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Question

Restored Corrupted Hard Drive: connecting back to lightroom

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 6, 2017
5 replies
734 views

Hi all, my external hard drive with all my photos corrupted a few months ago. I had the files restored, and managed to connect it all back to Lightroom. Unfortunately the new drive I had corrupted after only owning it for 3 weeks - at least I had it all backed up on another drive this time.

The problem is, I connected it up sightly wrong, and my catalog started pulling in another set of photos I didn't know were there (from the apple mobile app). Anyway. I am now stuck. I have a catalog that doesn't actually link to the 100,000+ photos I have made changes to over the years, but the 1000 photos my partner took on his iPhone. Is there anything I can do, or do I have to start again?

I have a huge file (42gig) called Lightroom Photos-2 Previews.Irdata + all my dated photo files.

Please help, as the whole process has been a nightmare. I'm just thinking of all the hours I spent on facial recognition alone, never mind all the enhancements made!

Thanks, Amanda

amanda phillips

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amandap14379443Author

Participating Frequently

dj_paige, I have managed to get the catalog back from an old restored copy back in September. It wasn't a small job tho & incredibly frustrating as it was trial and error. From what I can tell, when I opened the catalog the Lightroom mobile device app for the iPhone was over writing the file, basically deleting the existence of any of the other photos, but those that had been imported by the app!

I had to take it all off line, delete it all photos and connection of the app within Lightroom, rename the catalog, rename the path to be exact on the hard drive.

I was lucky to find an old back up of the catalog too. Almost cried when I had managed to get everything up and running only to have it corrupt again when I went in the next day!

Thanks for you help - was good to have someone there.

Amanda

amandap14379443Author

Participating Frequently

Actually it is almost like the Catalog can't see the external hard drive. I had a play with it and I can create a new Catalog using the drive & see all the photos under the "Folders". If I go back to the original Catalog under "Folders" I can only see the Macintosh HD.

amandap14379443Author

Participating Frequently

Perhaps I should step back a stage then. I have a new hard drive with 100,000+ photos on it.

If I go into Lightroom and open the Catalog from the pop-up box & it says I have 1000 photos under 'all photographs' from 'Lightroom mobile device' from 2014.

How to I get the Catalog to redirect to the external hard drive so it knows where the additional 100,000+ photo's are?

dj_paige

Legend

Just because the new hard drive has 100,000+ photos does not mean that these 100,000+ photos are imported into Lightroom and can be seen from the Lightroom Folder Panel or in the Grid. So I'm still not sure what is happening on your computer.

Why do YOU think these 100,000+ photos should be seen in Lightroom? Did you import them at one time? Were you previously able to see these photos in Lightroom?

amandap14379443Author

Participating Frequently

Yes, the 100,000+ have all been added to the Lightroom Catelog over the years. Everything was 100% until recently.

If I open the catalog under the 'Folders' second I only see: Macintosh HD & underneath the subtitle 'Davids iPhone'. Only the photos from David iPhone are accessible - and these have been saved to the Macintosh HD.

I can add the filer of the external drive using the + but then the import pop up appears, with it wanting to "Add" the photos from the drive. It comes up with the pop up: The destination folder "/Volumes/My Book/My Photos." is not available. Using "Pictures" folder instead

I am guessing Pictures is my Hard Drive.

At this point all 100,000+ photos are sitting there and I can see them under the various years.

The only option is to "Import" them onto the HD - which I am guessing that I don't wan to do???

Thanks for you help.

A

Just Shoot Me

Legend

I would start at some other part of your system. Hard drive don't just get corrupted for no reason. Yes any piece of hardware, anywhere, can fail at any time. But with today's computer aided design and manufacturing the failure rate has gone down considerably. So you would need to be extremely unlucky to have a new drive fail 3 weeks after you starting to use it.

amandap14379443Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the advice. I have had a good run with external hard drives up to now. Find they typically last around 5 years - the first one lasted longer. Hopefully this is just a dud one & there isn't a bigger issue. I only use my Mac for photography, so comfortable with its integrity. They are going to replace the drive, a WD My Book - apparently one of the better quality drives.

Amanda

dj_paige

Legend

amandap14379443 wrote
The problem is, I connected it up sightly wrong, and my catalog started pulling in another set of photos I didn't know were there (from the apple mobile app). Anyway. I am now stuck. I have a catalog that doesn't actually link to the 100,000+ photos I have made changes to over the years, but the 1000 photos my partner took on his iPhone. Is there anything I can do, or do I have to start again?

Could you explain this in more detail? Catalogs don't "start pulling in" on their own, you have to do something (and it's not clear to me what "pulling in" means anyway). What exact steps did you follow (in detail, leave nothing out)? Can you show us a screen capture of the problem?

In this catalog, do you see the 100,000+ photos? Or just a gray rectangle where the 100,000+ photos should be? Or are there not even places for the 100,000+ photos? Are there exclamation point icons or question mark icons on the photos?

amandap14379443Author

Participating Frequently

Hi DJ_PAIGE.

It was late when I did it & wasn't paying too much attention as I thought that it was a simple process as I had done it earlier & only have one Catalogue. I went in and double clicked on the Catalogue to connect it back up. On the left there were folders with question marks & there was a message like/meaning, 'is this the correct files'. I clicked OK, and straight away realised my error - I thought they were part of the same catalogue (under a different section - hard to explain... they were imported through the Lightroom App), but the were the ones on the actual Mac, not on the external drive.

My question is, have I ruined the catalogue? Now it only has those 1000 photos in it rather than the additional 100,000+ photos that are on my external drive. Is there any way to get back the work I have done?

Thanks for taking time to look at my query.

Amanda

dj_paige

Legend

This still doesn't make sense to me. The steps you have described don't remove photos from your catalog, the steps cannot make a catalog of 100,000+ photos into a catalog of 1000 photos.

So I have to take a guess. Emphasis on this is a guess. When you fix the question mark, the photos don't disappear, the photos are not removed from your catalog; the photos in that folder will now be shown in a different folder/different disk. Have you looked in the other disks in the Folder panel for these photos? Have you looked in other folders for these photos?

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