Photos Randomly Disappear

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
September 21, 2021
2 replies
268 views

I'm having 2 major issues recently, the first..

I have all of my photos on an external drive, along with Lightroom on that drive. I've had no issues until app. 6 months ago when randomly, an edited, picture "can't be located". It was in that spot yesterday. The pictures before it, and after it, are there. There were no unique changes made in between when it was there and when it wasn't (it happens to renamed photos and to untouched dsc files). I've exported an entire batch of photos on day 1, only to find on day 2 that several of the pics are now "missing". Day 3 a couple of different pics may now also be missing. Even pics that I haven't edited or renamed,

When I go to locate the missing images, they appear to have just been completely removed from the drive, they haven't reverted back to their original name/state. They are just gone. Thankfully I have all of my photos backed up elsewhere, but I'd like to know whats causing them to just go Poof.

It's incredibly time consuming to have to search for each individual photo.

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

GoldingD

Legend

 have all of my photos on an external drive

Perhaps not the computer, but the hard drive going out?

along with Lightroom on that drive

By that, you mean the catalog? Catalog could be on currently good part of drive, some photos on bad.

Thankfully I have all of my photos backed up elsewhere

meaning, not that drive? Good.

amyh77007716Author

Participant

It's happened on multiple drives (different manufacturers), and my desktop. So I don't think it's the external drive, unless it altered the original saved files somehow. Stranger things have happened..

Yes, the Lightroom Catalog. Sorry about that. I'd love for there to be a simple reason for this since I have found it so helpful to be more mobile with an external drive and work on multiple computers, however I'm starting to wonder how helpful that really is. Perhaps I'll just stick to uploading files while a travel for "safekeeping" and leave the editing for later.

And yes, backed up not on that drive. On several other external drives, and on the desktop. It might mean work down the line to sync things, but better than losing it all to one bad storage unit or computer (already dealt with that).

dj_paige

Legend

Copy (not move) the backups to the exact same location where the originals were.

Honestly, this sounds like a hard disk malfunction, or some third party software is somehow handling your photos. Lightroom Classic would not do this (unless you were deleting the photos, and obviously it sounds like that is not what you are doing).

amyh77007716Author

Participant

I suspect my computer is telling me it's time is over (the Apple MacPro has been nothing but problematic from the beginning), and I'm waiting on a new one.. however, in the meantime..

This means there's no simple way to bring all the missing photos back in, is there? I have to go in, locate the original details, go to each backup folder and copy the individual original over for every photo over the multiple years they've gone missing?

dj_paige

Legend

This means there's no simple way to bring all the missing photos back in, is there?

I told you exactly how to do that.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded