External disks are shown as folders instead of volumes

[magphotos]

For context: I am a professional photographer who uses LrC every day. My catalog is based on originals located on various external hard drives, and the Catalog file resides on an external SSD, which I need to use with multiple computers in my studio. I use Lightroom Classic only on Mac systems.

Hello Community

For a few days now, my catalog has been showing external drives as folders, rather than actual external volumes. These folders are grouped under the main "Macintosh HD" drive, but I would like them to be shown as separate drives, as they actually are and as it was until few days ago. I must say that I am not experiencing any issues with offline files or lost links, but I would like to go back to the previous view, which was easier to navigate and keep in order. In fact, in the previous view I could see the photo count and available space for the individual drive, and now this data is no longer shown.

I have not made any changes to the Catalog recently, I have not renamed the external drives, and I have not updated the computer. There have been no substantial changes to my workflow that may have affected the files or the drives.

Has anyone else encountered this same issue? I have already tried these steps, but with no solution:

- Contacted official Adobe support, but they were unable to solve it, in fact they even had difficulty understanding what the problem was.

- Created a new catalog and imported the images from the old catalog, but the problem persists.

I attach screenshots to better explain what I mean. In image 1 -a new catalog created from scratch- the disks are correctly shown as external volumes. In image 2 -my actual catalogue- the disks are shown as subfolders of the main Macintosh HD volume.

[Sameer K]

Hey, @MAg Photos. Welcome to the Lightroom Classic Community. I'll help you figure this out. What version of MacOS are you working on?

If it hasn't already been tried, try this: 

• Reset Lightroom Classic following the second (manual) method from this article: https://adobe.ly/4fOPxm4

Let me know how it goes. Thanks! 
Sameer K

[magphotos]

Hello, thanks for your help. I tried but the problem persists.

[GoldingD]

look like file structure got fouled up, and LrC thinks folders are missing, and those Folder locations need to be fixed, see:

• https://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

As to what caused that? Not a clue. But you do have several backups of your catalog, and several backups of your photos, correct.?

[magphotos]

I appreciate your help but this is not a problem of missing photos. All my links are correctly working, in the Image I posted some drives are offline as they are simply disconnected from my pc (I only connect them when I need something from that particular drive). 

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

This is usually easy to fix. Right-click on 'Volumes' and choose 'Hide This Parent'. Then do the same with the disk names. You may have to restart Lightroom Classic once you have done that.

[magphotos]

Thanks a lot! It worked perfectly after restarting Lightroom. Many thanks Johan!