Restoring photo filenames after filesystem recovery

Ah right. No sadly that's not going to help in this scenario. Its the association between the recovered files and the LR items that's the issue. As the recovered files are just numbers for names now i think the dump to csv and script the rename based on exif might be the way.

Thanks for replying though 

I've got the filenames in LR yeah. They are showing as missing files but looking at the metadata section shows what they used to be called (and locations). After getting the photos back from the disk with photorec I then ran a sorting python script from here - https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/After_Using_PhotoRec 

I'm basically left with a bunch of photos sorted into date relevant directories but with effectively sequention filenames. Great I've got them all back would be better if I can get them to the original filenames and locations so I can associate with the missing images in LR. If you've got a script that can help with that then it would certainly save me some time this evening 🙂

Thanks John. Thats really useful. Sadly I didn't know about those metadata settings so didn't have them set. I've been using exiftool to see if there is any information regarding filenames but alas I'm out of luck there. I'll certainly be taking your advice on those settings in the future though! Hindsight is a wonderful thing

Dumping the catalog metadata to csv sounds like a winner though. I'll give that a go. Matching up the date/time stamps sounds like it could work.

I really apreciate the assistance.

Every year or so we see an unfortunate post like yours.  It's possible to recover the folder structure and file names using photos' and catalog metadata, but it requires some previous experience with command-line scripting.  It doesn't happen often enough, and each circumstance seems to be a little different, to incent a plugin developer to create a plugin to solve this.

But if you're technically inclined:

First, use the free Exiftool to examine the photos' metadata. No other tools give a complete, authoritative view or provide such power to manipulate photos.

Second, recent versions of LR wrote the original file name (but not the folder path) of a photo into the photos' metadata in XMP:PreservedFileName, but this would only be there if you happened to have done Metadata > Save Metadata To File or used the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP (which I encourage people to set but few do).

Third, you could recover your entire folder and file name structure using the catalog metadata. Use one of the plugins that can dump catalog metadata into a CSV text file (Any Filter, List View, Data Explorer). Dump out the full file path, file name, capture date, camera model, perhaps some other fields (unfortunately, LR won't disclose the file size of missing files). Then use Exiftool to dump out the same fields for the recovered files.

Use Excel or (more painfully) your favorite command-line tools to join the two dumped CSV files based on capture date, camera model, etc.  Then from that joined table, write a command-line script that creates the folder hierarchy and moves the recovered files into their original locations.

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If the file names are different, that's not an easy situation to recover from. Basically, you'd have to re-connect them one-by-one. If just the folder names are different, or just the folder hierarchy is different, but the file names match, then you can reconnect following these instructions: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm