Lightroom Classic catalog on external SSD from macOS to Windows 10 - Unable to find missing images

[robertol52259083]

I have the catalog of LR classic on an external SSD, when I switch it from the mac to the PC with W10  it reports me the error "cannot find the original files". If I try to relink a photo so that it finds all the others, it relinks only that one and it still doesn't find the originals of all the others.
Thanks for the support and sorry for my bad English

{Thread title edited by moderator}

[nikunj.m]

Hi,

We're sorry about the trouble with Lightroom Classic. Would you mind telling us if you have the images saved on the external drive as well? 

You can check out: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/locate-missing-photos.html

Let us know if it helps!

Regards,

Nikunj

[robertol52259083]

Hi Nikunj, the images are in the external drive, and the files it'snt corrupted. I follow the istructions in the attached link

: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/locate-missing-photos.html

but the problem persist.

Best regards and thanks for your support

Roberto

[AxelMatt]

Where you have storer you originals? Do you have access to the originals via the Windows Explorer or an picture viewer? 

[robertol52259083]

Hi Matt, the images are stored in the external drive, and i can see it whith explorer and image viewer.

I follow the istructions in this link

: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/locate-missing-photos.html

but the problem persist.

Best regards and thanks for your support

Roberto

[Todd Shaner]

Please show us a screenshot of the folder structure in the LrC Library module's Folder panel and the same folder tree as seen in Windows Explorer.

[JohanElzenga]

The explanation is simple. Windows uses drive letters, while MacOS uses disk names. Lightroom stores a path to the images in the catalog, so when you run Lightroom on Windows that path starts with the drive letter. If you then use the same catalog on MacOS, that path is not correct because drive letters mean nothing to MacOS. If you relink the images in MacOS and then switch to Windows again, the same thing happens. Now the paths start with the MacOS disk name and that means nothing in Windows.

First of all, if something like that happens you should not try to relink individual images, but relink folders. If you relink a top folder, then the entire hierarchy below that top folder is relinked too, so that means that you can relink all images by relinking only a few folders at most.

In this case there is an even better solution. Move the entire image folder hierarchy inside the catalog folder. In that case Lightroom will use a 'relative path' to the images, that starts from the catalog folder and so does not include any disk name or drive letter. That means it should now be possible to use this disk on Windows and MacOS without the images getting 'missing' each time you switch.