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Jbean25
Known Participant
September 15, 2018
Question

Lightroom Classic: Deletes files when moving folders

  • September 15, 2018
  • 26 replies
  • 1082 views
There is another thread describing this same behavior that is marked as solved. However, the problem is not solved.

Today I moved a folder inside LR to an external HD. The folder itself was over 40GB. The progress bar stopped about 1/3 way through the process, and after 15 minutes no more files were being moved. I finally stopped the move by clicking the "x." When I looked at the size of the folder in the external HD and the size of the original folder still remaining, I had lost over 25GB!!  
Arguably the most important function LR has is not image organization, it is image preservation. And if files just disappear due to LR glitches, then steps need to be taken to fix that as priority #1! 
I will not be moving files within LR any longer, and I will not recommend that anyone do so. If I know of someone who is considering using LR, I will suggest they look at alternatives.  Unbelievable!
I'm using version 7.3.1
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    26 replies

    Todd Shaner
    Todd Shaner
    Legend
    June 23, 2021

    Please see my suggestions at the below post. This is prudent advice regardless of the photo app you are using.

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/how-do-i-move-my-pictures-to-external-hard-drive/m-p/5029125#M12054

    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    June 23, 2021

    Apparently this issue is still open. I had several cases where I copied images to a new drive, and suddenly the images are missing from the old AND the new drive. Some images were copied, some were not. This really is a major issue. I decided a year ago to go full-on with Lightroom, but this might be a deal braker.

    Victoria Bampton LR Queen
    Community Expert
    Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 10, 2019
    > Lightroom Classic (subscription so in theory running the newest one), El Capitan for op sys. Macbook pro.

    A side note on this. El Capitan support ended a few months ago, so you'd need to upgrade to a newer operating system to be able to download the latest updates.
    Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 10, 2019
    I'm following up on my last post. I went back into lightroom, and I plugged in an additional harddrive. I went back to the old harddrive to import from and set the new harddrive as the destination. When doing this, the files that appeared to be deleted, were there. (Still when I look in the original harddrive I cannot see them present anywhere and even tried searching for an image number, but they are available to import to the new harddrive and when I completed the task, they were normal files on the new harddrive). I'm not sure what to say, but somehow, perhaps beyond my understanding at this time, the images were just hidden on the old drive...

    I hope this can help someone.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 9, 2019
    You're right, I should have used that function. It's very unfortunate the files deleted as a result. If there is any way to search and find these files, please let me know. So frustrating. Thank you for responding.
    Lauca
    Lauca
    Participating Frequently
    February 9, 2019
    I understand you wanted to import photos in the catalog while leaving the files where they are, and you use the COPY function of the import, setting the source folder as destination folder .
    This is not what you should have done. Instead, you should have used the ADD function of the import.
    Of course, using the wrong procedure shouldn't have lead to have the files disappear. If it's what happened, for me it's a sever bug of LR.

    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 9, 2019
    Hello, I just tried to start a new thread and came across this. I'm going to recopy here. I had the same problem. Lightroom Classic (subscription so in theory running the newest one), El Capitan for op sys. Macbook pro.

    I tried to import photos into lightroom from an old harddrive into it's original folder on the same harddrive. I accidentally canceled it and now all the unimported photos are gone from the harddrive. Where did they go?

    Full story: 
    working on a macbook pro
    connected an harddrive from a few years ago with old photos to macbook pro
    opened lightroom>import
    navigated to the folder I wanted, selected it, selected destination folder as the same folder as where the images were coming from
    started the import, accidentally hit cancel
    went back to original folder (through finder), and only the initial photos that started importing before I hit the cancel button are there. They're doubled, but all the other photos in that folder from that shoot are gone. 

    Is there a way to find those? I've searched by image name, and nothing comes up for the missing files. It appears they're gone.

    Thank you.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    November 6, 2018
    System: iMac OSX.13.1 32 GB RAM SSD's/LR CC 8/latest

    A week ago, I finally took the step to move all my photo’s to one place/hard drive. My 60,000 (15-20 years worth, some from iPhoto, some from Aperture etc) photo’s were all over the place(some on local disk, others on NAS volumes), and this lead to a messy experience, plus it was hard to keep track of backups. So, as step 1, I moved a folder containing 25,000 photo’s in LR CC tree structure and dropped it on an empty folder on a new USB3 hard disk.

    It quickly went wrong, unfortunately. After moving 9000 files LR stalled. I waited for 5 hours, nothing happened, LR was no longer responding according to the Mac’s activity monitor. Only way out: force quit. I then noticed lots of empty folders on my source disk, and also empty folders on my destination folder. Files were deleted...

    I had to resort to backups of my photo's, but then LR got confused and all my RAW edits disappeared. More reloading of backups, copies via rsync instead of LR, trying to reconnect the catalog, crashes, stalls etc.

    Now after spending a week’s spare time on this, all my photo’s and most of my edits are back(and on the new disk). But: most of my albums have missing pictures or suddenly have 0 photo's. When I point LR to the proper location of the missing (grey rectangle) photo(right next to a photo it CAN find), it says it is already connected to another picture. When I show that picture in the library, it’s the same picture(same location) as the one I am trying to point LR at. There’s only one, there are no confusing duplicates.

    I also get this error when I try to point LR CC to the right location  of the missing files:


    Image is not available

    Best,

    Zip Boterbloem

    D
    DMEEPhD
    Known Participant
    November 4, 2018
    Nope.  I was running LR on Windoze (until I kicked the MicroSoft habit) up to March 2014 and LR would do the same thing if it hung up or crashed...delete the files from the source even though they had not been committed to the destination.  And the OS had no idea where they went.  Fortunately, I had a backup.
    B
    bob frost
    Inspiring
    November 4, 2018
    Is this a Mac only problem?

    Bob Frost
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