I have ongoing problems with linking my photos to Lightroom Classic and twice have lost them and had to restart the editing of my total collection – I have now re-edited back until 2019 (8 years to go).
I store my photos on an external SSD hard drive (G) and I also have backup on two other external drives (E) and (F) plus the C drive I decided to accept the update to Lightroom Classic (Catalog v10-3). Today I downloaded update but on restarting there was no G drive on the folders and only C drive and F drive with questions (?) and no photos shown - virtual or otherwise.
Is there anything I can do other than downloading the photos and starting to re-edit? Is there any support or advice anyonecan provide?
I will not do anything until get reliable advice for fear of making an irreversible error.
"Catalog v10-3" sounds like Lightroom has made a catalog upgrade for the third time, even though an update from version 10.2 to 10.3 doesn't require a catalog upgrade at all. Your problem may be that you keep upgrading an old catalog. Take a look inside your catalog folder and show a screenshot of it here.
Lightroom Classic cannot find the folders (see the question mark icon next to the folder name). You need to point Lightroom Classic to the proper location of the folders, follow these instructions (in particular, see Figure 4): http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm
Also, when fixing the missing folders.mIn that Folders Panel, the F drive. That folder named DNG. Is that the parent folder? You will want to start your missing folder repair at the parent folder.
No, I require a screenshot of the contents of the catalog folder, as seen by Windows Explorer. This screenshot does tell me something however and that is indeed that it looks like you have upgraded a catalog that was originally named 'Lightroom Catalog' three times with Lightroom version 10.x. Unless you know why you did that and have a good reason for it, this might be part of the problem. You can fix the 'missing folders' as suggested by @dj_paige , but if there are folders that are completely absent (not even shown with a question mark) then that is possibly because you keep upgrading an old catalog.
I store my photos on an external SSD hard drive ( for when i travel and use a smaller but slower laptop) and I have been backing up to the same drive. However it would appear that my recent backing up has sefaulted back the the C drive.
I appreciate your help and thankyou to the other folk that provided support - I will be able to now enjoy the Olympics and and sleep tonight
You need to acquire another external drive for the backups. Backing up to the same drive as the files are normally on is begging Murphy to trash the drive.
I disagree with GoldingD. There is no reason why you could not use the external drive with the photos as backup drive for your catalog (if the catalog is on the C drive). The most important thing is that you do not backup to the same drive that holds the original. You do need to backup the photos as well, of course, but that photos backup does not have to be online permanently and so it might be less useful for your catalog backups. If the photos backup is always online, then it makes more sense to use that drive for the catalog backup too.
My point was the OP is placing both the original photos and the backup of those photos on the same drive.
from OP
"I store my photos on an external SSD hard drive ( for when i travel and use a smaller but slower laptop) and I have been backing up to the same drive."
I take that as photos on ext SSD, backup of photos on same ext SSD.
Did I read that wrong?
If OP was referring to the Catalog, not the photos in that statement about backup, then fine, catalog on C, backup of catalog on ext SSD, fine.
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