Lightroom not showing files on an external drive, was in the catalog

[unknown camera guy]

1st the basics, Lightroom CC and macOS Sierra, all at the latest version.

I was running LR and had pictures stored on an external drive as well as the internal drive. They were all showing in the catalog and I was able to access the pictures on the external drive from within LR. The external drive was ejected properly but when I reconnected the drive LR is seeing the drive and the folders but not the files in the folders. All the folders are showing zero as the size. The bar that has the drives name is shoring that space is occupied.

I am also able to go to the drive in Finder and see all the pictures. If I select Synchronize on the folder LR says no photos in previous import. I'm able to open the files in photoshop. Ejected the drive and reconnect it and the photos are still not shown.

I am seeing a folder called Lightroom1 with the files and folder listed but they all have a ? and the LED is grayed out while I'm seeing a folder called Lightroom with the LED green. If I right click on the folders in Lightroom 1, with the ? and select find missing folders it will import them to the Lightroom folder.

Confused, and please help.

[99jon]

You should not use synchronize folder. That is only for images not previously imported into the Lightroom catalog.

Try right-clicking (control-click) on a folder in the LR Library with a question mark and choose update folder location. Then navigate to the corresponding folder on you Lightroom external disk and choose it.

[dj_paige]

Right click on a folder with a question mark and select Find Missing Folder. Then select the corresponding folder on your disk.

[unknown camera guy]

replying again as the 1st response was not saved.

I tried what you suggested but it doesn't work. LR is seeing two folders for the same external drive, Lightroom and Lightroom 1 and it thinks that when I connect the drive the Lightroom folder shows attached but it shows the files are installed on Lightroom 1. No matter which one I try to delete it always it always point to the one that has the files on it. If I try to update the folder location on the LR drive it doesn't find the files but if I try it on the LR 1 it moves the files to the LR folder.

Any more suggestions. I'm thinking of just removing all the files from the catalog and import them again. The problem is that I'm afraid that it will happen again.

[dj_paige]

Removing photos and importing again will cause you to lose your edits and user supplied metadata. Not a good solution.

I tried what you suggested but it doesn't work.

Why didn't it work? What happened? What was the exact word-for-word error message.

Also see this: Duplicate hard drive in Catalog Folders

[Jao vdL]

Jeff, there is a long standing bug in Mac OS where it will sometimes mount disks at a different location with a -1 (and -2, etc.) appended and will generate ghost copies of your external drives. You can check whether this is the problem by going to /Volumes/ on your main drive. You will see multiple instances of the same Lightroom drive there. Rebooting the whole machine with the drive disconnected should clean this up. If after you do this, you still have the problem than do the reconnecting thing by "find missing folder"

[cmgap]

Do you have this checked? Right-click on the + and down arrow icon and turn this on. It will show all of the images in their respective folders and subfolders.

Also Turn On Show Parent Folder by righ-clicking on the folders. This will identify the full path showing where your images are located.

[jonathandade]

THANK YOU!  This answered something I have been trying to google-fix for HOURS! 

[jLorenzo]

Even with this checked, I still cannot see the files that are the external drive. So I tried to remove the folders from the catalog and re-import the images and this did not work either still a bunch of greyed out images in the import screen yet no images in the folders.