hogilbert

Help!! I moved all my LR images from my c drive to an auxiliary drive. I stupidly moved them using windows! now LR cannot find. Does anyone know a method to get them back to the original catalog?

bleirer

open Lightroom library, click on the little symbol to find the photo, navigate to the folder where you put them. Keep the boxed checked to find nearby photos.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/locate-missing-photos.html

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Fixing individual images, even folder by folder, could take forever.

Instead, try:

a) From the LR Library mode, assure you have the folder display active on the left panel.

b) Find the highest level folder from the old C: drive location.

c) Right-click that folder and select option 'Update Folder Location'

d) Navigate to the new folder location on the external drive. Press the <Select Folder> to update that location and the update should cascade through all the sub-folders.

e) Confirm the fix, possibly needing to repeat if you have multiple high-level 'trees' within your image folders.

windshoppe Loc: Arizona

Here is a video that I used very recently to avoid exactly what you're talking about. In addition to demonstrating the correct way to do it he also shows how to correct the problem if you've already done it incorrectly. https://lightroomkillertips.com/10555-2/

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

CHG_Canon's method generally works but sometimes the cascading is interrupted, particularly if you have gaps in the path.

So after you use his method, go to Library -> Find all missing photos. Note that this menu item is mis-named. It does not find all your missing photos. It displays the catalog entries that are missing. Each entry will have an exclamation point in the upper right. Clicking on that will bring up a dialog telling you where the catalog thinks the photo should be. You can supply the new location and all will be well. It will also cascade through contiguous folders to find other images.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Since your photos are now all on an auxiliary drive there is one more thing you should do: Fix the name of the auxiliary drive.

In Windows, go to the disk manager. Control Panel home -> system and security -> administrative tools -> computer management -> disk management. You have to do this as an administrative user. Once in disk management, you will see what the drive letters are for all your disks. You can change the letter of the auxiliary drive to any letter that isn't being used by some other disk. "P" might be a good letter, for "photos". That drive will then always be the "P" drive (Note that if you change the letter you should do that before locating all the files in the catalog).

On a Mac, I haven't a clue, but someone will tell you how to do it if you ask nicely.

One advantage of doing this is that in the future, if you ever have to change the auxiliary disk (need more space, disk getting old, etc.) all you have to do is copy the photos from the old drive to the new drive (in Windows is the easiest way) and then disconnect the old drive, go to the disk manager and set the new drive letter to "P" or whatever you were using for the old drive. That way the path to your files will not have changed and LR will be happy.

DesignOrc

Another way around this in Windows is to use symbolic links. You know where LR is expecting to find your files. You can use a command line to tell LR where the photo folder now lives using the mklink command

mklink /D \users\userid\Documents\(folder where the photos were) drive:\new folder

Now, whenever LR goes to where it wants to go, windows serves up your photos from your external drive. Any subfolders you create in the new location will subsequently be seen by LR as if they were in the original location.

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

Renaming hard drives on a Mac is simple. Highlight the drive ICON on your desktop. One click on the name of the drive highlights the name. Type in any name you want. Thats it. My photo drive is called New Photo. My new main drive (not the system drive) is called New Main Drive. My photo backup drive is named Photo BU #1. And on and on. No A's and C's which tell you nothing about what is on the drive. I think putting a real name on a drive is available in Windows too but most people just seem to keep the letters. I don't know why.
...Cam

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

For those who haven't used mklink, it's available through the command window. Hit the Windows key, go to Windows System -> Command prompt. That will bring up a command window. Type in the command given above.

Note that to operate correctly, you have to preserve the folder structure within the target location.

This is something I haven't used. Does it survive a restart?

BigChicken

Yes it survives very well. I use it to put my Win7 User profiles on a non-system drive. Win7 can make a call to them on C:\ even though they are on a different drive. Let’s me do a restore of an old image backup of the system drive without losing data files in the User profile folders like My Documents or My Pictures.

Now the harder part is to remove it. It is basically transparent. It looks like you have two copies of the files, one on each drive, but if you delete on one it deletes in both as they are really only on the target drive. There is no “Link” to delete Like with “shortcut”. I made a Snip of the commands I used to make them so I can remove if needed. Look up how to delete or remove a “Link”.