All shortcuts stop working after transferring all data from one hard drive to another

Jun 16, 2018
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All my shortcuts have stopped working after transferring all video data from one external hard drive to another.FYI All the data was transferred at the same time but now all the shortcuts in the other transferred folders have stopped working.Even though whist hovering over each shortcut they will still show the correct folder leading back to the original video.How can i solve this problem so that in the future when i transfer all this video data to another hard drive the shortcuts still work.The data in question is a continually growing archive of old news footage,which requires shortcuts to many relevant folders.Just to clarify the exact problem-the old HDD is fine with all shortcuts working etc...the problem arises when i copy all data to a new HDD then the shortcuts no longer work.
 
Solution
The new location is a different drive letter.
All your shortcuts point to the original location.

You might be able to just swap drive letters. Have the new drive the same drive letter as the old drive.

Now...if you changed the folder/subfolder structure....that won't work.

rabmcnair90

Prominent
Jun 1, 2018
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They probably just have the wrong path.

I would delete all the existing shortcuts and then open the program folder and right click the application and select create shortcut from the list that appears.
 
Jun 16, 2018
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Thanks rabmcnair90 could you explain it again as there are hundreds of shortcuts in hundreds of folders that all worked fine on the initial HDD,but after copying to new HDD they all stop working.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
The new location is a different drive letter.
All your shortcuts point to the original location.

You might be able to just swap drive letters. Have the new drive the same drive letter as the old drive.

Now...if you changed the folder/subfolder structure....that won't work.
 
Solution

rabmcnair90

Prominent
Jun 1, 2018
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540
I will give an example to try and help.

Each shortcut you have will have a path and the path is just the address of where the file is.

Say your old hard drive was the C drive and you had a shortcut for google chrome on this drive. The path of this shortcut would be C:/program files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application

So if you copied the contents of your C drive to your D drive, the shortcut path would change from C to D. Therefore, when you click on the shortcut it looks in the wrong location, so does not work.

I am assuming when you try to click your shortcuts you get this message: 'shortcut has been moved or changed'

Therefore, you either need to give the shortcut the new path details or delete the existing shortcut and create a new shortcut.
 
Jun 16, 2018
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@ rabmcnair90 & USAFRet thank you both so much!...All sorted. I just had to learn how to assign a Persistent Drive Letter to a USB Drive in Windows and then all my old shortcuts miraculously restored themselves.There were thousands of them & just the thought of making a new individual shortcut again had aged me 10 years! (after already causing this problem once before by altering the folders as USAFRet also mentioned)