An internal error has occurred. Invalid Path error while finding raw folders on a NAS

[MemoMedina]

Hi guys, oldtime Lr User here, but new to the forums.

(My native language is spanish, so excuse me if my english is bad.)

System Specs: LR Classic 12.2 release, Camera Raw 15.2 (Build 202302032259-eb84d255) on a 2013 Mac Pro 6-Core 3.5Ghz Xeon with 16 gigs of ram Running MacOS Monterey 12.6.3 (21G419) and with a Synology NAS DS420+ Running the latest  version of DSM 7.1.1-42962 Update 3

In my studio we have 3 workstations; the first is my "trashcan" mac pro 6,1, and 2 assembled windows PC. We use several catalogs that are stored locally on each machine and synchronized with synology drive, so we always have the updated catalogs on every workstation, and all the raw files are stored on the NAS. Each client has his own catalog and directory with the name "-Name of the client- Medios" being "medios" the word we use to know that is the correct folder, and then it contains the usual LR structure that is year and then date folders. 

Each time one of my assistants opens a catalog on his windows workstation, they find all the photographs offline because the file adress is different on windows and mac and viceversa, so the only thing we have to do is clic on the "medios" folder cna clic on "find missing folder" and then we select the respective "Medios" folder. We've been working like this at least 3 years and it has been very easy and productive for us. 

Everyting worked fine until this week, when I tried to locate the missing folder i've found an error message that appears immediatly after clicking on the folder: "An Internal Error Has Occurred. Invalid Path"

I've tried restarting my system, the NAS, recconecting the network volumes, resseting the preferences while launching LRC, reinstalling LRC, and even the support team tried to remotely fix the problem granting full acces to the Library folders... but all without succeess. 

Funny thing is that I can import new photos to the very same directory that LRC says it's an invalid path, and i can locate individual photos succesfully, but not the Top Parent folder "medios", nor the year folder or even the day folder. 

My assistants can work normally on their windows workstations, but it's me who cant find peace of mind having all my photographs online. Hope you can help me with this! Thanks in advance for your time. 

[FurryHerbington]

It didn't work.

If anyone knows what I should have done differently, please let me know.

Thank you

[icrispy]

Hi, I have been using Lightroom CC for many years now. Until recently I used a PC with my RAW files stored either on my local SSD (actual year only) or on Synology. The Synology drive used to be E:\ in PC.

I have finally moved on a Macbook Pro a couple of weeks ago. Lightroom works much better in general. All the links from my pictures within Lightroom to the source on Synology are broken though. When I try to remap pictures (e.g. click on exclamation sign an search the file in Synology) I get an error thar this file is already mapped to another picture in the catalog.

What can I do to correct this problem?

Thanks in advance, Chris

[Gennady Meergus]

first, check whether they really exist in lightroom under the same path. you can search by file name and find them.

if yes (they do exist), then you have to decide which copy to keep, either delete the new one or the old one, depending which one is more "precious", e.g. particiaptes in collections, etc. sometimes if both of them participate in collections, then you have add the photo you're going to keep to all the collections where the photo you're going to delete participates. this is a hassle, but there is no other way to sort this out.

if the files are NOT actually duplicated (this happens sometimes as well), then exiting and restarting Lightroom sometimes helps.

[maxlalvelais]

Same issue here, but with a variant: in my wife's MacBook Air (13", M2 with 24 GB RAM) everything works fine, in my MacBook Pro (14", M2 Pro with 16 GB RAM) I got the "invalid paht" error. So, I reverted to 12.1 and the error dissapeared, but I couldn't use the AI Noise Reduction feature.
I "reverted forward" to 12.4 and the "invalid path" is now solved, but the AI Noise Reduction is gone!
I'm stuck...
Best regards to you all,

Max Alvelais

[DdeGannes]

@maxlalvelais , Are you sure you have a supported file type selected. See the screen capture for the file type needed for Denoise AI?

[maxlalvelais]

Thank you very much!
Yes my files are Canon RAW, the issue is the Lightroom Classic version, bue I found a solution after having suffered the same failure in my wife's MacBook Air (13", M2 with 24 GB RAM):
Select any image, right click and select "Found missing picture", select the correct file and voila! the issue is resolved.
Greetings to you!

[Gennady Meergus]

Same problem. Lightroom 12.5, MacBook Pro M1, MacOS Sonoma 14.0.

