Lightroom changed the location of all of my files

To be clear - while my external drives have been unplugged recently, their drive letters haven't changed, and I haven't moved any files around at all.

When I go to the missing files in Lightroom, and check the related filepath using "show in explorer", it says that photos that were *never* on I:\ are marked as being on I:\ in Lightroom's database. What's really weird is that the rest of the filepath is the same (all the other directories nested below the drive) but the drive letter is different.

Here's an even weirder situation: I break up my photos into collections, and each collection usually contains photos that are all in one folder. For some collections, it locates half the photos correctly (on their original drive) and half of them on I:\. It's SO weird.

Lightroom loses photo location after connecting removable devices

Further, LR can't move anything without user intervention. You might and if done without using LR, then LR doesn't know what you did behind it's back and now it's time for the Update Folder Location (or synchronize Folder) commands.

'Find Missing Photos' only does that: find them. It does not fix the problem and is not supposed to fix the problem. To fix it: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/