Migrating the database from a crashed computer.

Hello,

I would like to merge two databases and recover the tags and labels.

I am going to completely reinstall my PC's operating system due to a 
technical problem and a hard drive change.

I put the old hard drive in a USB adapter and I have access to the 
photos in my collection and the database.

For this step, I plan to mount the external drive in a USB adapter, 
recursively copy the collection directory and the database directory to 
the new drive, start digiKam, and configure it to use the database 
copied to the new hard drive and the collection.

In the database, is the path to the photos in the collection absolute or 
relative to the collection?

Will there be any problems with the paths?

In case of problems, I also have incremental backups of the collection 
and database on another disk, but they are a few weeks old.

Is this the right method, or is there a safer/simpler one?

However, I have been using digiKam for some time on another temporary 
installation.

Is it possible to merge this data to recover the work of the last few 
weeks: tags and labels, etc.?

Thank you.

--
Benoît