Oklahoma 46

About 3 years ago the Windows 10 operating system crashed and almost a year later the hard drive crashed. These happy events occurred shortly after moving across country and since I wasn't sure all the latest photos had been backed up I took the computer to a computer store to have the photos on the C drive recovered. Downloading the recovered files brought an avalanche of duplicates - something in excess of 200,000 duplicates. It has been an arduous task getting back to somewhere close to where things were prior to the first crash.

Now something new is happening. About 3,000 pictures are not linked to the file. I tried to link the first photo of a group and when I clicked on the file location on the external disk nothing happened. The icon for not being linked just winks and remains in place. In some cases a message pops up saying the file is associated with another picture and that isn't allowed. There are in fact some file numbers that are attached to 2 different pictures - identical including the unique camera code.

Today I tried being cagey and a different thing - perhaps the most bizarre of all happened. I found a collection of pictures on the external disk and tried to import them into Lightroom so I could delete the missing photos. They would not import. Okay, I understand. So I changed each name by adding a -a after each name. They imported just fine but after importing they joined the rest of the pictures in that collection showing no link to the file. HUH???

Anybody have suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated. For what it's worth, I am on the Adobe $10 a month subscription plan. It would sure be nice to be able to use it once again.

Larry

rmcgarry331

I'm assuming you are using LrC, rather than the web based Lightroom. Did you make a back-up of the Lightroom catalog prior to importing? If you did great, it will be easy to un-do your import. To reconnect lost images with their original files, you need to the thumbnail in the drive location, then from there point Lightroom to the new location. Either way, to keep you from going farther into the weeds, contact Adobe Tech Support. Your $10/month subscription includes support, and they can best help you to fix this.

Oklahoma 46

Thank you for the quick reply. I will contact Adobe.