Syncing photos found in folders outside of lightroom to the folders connected to in my lr catalog

[esimmons]

So I recently just got a NAS. Before I was using 4 separate extrerbal hard drives to manage my organizing system in my lr classic catalog. Upon getting the NAS I dumped everything I had from all 4 hardrives into the one hardrive in my NAS. After that I added I ran a duplicator finder and deleted all the duplicates I had. The problem is it deleted the duplicates it found in the folders I had made to organize them and kept the originals found in the folders that they were originally created. And before I realized that I had added the NAS hard drive to my catalog. Now im running into an issue where lightroom cant locate the photos because they are in their original dated folders instead of the ones I had made to organize them. The only way I've been able to figure out how to fix them is by finding the photos in my finder and moving them to the existing folders I made for them (that are now empty). I realized I've made a huge mess of this whole process and I'm not sure what the best solution is because I have almost 80,000 photos to deal 😣 does anyone have a bettter solution then finding each photo and moving them manually out side if lightroom? 

[DdeGannes]

You stated in your post “  Upon getting the NAS I dumped everything I had from all 4 hardrives into the one hardrive in my NAS.“

Explain, did you copy or move the images?

Are the original images still on the 4 hard disks in their folder structure?

Do you have a backup of your Catalog File for a date before you decided to utilize the NAS?

[esimmons]

I do have the original images still on the 4 hard drives in their folder structure. Would it be best to just delete them from the NAS and reimport them through a lightroom catalog before I added the nas? 

[dj_paige]

No. There is no importing here. Importing is 100% wrong. It will cause a bigger mess than you already have.

Erase all the photos on the NAS. Copy the photos in their dated folder structure to the NAS. Leave the folder hierarchy the same. Do not move photos from one folder to another. Re-connect the folders in Lightroom Classic, following these instructions: https://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm If you catalog  shows ? icons on the folders, follow the instructions in Part 1. If your catalog does not show ? icons on the folders, follow the instructions in Part 2.

From then on, leave the photos in their dated folders on the NAS, do not move them; and use keywords and other metadata to achieve additional organization.

Also, repeating the earlier advice, because some people in the past have not believed me:

There is no importing here. Importing is 100% wrong. It will cause a bigger mess than you already have.

There is no importing here. Importing is 100% wrong. It will cause a bigger mess than you already have.

There is no importing here. Importing is 100% wrong. It will cause a bigger mess than you already have.

[dj_paige]

You need to find your backup of the photos, in their original dated folders, and use that, copy these backups to the NAS. Then you should be able to re-connect the photos in Lightroom Classic to the photos in dated folders.

From then on, leave the photos in their dated folders on the NAS, do not move them; and use keywords and other metadata to achieve additional organization.