't open on Windows](https://firelet.media/blog/heic-wont-open-on-windows). ## Step 3: phone photos go to a PC first Your phone may hold the only copies of its photos. Copy them to the PC before you reset or trade in anything. With firelet.media Gallery, **Imaging → Import** copies only what's new, checks each copy and deletes nothing from the phone. [Phone storage full? Move your photos to your PC](https://firelet.media/blog/phone-storage-full-move-photos-to-pc) walks through it, and [back up phone photos to your PC without the cloud](https://firelet.media/blog/back-up-phone-photos-to-pc-without-cloud) covers the routine after that. ## Step 4: check that nothing was lost 1. **Before you copy**, right-click each top photo folder on the old PC and choose **Properties**. Write down the number of files after **Contains**, and the **Size** (not **Size on disk**, which depends on the drive). 2. **After you copy**, do the same on the new PC. The numbers should match exactly. Hidden files such as `.picasa.ini` are counted on both sides, which is what you want. 3. **If they don't match**, look for a copy that stopped with an error, files over 4 GB on a FAT32 drive, very long file paths, or cloud files that were still online only. 4. **Spot-check.** Open a few photos from your oldest year, from a recent phone backup and from each external drive, and play a video or two. 5. **Keep the old drive.** Don't wipe the old PC or reuse the external drive until the counts match, you've used the new PC for a while, and the new PC has a backup of its own. ![The Statistics panel listing the items in the library with their total size, and breakdowns by year, file type, orientation and source folder](https://firelet.media/help/media/shot-statistics-panel.webp "Statistics shows how many pictures each year holds, so a missing year stands out") If you use firelet.media Gallery, the **Statistics** panel ([[Alt]]+[[8]]) adds a quick sense check: a **By year** breakdown makes a missing year easy to spot. Its count can be lower than File Explorer's, because the gallery skips files it can't show. Camera RAW files, for example, aren't supported yet; a scan counts them and tells you how many it found. ## Step 5: organise while you move A move is the one time you touch every photo folder anyway. firelet.media Gallery turns them into one collection on the new PC without moving your files again. **One library, folders where they are.** Open the **Library** panel ([[Alt]]+[[1]]), click **Attach a folder** and pick your photo folders, on any drive. **Add a cloud folder** finds the OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud folders already on the PC. Attaching only indexes the folders; nothing is copied or moved. See [how to add your photo folders to the library](https://firelet.media/help/add-photo-folders) and [how to add OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud folders](https://firelet.media/help/add-cloud-folders-onedrive-dropbox). **Find exact and near duplicates.** Backups of backups leave copies everywhere. In the **AI** panel ([[Alt]]+[[3]]), **Identical copies** finds byte-for-byte copies, and **Duplicates** finds resized and re-saved ones. Nothing is deleted: the extras are flagged as rejected for you to review. [How to find and remove duplicate photos](https://firelet.media/help/find-and-remove-duplicate-photos) has the details. **Fix wrong dates.** Select the photos with the same problem and press [[Ctrl]]+[[Shift]]+[[D]] for **Date and time**. Shift them all by an amount, or set the first one's true date and let the rest follow. The correction lives in the library and the files are never changed. See [how to fix wrong photo dates and times](https://firelet.media/help/fix-photo-dates-and-times). **Name the faces.** The **People** panel ([[Alt]]+[[5]]) finds and groups faces on your PC. You name a group once. See [how to find and name people in your photos](https://firelet.media/help/find-and-name-people). **Search by description.** After a one-time 438 MB model download and a run of **Index library** in the AI panel, you can type "birthday cake with candles" or "snow on the car" and find the photo, offline. See [how to find a photo by describing what's in it](https://firelet.media/help/find-photos-by-description). ### Coming from Picasa If your old PC ran Picasa, copy its folders whole so the hidden `.picasa.ini` files come along. Then open **Albums & keywords** ([[Alt]]+[[4]]), expand **Picasa** and click **Import from Picasa**. The gallery also offers it once, in a banner, when a folder you add holds Picasa data. - Picasa's stars become picks, its faces become named people, and its albums become albums. Captions and keywords fill in too. - It only fills what is empty, unless you tick **Replace flags and captions set here**. Running it again adds only what's new. - Picasa's files and your pictures are only read, never changed. - If you copied Picasa's `contacts.xml` from the old PC, click **Choose contacts.xml** so faces a folder's file doesn't name get their names too. The Picasa importer is new. If you don't see a Picasa section in Albums & keywords yet, it arrives with the next update of the Windows app. ### Already using the gallery on the old PC? Your stars, albums, people and edits live in one file, `%LOCALAPPDATA%\PictureGallery\gallery.db`. With the gallery closed on both computers, copy it to the same place on the new PC, and keep your photo folders at the same paths if you can. Then free the old PC's seat and activate the new one. [How to move your licence to a new computer](https://firelet.media/help/move-licence-to-new-computer) and [how to back up your photos and your library](https://firelet.media/help/back-up-photos-and-library) cover both, including changed paths. ### For a few files: free web tools For one-off jobs there are free browser tools at [/tools/](https://firelet.media/tools/): remove location data before you share, fix a date, find duplicates in a folder, turn HEIC into JPG and read a photo's EXIF details. ## Try it on the photos you just moved firelet.media Gallery runs on Windows 10 and 11, and the 14-day free trial has every feature with no limits. [Download it](https://firelet.media/download/?ref=blog-new-pc), attach the folders you've just copied, and check that every year is there. ## Questions ### Should I copy or move (cut) my photos to the new PC? Copy. A copy leaves the originals where they are until you have checked that the counts and sizes match on the new PC. Delete from the old computer only after that, and after the new one is backed up. ### Do photos lose quality or their dates when they are copied? No. Copying doesn't change the picture or the date taken stored inside it. File Explorer's Date created column usually shows the day of the copy, so sort by date taken rather than by file dates. ### Will my Picasa stars, faces and albums come across? They can, if the hidden .picasa.ini files were copied along with each folder. firelet.media Gallery's Import from Picasa, in the Albums & keywords panel, reads them: stars become picks, faces become named people and albums become albums. ### How long should I keep the old PC or drive? Until the counts and sizes match, you have opened a sample from every year, and the new PC has its own backup. A few weeks of using the new PC normally is a sensible margin.