Question

Folders aren't appearing on external hard drive

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
December 3, 2025
2 replies
527 views

I don't know when this started, I just noticed today.

When I am finished with a project/folder, I close LR and I move the folder to an external hard drive. When I open LR again, it's greyed out so I find the missing folder on the drive, and it then the folder correctly shows up under that dropdown for the drive.

This has worked for years.

Today I did that again--the folder had been moved earlier to the drive, and today I opened LR. I found the missing folder, and then, the drive shows up in the folders list, as if, it's brand new in LR. I think, wait a minute, all of the years of folders should be there too. The files are on the drive, all the photos are there when I open the Windows explorer, but it's like the catalog doesn't recognize them anymore.

I start going through the backups; unzipping, and opening all the old catalogs (and bacause of the recent LR update, all of the catalogs have to be updated. Okay.) But the links are all totally gone. None of the backups show the folders exist on the external hard drive.

So, what happened? How can I restore all the edits made to those photos on the external drive? Thank you.

LR 15.0.1, Windows 11 Pro

Windows

dj_paige

Legend

I'm going to disagree with @AxelMatt , it is actually safer to do the move in LrC, and then re-link the catalog. And since the designers of LrC provided two ways to do the move, including doing it in your operating system, I don't see a problem.

@Chezi :

I'm having trouble understanding the current situation on your computer that you tried to describe in words. Can you show us a screen capture of this problem? Please use the "Insert Photos" icon to include your screen capture in your reply.

Lastly, @Chezi to reduce confusion and increase clarity (always a good thing to do), please refer to your software as Lightroom Classic or LrC; it is not Lightroom or Lr which is entirely different software.

CheziAuthor

Simply put, the folders don't show up here anymore. I have lots of folders under the drive C: as usual, but under E:, those folders are all gone. Missing the link. This "porsche table" is the only folder because that's where I linked it to after I had moved it to the drive.

Sorry, thank you for the tip, it is LrC.

dj_paige

Legend

It is not clear what you are moving to the E: drive. Are you moving only the photos, or only the catalog file, or both photos and catalog file?

Not counting backups, it is not clear to me if you are talking about one catalog for everything, or many catalogs. Which is it?

A

AxelMatt

Community Expert

First, you need to make sure that the external hard drive is ALWAYS connected with the same drive letter.

Try to move the appropriate images back to the place on which you make your editings.

When I am finished with a project/folder, I close LR and I move the folder to an external hard drive.

By @Chezi

This is wrong way. All file operations, like moving from pictures to another folder or drive should be doing IN Lightroom.

In this case the links in Lightroom's catalog would be changed correct.

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 9 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI

CheziAuthor

Try to move the appropriate images back to the place on which you make your editings.

By @AxelMatt

This is confusing to me, I'm sorry. The files have been on the drive in the same spot the whole time. So what is it I'm moving, where?

Like, you might be telling me to move the folders back from the external to the main drive. But then what? Import them like I would with new photos? Are you saying Lightroom Cl will automatically recognize that it had made edits to it before? Because if that's the case, then I should just import them from the drive they're on now, ...which I just did, and no, the edits aren't saved. So what else would I need to do for Lightroom to recognize it has already edited these? I'm just saying that when the photos were on the external drive, Lightroom could still edit them there, and there wasn't a problem.

A

AxelMatt

Community Expert

Ok. I seems I've already misunderstood your issue a little bit.

I've read your original post several times, but I've already issue to understand them correctly.

You've images in a folder and edited this images in Lightroom. After the project is finished you close Lightroom and MOVE this folder including the images to a external hard drive with the Windows Explorer. So it's only on the external drive. Correct?

The folder name in the library should be greyout and the images in the grid view should have an exclamation mark. Correct!?

Do I understand your problem correctly now?

And then? What happened or should happen? What do you expect? What you're doing after this?

If you like to see the folder on the external hard drive in LrC's library view you should have to relink one of the images in the folder. All other imges in the folder will be automatically relinked.

Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 9 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI

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