Exported edits on hard drive disappeared

[HanniF36]

Hi all, this is something new to me that has happened. I export all my lightroom edited photos on to an external hard-drive in a new folder within the RAW images. 

I have just come to upload some of the edited photo folders to another external hard drive but they have all gone. 

I deleted photos out of my lightroom library and now the only edited items on the external hardrive are the ones that still remain in the lightroom library. 

How has this happened? Can I get them back? How do I stop this happening in future?

Many thanks 😊 

[dj_paige]

Lightroom (Lr icon) or Lightroom Classic (LrC icon)?

What does this mean: "I have just come to upload some of the edited photo folders to another external hard drive but they have all gone. " Upload what to where? What does upload mean in this context? Do you mean all gone from the expected folder, or do you mean something else? Maybe you uploaded them (still not sure what uploaded means here) accidentally to a different folder.

How to prevent? Well, deleting photos from the Lightroom library is almost always not a good idea. If you also deleted the original RAW from your computer (either intentionally or by accident), that is also a poor practice which you should stop.

[HanniF36]

“Upload” - move a copy of a folder from one hard-drive to another.
No I haven’t already “uploaded” and not realised.
RAW images on the hard drive have not been affected just the exported edited photos.

Hannah Foreman

[Per Berntsen]

Assuming that you are using Lightroom Classic –

The edits are in the catalog, so if you still have your raw files, export them again.

LrC doesn't touch your exported files (unless you checked Add to this catalog in the Export dialog), so there is no way LrC could have anything to do with the missing files. If you did check Add to this catalog, LrC would only delete them if you explicitly told it to do so.

[dj_paige]

With this explanation, it sounds like Human error, perhaps accidental. LrC and your operating system does not delete photos unless you specifically tell it to do so (or there is some catastrophic disk failure). The comment that you said "not realised" is impossible — if you made an accidental mistake, you might not realize it.

Please have your operating system's search feature perform a search of all files on all disks for one of these photos that appears to have disappeared.

[HanniF36]

It’s not possible for it to be human error. Every folder containing edited images on my hard drive is now empty apart from the folders with edits still in the lightroom library.

To me it seems that when I deleted the lightroom library it deleted those edited images from my hard drive…this could only be if my external hardrive was plugged into my Mac at the time of deleting. However I still didn’t think this would happen as the images were exported as JPEGS to the external hardrive.

The human error may be that I deleted the lightroom library.

Hannah Foreman

[dj_paige]

To me it seems that when I deleted the lightroom library it deleted those edited images from my hard drive…this could only be if my external hardrive was plugged into my Mac at the time of deleting.

Deleting the catalog file (is that what you mean by "deleted the lightroom library"?) does NOT delete images and does not delete exported images. As I said, neither Lightroom Classic nor your operating system deletes photos unless you specifically tell it to do so.

What do you mean by "lightroom library"?

Did you perform a search (as I suggested earlier), using your operating system's search feature, to search all folders on all drives for (at least) one of these photos by file name? (as I suggested earlier)

[D Fosse]

Not to be pedantic, but meaningful discussion is difficult when terminology is misleading and incorrect.

Moving a folder to a different drive is not "upload". That's either move if the original is deleted, or copy if the original is left intact.

Upload is something you do on the internet.

[HanniF36]

Your correction of my terminology isn’t helping my situation or answering my question. It has been made clearer what I meant.

Hannah Foreman

[DdeGannes]

@HanniF36 , you stated the following "“Upload” - move a copy of a folder from one hard-drive to another."

This statement is confusing, Moving images from a folder to another location will actually move them i.e. they will no longer be a copy in the original folder.
If you Copy and image from a folder and place it in a new folder a copy will be retained in the original folder.

So what did you do, Move or Copy?

[HanniF36]

Copy, but the folders I copied were empty which is what I’m trying to figure out. At no point have a deleted the folders only images on light room library, so why do those images no longer exist in the folders on my external hard drive?

Hannah Foreman

[DdeGannes]

Did you perform this operation using Lightroom Classic or using Finder in your operating system.
Please explain what you did.

[Schoey11]

I am experiencing this problem.  I have the RAW files stored on an external hard drive.  I have exported the processed files. Now when I open Lightroom I get the message that the 'files cannot be found.'  I have not deleted the original RAW files but they have disappeared from my external hard drive.  This has happened on several occasions.

I would be grateful for any help with this.