Missing Photos - moved from Mac to Windows

[OculusEst]

Hey team.

So I've got an issue and while I can see NUMEROUS posts about this particular subject I can't seem to either get the right answer or figure it out for myself..

Basically I've gone back to Windows from Mac and stored everything on external drives.  Everything went smoothly but.....  Finding the missing photos hasn't.

I see the obvious problem on a few where my Mac has chucked a "volume" label at the start of D Drive (labelled as Red Expansion) and now my PC isn't playing nice as it IDs it as simply D Drive or Red Expansion blah blah drive.

So I see that's the problem but how do I reconnect all the missing photos?  I can imagine it is something obvious but I am missing the very large and obvious point 🙂

These photos are there but the question is HOW..

[richardplondon · Accepted solution]

As I understand it MacOS "goes by" the volume name, but Windows "goes by" the drive letter, and the volume name is just an optional description.

When the volume name is consistent, MacOS will recognise that this is the same drive as before - and, that the image paths relate to.

When the drive letter is consistent, Windows will recognise that this is the same drive as before - and, that the image paths relate to.

IMO it is unwise to employ a drive letter such as D: for an external drive: because sometimes, accidentally, that particular drive letter will have already been assigned to some different device. This will depend on the order in which devices are connected (or if left connected, the order in which they are found when the computer next starts up). In which case, this external drive will be assigned E:, F: etc instead - whatever is the next currently free letter. 

And if images were formerly found in a D: drive which now appears to the computer as F: these images are thereby 'not found at same location' so far as the Catalog is concerned. 

I strongly recommend: leave the volume naming in place for MacOs purposes, but for Windows change each external drive so that it will request a particular (unique) drive letter much further on through the alphabet. That way, there will be no accidental drive letter conflicts that will affect the Catalog. You will just once need to re-address the Catalog to tell it that this whole set of photos can be now found on (say) P: drive instead of D: drive as before.

Re-addressing a bunch of image folders is easiest when there is a single point of management exposed.

Say that within a given drive you have a top level folder "photos" and inside that year folders "2019", "2020" etc, and inside each of those a further subtree of image folders relating to that year.  And say that within the Catalog you only see those "2019", "2020" etc. As things then stand you would need to re-address "2019", and then separately "2020", etc. So it would be more efficient to go to (say) "2019" and right-click and choose Show Parent Folder to expose "photos" to your Catalog. Now you can just readdress that to update the locations of all the year folders in one go. This is done by right-clicking the folder and choosing the relevant option "Update Folder Location / Find Missing Folder" (which differs by circumstance but amounts to the same result). 

[OculusEst]

I was hoping it would be more simple but I think I understand the process.  So rename the external drive.  

Then go back and re-find the photos that relate to that drive?

Seems straighforward looking at it from this standpoint.

I have two external drives - and both were "exposed" to volume naming - although I can only  see one having this extension but my missing photos are across both.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

If you tell LrC where photos on the Mac are located, you shouldn't have to also "re-find" the photos. The way to do this is to select the parent folder in the LrC Folder Panel, which will show under the D: drive. Then right-click on this parent folder and choose "Find Missing Folders" and then select the parent folder on the Mac. More detail at https://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm (see Figure 4 and associated text).

[OculusEst]

I've hit something of a brick wall.  So I've relabelled one drive.  I've done the parent thing and found the new drive name (which is now P:) and I've realigned the photos that couldn't find the old drive name but now I've come across around 8000 missing photos under "find missing photos" in LR.

When I click on the photo and then click on go find folder in library I go nowhere.   Even if it is actually there as in through explorer it simply won't match.

So now I am back to the where I was at the start..

[dj_paige]

The instructions at the link I gave indicate how to fix missing files, or if there is a question mark icon on the folders, you can fix an entire folder of missing files.