John, just wanted to report on this 'move' being successful...my new drive now has all my images, nearly 40,000, and my catalog linked to it like before...i did make sure i had back up catalogs saved and also all my images saved to other drives, just in case...
things that surprised me...i thought lightroom would duplicate my images to the new drive, not actually move them to it and delete from the old location...
I also would have liked to have been able to drag my entire folder of images to the new drive and drop it onto the drive...as it was, i had to drop them into the new folder i created on the drive so now i've got my original folder inside a new folder which wasn't necessary...i mean it's just an extra layer of folder for no real reason other than this physical move...
I almost followed Rhossydd's suggestion, i have CCC, but wanted to make sure my catalog was a good, solid, working version so decided to go with your suggestion...
ok, so now i'm set for a long while i think...thanks for your help...
Morris