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M
mayrhofs
Participant
January 22, 2017
Answered

Drive Letter / Missing Folders on Mac

  • January 22, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 1349 views

I just switched from a PC to a Macbook and all of my photos in Lightroom are showing up as missing. The photos are located in folders by date on an external harddrive that on my PC went by the drive letter E. If I understand correctly, Mac doesn't function with drive letters, so I'm unable to change the drive letter back to E and recover the missing files in Lightroom on my new Macbook.

Unfortunately I never created a parent folder under drive E and now have hundreds (maybe thousands) of dated folders under the following file structure (photo attached). When I try to locate the missing files in Lightroom, I can only locate the folders one at a time, which isn't a viable option considering the vast amount of folders that there are under drive E. Is there any way that I can locate and update all of these folders at once?

Thanks so much,

Sophia

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer dj_paige

mayrhofs

Right click on any folder and select Show Parent Folder. Then do a Find Missing Folder on the parent folder.

2 replies

P
Peter24411094yu6o
Participant
October 28, 2024

Hi - I have a very similar issue, in that all my photos are on an external hard drive, which used to be D:/ but is now 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 find. I've done all the steps to repoint LrC at the missing folders, but I'm baulking at the final step - 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, or will that create more problems?

 

Tech Illiterate and Risk Averse User

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
October 28, 2024

Please start a new thread and describe your problem in detail instead of adding to a 7 year old thread about something else. People will be happy to help you in a new thread.

Just Shoot Me
Just Shoot Me
Legend
January 22, 2017

The real problem is more than likely that external drive is formatted in the Windows NTFS format which OS X can read but can't natively right to it.

Where is your catalog file stored, on the external drive or did you copy if over and place it on the internal drive of your Mac?

In LR on the entry that says E, not the top entry E but the one at the top of the folder list with all the subfolders below it, right click on it and select Update Folder Location. Browse to the external drive, it should have a Name and select that name. If that works your problems are only half over. Post back what happens and we'll go from there.

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
January 22, 2017
right click on it and select Update Folder Location.

Find Missing Folder

M
mayrhofsAuthor
Participant
January 23, 2017

I did that, but I have hundreds of folders, so that it would take me days to update them all individually. There is no parent folder above them:/

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