Accessing Photos in LR when my External hard drive crashed

[jcus]

My Seagate external hard drive crashed, so it seems I can't access those photos in Lightroom.  I'm using a macbook.  I can see the darkened photos, but can I still access them or are they just gone because I no longer have the original photos?  

[dj_paige]

If you have backups of your photos, then you can restore the backups.

If you don't have backups, then your photos are gone. You may be able to recover the thumbnails (also called previews) that Lightroom Classic creates via this plugin, but these will be much lower resolution than the originals. (And also change your habits so that you always have backups of your catalog file and your photos)

[jcus]

Thank you for your reply.  I had the photos on two different EHDs--both crashed.  I've never had that happen before, but I am having issues lately with my EHD's not ejecting and a pop-up  window that says a program is using it--even though I have closed everything I know to close, logged off and back on, etc.  I have sent the EHDs to Seagate and am waiting to hear if the photos can be recovered.  Thank you for your replay--Julie

[dj_paige]

... and a pop-up  window that says a program is using it

By @jcus

Pop up window from LrC? Pop up window from the MacOS? What is the exact wording (word-for-word, verbatim) of this Pop up window?