Updating folder location in LR - folders disappear

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 10, 2024
2 replies
562 views

I moved folders to a new hard drive by copying and pasting using OS (Mac).

Then I selected "update folder location" in LR and chose the appropriate folder on the new hard drive.

The folders disappeared from the old hard drive but were nowhere to be found in the list of folders on the new drive.

The images seem to be there somewhere because they cannot be imported.

I would be grateful for advice as how the missing folders can be found.

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

AxelMatt

Community Expert

I moved folders to a new hard drive by copying and pasting using OS (Mac).

...

By @Elinlax

This isn't a good idea. It' s better to use Lightroom for file operations like copy, move, rename and so on.

But anyway, if the new hard disk is connected with the same name and the folderstructure is the same as the old one normally there's no problem. Lightroom should find the images.

Otherwise following the infos here: How to find missing photos in Photoshop Lightroom Classic.

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 5 - Topaz Photo

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Did you restart Lightroom after you updated the folder location? That is sometimes necessary before the new location shows. If that does not work, then try this: open your catalog folder and trash the 'catalogname helper' file. Then start Lightroom Classic again.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

E

ElinlaxAuthor

Participant

I managed to find the photos by searching on metadata. Deleted them and then imported the photos - so now everything is ok.

D

dj_paige

Legend

I managed to find the photos by searching on metadata. Deleted them and then imported the photos - so now everything is ok.

By @Elinlax

Better would have been to right-click on one of the photos that you found and then select Show in Library. This will highlight the folder that the photos are stored in (on the left in the LrC Folder Panel), so you will know where they are.

Deleting and then re-importing means that you lose information from the catalog, including things like Collections, Edit History, Virtual copies and a few other things. If you haven't saved the metadata in an xmp file, then you also lose metadata like keywords, captions, title, GPS location, edits. Really not good to delete photos and reimport them.

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