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Iktomi_Imagery
Participant
March 13, 2025
Pregunta

getting a message when looking at some of my collections. file associated with another photo

  • March 13, 2025
  • 1 respuesta
  • 158 visualizaciones

i store my photos and cataloge on a external drive.  do to space limits i upgraded to a larger drive and transfered the files, but i broke the golden rule and didnt do it in lightroom.  So when i went to locate the files i was able to show lightroom that they were now kept on a different drive letter, all photos show up in the files tab but when i look at my collections some of them show no pictures and have the file not found "!" symbol.  when i click on it to locate the file it says the file is already associated with a photo when i go to the folder it is in i see only one of the files with all my edits and everything the way it should be but it will not show up in the collections.  Im assuming it still thinks its tied to the old hard drive and not the new locataion.  Thanks for any help

1 respuesta

AxelMatt
Community Expert
AxelMattCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 13, 2025
quote

i store my photos and cataloge on a external drive.  do to space limits i upgraded to a larger drive and transfered the files, but i broke the golden rule and didnt do it in lightroom.  ...


By @Iktomi_Imagery

 

Normally this isn't a problem if you consider a few points:

  • Copy the folder structure 1:1 form the old to the new external drive
  • Connect the external drive with the same drive letter to your PC

 

If the old drive is already available I would return to the initial state before you start changing the drive.

Restore the catalog from the backup which was recent at this point, copy the data from the old hard disk to the new bigger one by using the Windows Explorer or another tool like FreeFileSync. If it's finished connect the new had drive with the SAME drive letter as this old one to your system. Then start Lightroom and check. Normally LR should find your images without any problems.

  

 

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 5 - Topaz Photo
JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 13, 2025

That 'golden rule' is not as strict as it sounds. If you copy all your images to a new drive, then it's fine to do this outside of Lightroom. The problem is what you did next. It sounds like you imported the photos from the new drive, and then you tried to 'relink' the photos that Lightroom still showed on the old drive. That import was wrong. If you ever want to do this again (or as tip for other people reading this) do not import the images again. Instead what you need to do is go to the Lightroom folder panel, right click on the topmost folder in the folder hierarchy, and choose 'Update Folder Location'. If your old drive is no longer online, then the folder will be shown as missing and the menu is called 'Find Missing Folder'. In the dialog that follows, navigate to the corresponding folder on the new drive and select it. Done.

 

Of course the trick with using the same drive letter (Macintosh: disk name) described by @AxelMatt is even easier if you can use that.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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