P: Automatically find mis-mapped drives when drive letter changes

Adobe gives you the option to hide folders so the hierarchy does not extend too much to the right. That makes a lot of sense and gives you a lot of flexibility. Just imagine that they did not offer you to hide an irrelevant part of the path. Then your folder panel could look like this:

C/Users/Username/Pictures/Lightroom pictures/2022/02/03/

Would you really prefer that? Don't blame Adobe for giving you this option. Blame yourself for not knowing a feature that is actually very useful for you...

Thank you. I did that and it worked. It leaves me scratching my head why on earth would Adobe want to hide the parent folder if pointing to that parent folder solves the problem. In any case, I know now. I hope Lightroom becomes more user friendly as already is. Hidden things never go far. Maybe the parent folder should be in another colour but it should be there by default unless you want to hide it. This was really confusing. In any case thank you for your input.

"When I catalogue I have not catalogued folder STOCK 1 (that is on a disk named Stock 1 too). Why do I don't do that?"

Jim and I already explained that. The parent folder is simply hidden. Right-click on one of the folders you do see, and choose 'Show Parent Folder'.

Thank you Jim for the long post.

I still don't get it. All my HD have a parent folder (Stock 1, Stock 2, Stock 3 until 28) inside there are 3 more folders  that contain images (RAWS,Tiffs,Jpgs) and other folders containing PDF like model releases etc. In every one of those there are many sessions inside the 3 (Raw Tiffs Jpgs folders)

When I catalogue I have not catalogued folder STOCK 1 (that is on a disk named Stock 1 too). Why do I don't do that? Because I have many catalogues and if I would import all the files selecting folder Disk 1 it would catalogue everything inside that I don't want. Maybe in Disk 1 I am only interested in India (So I go inside the RAW folder and catalogue all the files that have India as a subject, then I do the same with all the ones in the TIFF folder and in the JPG folder and leave everything else out. 

So this is the problem I have already a Master folder but when I import I don't select it because I dont want all the files catalogued inside there. This is because creating a parent folder does not work as a strategy in my case. I could create a parent folder for India ( and put all the inia Raws,tiffs and jpgs inside) but that would be really a long task as I have hundreds of different subjects. It would mean creating parent folders for every of those folders (remember that I don't want all catalogue all the files inside a parent folder) That is the reason why I am selective to specific folder for a specific catalog. But it comes later and bites me in the a$$ later when Lightrom gets confused if the letter has changed.

Right now it is a nightmare problem where the only solution (quick) is to change letter if it is free (many times is not) or just show him the right folders every time. Not ideal but unfortunately it is what it is.

Yes I hope they will change that some day to just point to the right disk and be done with it. In any case thank you very much for your help and ideas.

I wish it was that easy. You are solving a problem and creating a much bigger one. In every disk as I told you there are multiple sessións made until that disk was full. Travels, lifestyle shootings, still lifes,..... So I take out and I create a parent folder for that session (India) with those 3 subgrups inside( Raws,Tiffs, Jpgs). So should I do the same with 20 different session I have only in that disk only. Multiply it by 12 disks. And change also parent folders of 2 backups of every disk to maintain the same file structure. That would be a nightmare that would take me 1 month at least. I have over 300+ more sessions by subject. Should I group them all in a parent folder and inside (raw,tiff,jpg) . 

By @mastix

I really don't think you're getting this at all. Nobody is suggesting a parent folder for each of your sessions, what is suggested is standard "best practice" to have ONE parent folder for each disk, no matter how many sessions you have on the disk. Doing that means that every time a disk drive letter is changed, you only have to relink that ONE parent folder which takes a matter of seconds.

Setting that up using LrC would take no more than a couple of minutes per disk:

Make sure you take a catalog backup first, just in case you make a mistake. Then in the Folders Panel use the Add Folder option to create the designated parent folder for the specific disk. Then select all the Sessions parent folders on that disk (ctrl-click on each session folder), then when all are selected drag one of them (which drags all of the selected ones) and drop them onto the newly created parent folder. And that's it, you now have all session folders and sub-folders under the one parent folder, and you can repeat for all your other drives.

And if it bothers you to have the parent folder showing in the Folders Panel, you can simply use the "Hide this Parent" option to remove it from sight, then use the "Show Parent Folder" option when you need to use if for relinking purposes.

Understand that LrC is not a file-browser, so to implement your suggestion would likely be a non-trivial task given the age of the code-base. I'm not saying Adobe will never do it, but I'm guessing that if it happens it's not likely to be a quick fix. So perhaps you might want to invest those few minutes per disk and save yourself a lot of grief.

