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Andrewjmarino
Andrewjmarino
Known Participant
July 31, 2022
Answered

Lightroom, Drives, Ports and External Drive Confusion

  • July 31, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 208 views

Hello

 

First, I have made absolutely no changes to my laptop, external drive for photo storage etc., since last using Lightroom.

I tried importing some photos into a new folder. Lightroom said that the destination folder was unavailable. However, (per forum posts) I created a folder on my external drive anyway and imported the photos. The photos are on my external drive in the correct folder and location.
All my photos are stored in one master folder on an external drive.

But, Lightroom or Windows or the external drive is seeing a D drive an E drive, and an F drive. See attachment

The recently imported photos/folder is "green" and reads as the "F Drive"
All my other photos/folders are greyed out in the "E Drive" (no exclamation mark!). 

I have no E Drive and F Drive. I have one external drive with all my photos in one master folder.
I do have E and F ports on my laptop.
I assume Lightroom or Windows is confused about the port letters or something else.

I really don't know what to troubleshoot. I tried restarting my computer, but nothing changes.
I tried plugging the external drive into the other port (E), but nothing changed. Exact same scenario as above. The external drive still reads as "F" in the E port
I am concerned about dragging the folder from the "F" to the "E" drive or dragging all my other photos/folders from the "E" to the "F"

I guess this why I hate having my photos on an external drive and dealing with ports and drive letters.
I did not have this problem with previous, recent imports.

I am frustrated and open to suggestions as well as a way to prevent this from ever happening again.
I attached a screenshot. I hope it clarifies the issue.

Thank you
Andrew

(Windows 10, btw) 


  

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Rob_Cullen

Windows does not recognize 'ports' by a letter reference. (So no E or F port- as such.).

And when you plug in any external device- be it a USB stick, an external drive, a card reader, etc, windows assigns a letter to the devices in the order D, E, F, G, etc, of which thery are 'plugged'. This can cause the problem of an external drive appearing to change its 'Letter'  eg. E>F

 

The easiest way to overcome this problem with Windows is to give your external drive for photos a 'fixed' letter eg. "P".  So that every time it is plugged in Lightroom-Classic recognises it as the 'P-Drive', and photos then will not show Folders and Files as 'Missing'.

ASSIGN A DRIVE LETTER & NAME

 

AFTER Assigning a new Name & Letter to your 'Photos' drive- you will then need to relink the 'Missing' folders with the new drive name. Preferably starting with the topmost parent Folder (ie {E:Pictures}. Here are two webv links with advice on relinking Folders and Files

MISSING FILES & FOLDERS (Lightroom Queen)

MISSING FILES AND FOLDERS-(Computer Darkroom)

1 reply

Rob_Cullen
Community Expert
Rob_CullenCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 31, 2022

Windows does not recognize 'ports' by a letter reference. (So no E or F port- as such.).

And when you plug in any external device- be it a USB stick, an external drive, a card reader, etc, windows assigns a letter to the devices in the order D, E, F, G, etc, of which thery are 'plugged'. This can cause the problem of an external drive appearing to change its 'Letter'  eg. E>F

 

The easiest way to overcome this problem with Windows is to give your external drive for photos a 'fixed' letter eg. "P".  So that every time it is plugged in Lightroom-Classic recognises it as the 'P-Drive', and photos then will not show Folders and Files as 'Missing'.

ASSIGN A DRIVE LETTER & NAME

 

AFTER Assigning a new Name & Letter to your 'Photos' drive- you will then need to relink the 'Missing' folders with the new drive name. Preferably starting with the topmost parent Folder (ie {E:Pictures}. Here are two webv links with advice on relinking Folders and Files

MISSING FILES & FOLDERS (Lightroom Queen)

MISSING FILES AND FOLDERS-(Computer Darkroom)

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .
    Andrewjmarino
    AndrewjmarinoAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 1, 2022

    Thank you. Yes, I think that solved it. I renamed the external drive to E which "found" all my photos. Then, I imported that most recent folder that was on F into the E Drive. 
    (Hmm, naming the external drive P - photos -  would have made more sense, but, hopefully, I can keep track of things now)
    I have no idea why or how the F drive was created. And, no idea why I got the initial "destination folder is unavailable" error message when trying to import. I never had that problem before.

    Thank you again
    Andrew

    Now, I need to back up my external drive (master photos) to another external drive. Hopefully, renaming the external drive will not cause a backup/sync problem. I use Goodsync.


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