Photos not uploading to the right place in Lightroom

I'm not sure what you are remembering. The import process for assigning the destination folder has been the same for quite a while as far as I can recall.

In case you're interested, here is the link to the Lightroom Classic forum:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/bd-p/lightroom-classic?page=1&sort=latest_replies&filter=all

Apparently you are referring to Lightroom Classic. This is the forum for Lightroom, the cloud version. But to briefly answer your question, not only do you want to rename your files if that is your desire, you also need to go to the right-hand panel and choose the precise destination for your images, including choosing the external hard drive, the parent folder, and if you want the images in a date formatted subfolder then you need to choose the format for that subfolder. You are in control of all that, but you must take control and set that up before you initiate the import.