Lightroom: Deleting imported added photos from disk AFTER deleted from HD

[RFT64999488]

I want to delete imported added photos from my HD disk on lightroom AFTER I have inadvertently deleted the original photos from the HD. When I click on the photos to delete them it says "The original file cannot be deleted because it is missing or is in a volume that is off line" You see the bigger issue is I can't add those photos back on to my computer as my start up disk is full. 1) is there a work around for this issue? 2) If not, is it possible to unistall and reinstall lightroom without the imported photos? Thanks for your help

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

Your images are not "in" Lightroom. The import process simply allows you to copy files from your camera or camera card to the hard drive, and places them in folders on your computer. If you deleted the photos from the hard drive then they are gone. Reinstalling Lightroom isn't going to change anything in that regard because it will be the same program opening the same catalog. If your startup disk is full then perhaps it's time for you to consider adding another hard drive or external hard drive and use it to store all of your images.

[RFT64999488]

Thanks Jim for your response. I really appreciate your help.

1) I have noted that the backups of Lightroom are taking up 42 MB on my hard drive. Can one change the location of the back up's ZIP's of lightroom to an external HD or will this cause a problem?

2) I think maybe the issue is with my workflow process. I understand that the actual photos are not on my hard drive. However, lightroom is still showing those items in my catalog but with a question mark next to them. Is there a way to correct this? My selected raw photos are on external hard drives. (My previous workflow was copy raw photos from camera to desktop. Import add photos to lightroom and then once in lightroom save and export the best of the raw photos to the external hard drive and then export the adjusted touched up photos to external hard drive. Then delete the photos off my desktop)

3) Is there a way to clean up my catalogue after I have deleted the photos off my desktop?

Thanks so much for your help

Bobbi

[Bob Somrak]

As Jim said, your images are NOT in Lightroom but only linked to the photos on the disk.  When that dialog comes up just hit the REMOVE button and the photo links will be removed from Lightroom.

[RFT64999488]

Hello Bob,

Thanks so much for your response. I see that I can choose the option of removing photos but the broken catalogue link remains and will still have the question mark with 0 photos in the named catalogue. 

Is there a way to clean up my lightroom catalog instead so that the links can be redirected to the file link on the external hard drive instead of on my hard drive that they have been deleted from?

Thanks so much for your help. You guys are the best!

Kind Regards

[robins30114389]

Thank you alll for your response.  You confirmed what I hoped would not be the case.