Copied a catalog from Windows and cannot re-attach folders using "Find Missing Folder", it always says "An internal error has occured. Invalid path".

Indeed, it did not work for network paths (\\server\share) and did work for letter paths (P:\folders).

Downgrading to 12.1 helped, although it issued a warning "The catalog was previously opened by a newer version of Lightroom Classic. If you continue, some unsupported edits may be lost".

Too bad.

This is clearly a bug that needs to be fixed.

[Gennady Meergus]

Same problem with Lightroom Classic 13.0.1 on MacOS 14.0.

[Damon28659084270t]

I was able to solve this tediously by going to the individual photo in the catalog. Finding one would find for the whole folder (which would be by day in my NAS). I see there is a faster answer but not going to lie I couldn't understand it so just putting this out there as backup for anyone that needs it!

[Gennady Meergus]

Yes this works, but in my case this is a network volume with 5000 folders and 600K photographs. I could not navigate each folder, that would take years.

[hudsonhenry]

I never had an issue again after simply mapping the NAS drive as a lettered drive for Windows purposes. I share back and forth between a Windows 11 Laptop and Mac Studio daily with nearly 400,000 images in my NAS collection going back to film scans from the 90s. I can't imagine using an image by image solution either!!! No way. Just map the drive in windows as a networked drive with an assigned letter. It solves it.

[Gennady Meergus]

Agree. The problem does not occur when a folder is mapped to a letter.

But the bug exists and it makes a problem the following workflow:

when you have a catalog that was made in Windows and it contains UNC paths (\\computer\share) and you move it to a Mac, you cannot remap folder structure using "Find missing folder" feature.

This is the bug and this must be fixed. It did not exist in 12.1 and it does exist in 12.4 and in 13.1 (tested).

To work around the issue, you need to take another window machine, copy the catalog there, remap all the UNC folders via drive letters, the copy the catalog back to map and then re-map them to Mac paths.

This is the problem.

I am working with Mac and I'm not supposed to have the issue, however, being an exprienced 30+ years IT expert, I regularly test my catalog for being readable both on PC and Mac, just in case I will need some day to read it on a PC.

This is how I found this bug and I do believe this must be fixed.

[hudsonhenry]

While I agree that it deserves fixing, once my 10GBe NAS is drive letter mapped on my Windows 11 laptop. I have zero problems pulling my Lightroom Catalog drive (it's on a Samsung T7 Tough formatted ExFAT), plugging it into my Mac Studio Ultra, firing up Lightroom Classic and using "find missing folder" to reconnect the Mac to the NAS on the Mac. I do it nearly daily back and forth Windows to Mac and back without any issue after mapping the NAS with a drive letter in Windows. It solved the issue permanently with a few clicks for me.

[Damon28659084270t]

I think for complete re-mapping intentions, we might need a more in depth/step by step solution posted because this can happen to anyone who just knew to share a drive but doesn't really know much about mapping. How it happens though is still something to be recreated. I have gone back and forth with a fixed drive through the same laptops but only out of nowhere has the error occurred. 

Just something to think about so there is are good instructions to fix AND avoid. 

[drums351]

This is still an issue.  Luckily HudsonHenry has a viable work around that acknowledges "why" this is happening on the windows side, not writing the catalog file in a manner that the MacOS can handle and allow the folder path to be re-established easily.  Adobe, I hope you see this and work on a fix for it.

[mksap2000]

Switching from Windows and Mac still not work in 2024 either. You can link the folder again and again, but then Lightroom can't find the folder on the other system.

[JimPorterPhoto]

And still not working in June 2024.  I was already using a mapped drive to connect to my NAS on Windows, so that didn't work for me.  Nor did trying to point the catalog to a non-NAS location before saving and moving the catalog from Win to Mac (one of the other suggestions).  I'm in the process of manually rebuilding selected folders, specifically those for which I had created a collection (i.e., paid or otherwise important shoots, vs just fun photos).  Finding a single photo refreshes the entire folder (and, of course, the collection).  I have a lot of photos that I can live without being in folders in LrC (despite the fact they actually are in folders).  I'll reconnect them as I need them.  But fwiw, I've been using LR on Mac, iPad, and mobile quite a bit recently.  It's fine for less intensive projects, and it's nice to just navigate the folder structure on the NAS.  Good search tools as well.  So my solution here is to manually repopulate selected folders upfront, repopulate others as needed or simply edit in LR instead of LrC, and yell at Adobe for not fixing this.