You clearly still do not understand.  You should make a parent folder that includes everything on the disk. So no matter how many folders and folder hierarchies you have, you just need to move them all (without changing anything) inside one single new parent folder. Anyway, this is your problem, not mine, so I'm not going to spend more time on it.

I wish it was that easy. You are solving a problem and creating a much bigger one. In every disk as I told you there are multiple sessións made until that disk was full. Travels, lifestyle shootings, still lifes,..... So I take out and I create a parent folder for that session (India) with those 3 subgrups inside( Raws,Tiffs, Jpgs). So should I do the same with 20 different session I have only in that disk only. Multiply it by 12 disks. And change also parent folders of 2 backups of every disk to maintain the same file structure. That would be a nightmare that would take me 1 month at least. I have over 300+ more sessions by subject. Should I group them all in a parent folder and inside (raw,tiff,jpg) . 

The things that needs to change is Lightroom to be able to point at the disk where the files are located and not have to touch all the folder structure made with windows through the years. Every person catalogues their own way. Some might use something similar like mine, other might use create a subject folder and put everything inside,...

Windows and the folder structure in the Hards disks are sacred. Nothing should be touched in that. It should be the database software, be it Lightroom, Davinci, or any other database program the one that should find the files without having you to remodel your HD folder structure.

This is because I think Lightroom is so behind other software specially if you are using lots of external drives. it can become quite fast a nightmare to handle because you always have the same "missing files" problem that makes you waste enormous time.

Lightroom need to be"smart" enough to detect the folders when you connect a disk and even if it doesn't you should be able to point him where the catalog files are (pointing at the disk and not the folders) and be done with it. That would be the right thing to do in my opinion. Now if there is some kind of technical problem the way Windows works that makes this impossible I don't know. I do know that in Davinci when you change location of files you tell the program it is now inside this disk and you have to do nothing more. The software connects to those files again.

P.S. If you already have a 'Disk 20' parent folder, but Lightroom does not show it (so you can't reconnect it), then all you need to do is the following: right-click on any of the three folders of that disk in the Lightroom folder panel and choose 'Show Parent Folder'. That will make Lightroom show that parent folder in the folder panel, so you can now reconnect that one parent folder instead of each of the three subfolders.

I don't follow you here. I am not able to create a parent folder because it would import into the catalogue thousands of images I don't want 

By @mastix

Nonsense, creating a new parent folder does not make you import anything. A parent folder is just another folder, at the top of the folder tree. Right now you have three folders on the disk:

-RAWs

-TIFFs

-JPEGs

If you have to 'reconnect' the disk because the drive letter has changed, you will have to use 'Find Missing Folder' on each of them.

If you created an empty folder called 'Disk 20' (or whatever name you want to give it) and you placed the three folders inside that new folder, then your disk will look like this:

- Disk 20

  --RAWs

  --TIFFs

  --JPEGs

You will have to 'reconnect' the three folders once to let Lightroom know they are now inside that new folder, but from that moment onwards you will only have to reconnect the 'Disk 20' folder if your drive letter has changed, because the RAWs, TIFFs and JPEGs folders are now subfolders of the Disk 20 folder and subfolders are automatically reconnected when the parent folder is reconnected.

I don't follow you here. I am not able to create a parent folder because it would import into the catalogue thousands of images I don't want. In the sample I posted you there are : Parent Folder disk 20. 3 Subfolders : Raws, Tiffs,JPGs and inside of those many more: For example inside raw we have: India, Italy, Spain, Germany....... I have only imported the India one that is inside Raw that is inside disk 20. If I import disk 20 in my India catalogue (I have 1 catalogue by country because if not I would have over 1 million images catalogue) it would take all the other images I dont want . So i have to import that India folder inside Raws inside Disk 20. No other choice. And when I import that specific India Raw folder I don't get any other parent folder to point inside when the letter changes. I have to search everytime for the raw India folder, the Tiff India Folder, the JPG India folder. I wish I could just point out to Disk 20 but I cannot because if I would had created a catalog of Disk 20 in the first place it would had imported many images I don't want in that catalog

This is because I am saying it would be wise for Lightroom to be able to pint at the disk and that it would search for those folders and leave out those that were not catalogued. This is how it work for example in Davinci Resolve. You point out where you think the assets are (music,clips,photos) and the software is able to find them all.

I think I might have confused you more because my explanation is a little convoluted, just as Lightroom 😄