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Peter24411094yu6o
Participant
October 28, 2024
Question

Changed of external drive letter (D:/ to F:/) - problems getting LrC to see all my photos

  • October 28, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 320 views

Hi - This is an issue that keeps popping up on here, but I can't see an answer for my specific question, which is in two parts: All my photos are on an external hard drive, which used to be D:/ but has now been reassigned to F:/ . Lightroom can see all the photos I've imported recently from F:/ but nearly all my folders are 'missing' because Lightroom thinks they're on D:/ which it can't now find. I've done all the steps to repoint LrC at the missing folders, which are all in a single master folder on the external drive. I think I'm nearly there, but I'm baulking at the final step, where after I've right clicked on the 'missing' D:/ drive in Lightroom, found the missing master folder and all the missing folders within it, clicked on it but now LrC is saying

 

"The selected folder or one of its subfolders is already in Lightroom. Do you want to combine these folders?".

 

It then gives the option to MERGE or CANCEL. If I hit MERGE is that problem solved?

 

Second part of the question: If I then reassign the external drive to say L:/ to limit future reassignments by Microsoft (and having to resolve the issue again every time the drive letter changes), do I then simply repeat the process of finding the new drive from within LrC and pointing it at the master folder again? Or is it more complicated than that?

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1 reply

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
October 28, 2024

First, if you can start over from scratch, that's the best thing to do. Then you can re-connect all subfolders in one action (see Figure 4 here).

 

If you can't start over, then please make sure you have a recent backup of your catalog file before proceeding. Assuming you have made a recent backup, then go ahead and click on merge. If that doesn't do what you want, then restore the backup and we'll have to figure out what is going wrong.

 

In the future, use the link I gave above to reconnect all subfolders at once.

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Peter24411094yu6oAuthor
Participant
October 28, 2024

Hi - thanks for the very prompt reply and advice. I wasn't in a position to start over, so I hit merge and things seem to be fine. The greyed-out old drive D:/ has vanished and LrC can locate all the missing files which it couldn't find on F:/ previously. Hopefully that's it.  I was planning on reorganising my folder structure and names in LrC down the line, but having read through your advice via the link you sent I think I can live with them as they are!! I will reassign the external hard drive to L:/ at some point, but that's for another day...

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