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Question

Opening files on new external hard drive - still unresolved

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 31, 2022
4 replies
2058 views

Hi, I have written about this before but still haven't been able to resolve how I access photos I transferred over to new external hard drive. I know it has to do with the catalogue, that the photos that were in a catalogue when they were on the older hard drive are no longer on any catalogue on the new hard drive but I'm unable to fix the problem.

I've tried the Update Folder Location many times but nothing happens. The Find Missing Folder command no longer seems to be available. Somewhere I saw the advice to place the ircat files in the new hard drive so I tried that but nothing happened.

Everything remains perfectly organized and in place when I look at the new hard drive on Finder: under Photographs I have annual folders for each year from 2006 to 2022 and in those annual folders I have all the folders I created by downloading photos during that year. And if I open any of those folders and say I want to open a photo, even using LrC to do so, I can see the photo in question (and all the others). When I say I want to open a photo in LrC it brings up the Copy screen and suddenly all my folders and all my photos are there on the left hand of the screen. If, however, I just copy one photo into its own file and then go back to Library, everything disappears and I'm exactly where I was before, except with that one photo now available to view.

So, does this mean that I have to go through this process and Copy from my new Toshiba hard drive over to the same folder on my Toshiba hard drive, and do this for every single folder from the last 16 years? Copy is defined as copying to a new location and adding to catalogue - but I would be copying to same location and, presumably, finally, adding to catalogue. Is that the onerous solution?

When on this screen, I can also change from Copy to Add and then the destination becomes My Catalog. That seems to be what I need to do but do I need to do it at the level of the folders that actually contain photos, rather than the folders (annual, in my case) that contain folders of photos. It would be simpler if I could just go to the parent folder, Photographs, but there are also only 16 annual folders and adding at that level would be fine. I just don't want to lose the file structure that I've set up on this new Toshiba hard drive, since that was one of the points of putting 16 years worth of photos on this one hard drive.

This is driving me a bit crazy and in my attempts to solve this problem I've now lost 'sight' of the other older hard drive I have connected to this computer. No idea what I did that has caused it to disappear from view under Source on the left hand side, but one problem at a time....

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Sounds like you are confusing the Library grid, which shows all the photos that are imported in Lightroom, with the import dialog, which shows all photos in the selected source folder. STOP TRYING TO IMPORT PHOTOS AGAIN, because you will create a much bigger mess than you already have created. Post those screenshots, do not try anything else in the meantime.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

J

jeffg28527173Author

Known Participant

I do understand that and that's why I selected just one single photograph to import. I thought the import process for just one photo might alert LrC to the existence of that one photo and the 100,000 others on the new drive. I am not trying to import photos in bulk.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

@jeffg28527173 wrote:

I do understand that and that's why I selected just one single photograph to import. I thought the import process for just one photo might alert LrC to the existence of that one photo and the 100,000 others on the new drive.

That's not how Lightroom works. It does not 'forget' things and then 'remember' it again after an action like that. Post those screenshots, please.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

Have you given LrC Full Disk access as described in https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/quick-tips-how-to-give-full-disk-access-to-lightroom-classic-on-macos/td-p/12913413

J

jeffg28527173Author

Known Participant

Yes.

dj_paige

Legend

Tried "Update Folder Location" on what folders? The old folders on the old hard drive?

And if so, then what did you do? Did you select the corresponding folder on the new external drive? If so, the folders should appear in LrC as being on the new external drive.

Show us a screen captures or screen captures to illustrate the problem. Use the "Insert Photos" icon, do not attach files.

J

jeffg28527173Author

Known Participant

No, not the old folders on the old hard drive. As I mentioned, I 'lost' the one old drive I have connected to my computer. It no longer appears on the left hand side under Source. I just tried Add Folder, under Source, and I can Add the Photograph folder and sub-folders to My Catalog. If I do that I'd think that then I'd again be able to see it under Source in the left hand column and then I can do as I think you're suggesting: try Update Folder Location on the old hard drive and then select the corresponding folder on the new hard drive.

Should I Add the folder and sub-folders from my old hard drive to My Catalog? (They were obviously in it before but in my attempts to be able to access folders and file in the new hard drive, I must have managed to remove them.)

J

jeffg28527173Author

Known Participant

"I'm getting so sick of all of this that I'm wondering if I would be better off to uninstall the LrC app and then reload it, so that I could start with a blank slate, if possible. Would this new download of the app be able to 'see' the storage devices (my external hard drives) and the photos within and be able to add them all to a brand new catalog?"

There is no need to uninstall and reinstall the app to do this. Just create a new catalog, that is all. And yes, of course Lightroom will be able to add all the photos on all your hard disks to this new catalog. It would be just like you started to use Lightroom for the first time. That's also the biggest disadvantage of 'solving' a problem like this. Because it's just like starting to use Lightroom for the first time, you will not see any edits that you made in the past. Everything is like starting for the first time, so that will also apply to your editing...

Okay. Thanks. I still have another question from my last post:

"I'm now concerned that I went through the command for each folder too quickly and that the two external hard drives couldn't keep up. I have a number (most) of folders where it says there are 75 or 325, etc photos but only the first 30 will open up. In Library mode the remaining photos, 30 through 76, say, are listed and numbered but they are grey, as if they haven't loaded properly. Because I apparently successfully relocated all these folders I can't go back and do this again because they no longer show up on the old hard drive. I did try to update folder location with a couple of these partially loaded folders on the new hard drive and chose the exact same folder on the new hard drive, thinking that if it has included the first 30 photos in that folder it should be able to recognize the rest, but it doesn't work."

I have confirmed that most of the folders that I did Update Folder Location only have 28 or 29 actual photo files. I've been doing some more of this from another older hard drive and now see that if I slow down and wait until I can see every thumbnail before I command Update Folder Location then I am able to fully download each image and all thumbnails show up in the same folder on the new hard drive.

That's great to know for me going forward but how do I recapture all the thumbnails that I have 'lost'. I have some data for each grey thumbnail frame, like the file number and the size of the image behind the thumbnail but I don't see the thumbnail and I cannot open the photo file.

Also, because I have updated the folder location, all these folders, with missing thumbnails, are on the new hard drive and are no longer visible on the old hard drive. With each Update Folder Location the folder in question disappears from the old hard drive list and shows up on the new hard drive's list of folders.

In other words, I can't just go through the Update Folder Location process again because the folders are no longer in place on the old drive. Any suggestions as to how I can access the additional data I need for each of the missing thumbnails so that I can see them and process them, etc?

DdeGannes

Community Expert

Are you aware of,

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/lightroom-classic-12-0-1-is-now-available-for-download/td-p/13303542

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

J

jeffg28527173Author

Known Participant

I wasn't aware of the new version but have now downloaded it. Unfortunately, it does nothing to resolve my problem.

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