Moving to LightRoom 3 from CS5 I have a few questions?

[BobFisher]

I believe that's the reason to double click on the moved catalogue file.  That's what makes the connection that it's the 'last used catalogue'.  

[johnbeardy]

From reading your questions and answers so far, you are a long way from really knowing how to take advantage of Lightroom and before you jump in feet first, it's optimal to learn about what you are planning on doing. The fact is, starting LR only with newly shot images isn't what LR is all about.

Though the kind of questions you're asking are the right ones. I don't think it's a bad idea to start off with new images, but pretty soon I think you're going to be at the point where you do understand what your catalogue is and will then want to bring all your pictures under Lightroom's control.

[Bill Koenig]

OK, now that I have Lr up and running, last night I successfully moved the catalog to my internal drive, and deleted it from the "My Pictures folder"
I now understand what the Lightroom file is all about. I understand Bob's point about double clicking the .lrcat file in the new location, and doing so completes the transfer to my internal drive. I understand how make new catalogs to the location of my choice.
I imported my first SD card, gave it date and location and imported that into my new catalog, then I worked a few files in the develop module before calling it a night.
Looking back, I really should waited until I had Lr installed up and running, work with it, get comfortable with it, get a understanding of the catalog and how it works before I started asking questions about backups.
I'll just let my backup software run as is for now, I'll still be covered.
Jeff, I'm going buy the "Guide To Lightroom 3" I do plan to import my old files, just not right away, when I feel I'm ready.
Thanks for all the help everyone, I'm sure I'll have more questions down the road, but I'm moving foreword now.

[Steve House]

Just remember when planning your backups, LR doesn't normally change your original files so one backup with a main copy and a redundent 'backup of the backup' copy in a separate location is sufficient.  The catalog is where all the data regarding your edits is stored as well as the pointers and other metadata about the files.  If you use an incremental backup strategy in order to save copies of the files at various stages of your workflow, the original files are not what are changing but rather it is the data stored in the catalog about those files.  Backing up the image files themselves more than once serves no purpose, but backing up the CATALOG at regular intervals is is important because that's where all the work you've done on your images in LR is kept.