Van,
I did not think of that way of moving files from within the organizer.
Unfortunately, the 'move' feature for selected files works is meant to move files from any location on your computer to a single new folder. That should keep your catalog on the same location than before, with the albums, categories and tags unchanged. I don't understand how you can have lost your albums in the process.
That's not what you want, and the 'move' feature is rarely used because there is always the risk to move files with the same filename into the same destination drive. Since that is not possible in the explorer, the organizer is supposed to rename files to avoid that problem. In older Elements versions the 'move' command had several bugs which explains why it is rarely used.
I hope you had a backup of your files before your move ?
Of the two recommended ways to move folder trees within Elements, I prefer the backup and restore method. The second method is rarely used, although I have tested it successfully with a big catalog in PSE12. With a big catalog like yours, a backup is necessary anyway, which means you don't save time. The usual result of the backup/restore (totally safe process) is that the catalog itself is also moved to the new drive; but you can get it back simply to the default location on C: from the catalog manager (catalogs accessible to all users).