Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Hi, I had an incredible problem last Saturday: I'm a travel photographer and in the end of my last press trip when I started to import the pictures in Lightroom, I stopped the import because I only needed one image. however, when I went to reopen the folder with all the images on the hard disk, they were missing. Lightroom had deleted all the images, I only had 2 Lightroom backup folders which contained only 30 images imported into the program before I stopped importing.
what a incredible bug is this? I lost all my work…
You may never use MOVE intentionally, but you may have used it accidentally... and not even realized it
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
I have never heard of such bug and I doubt it exists. You are not the only one who ever stopped an import...
Can you explain exactly how you did the import? Did you import from a memory card? Did you first copy images to your hard disk and then imported those images from the hard disk? You posted this in the Lightroom forum, but are you using Lightroom or Lightroom Classic? Mac or Windows? Version numbers?
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Yes, sorry...
First step, I copied images from memory card to my hard disk, then I started to import images from Hard disk folder to Lightroom Classic, version 10.0, I use macOS Catalina 10.15.7
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Perhaps you chose 'Move' when you imported. That means Lightroom moved the images to another folder, but because you stopped the import they were not yet added to the catalog.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
No, I never use "move". All my settings are every time the same. I just import pictures... I use Lightroom and Photoshop from a long long time
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
You may never use MOVE intentionally, but you may have used it accidentally... and not even realized it
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
if I choose “move” only the imported files should be moved anyway. if I interrupt the process, the other files should stay where they were
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Quote:
if I choose “move” only the imported files should be moved anyway. if I interrupt the process, the other files should stay where they were
End Quote:
And is that FACT or Supposition?
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Is a fact. I tried it and this is: if you move and stop the process you've moved just file until stop.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
When you indicate that all images are missing, are they missing in Lightroom? In other words, can you use Finder or Windows Explorer and find the images on your hard drive, or do you think Lightroom deleted them from the hard drive? Are they in the trash or recycle bin. What you are describing is a phenomenon that I have never experienced or read about, and can't imagine how Lightroom could possibly have accomplished such a task.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
the photos are disappeared. They are not on the hard drive, they are not in the recycle bin. In the original folder there are only the 30 backup photos created by lightroom, the only thirty imported before canceling the import.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Quote:
In the original folder there are only the 30 backup photos created by lightroom
End Quote:
Ah LrC does Not Create backups of images it imported or backups of images in any way.
You say you have used Lr Classis (traditional version) for a long time. Sorry it doesn't sound like you have or you have never actually learned how LrC works and how to properly work with LrC.
In all honesty one of the worst things you can do is Cancel an import.
In the import dialog windows there is an options to Select All, Check All, or Deselect All, Un-check all. And then you can Deselect images one by one you don't want to import and or Uncheck All then Select just the number of images you actually do want to import.
Hopefully you still have those images on the card from the camera.
Also what exact option do you select at the top of the import dialog window when you are importing images from your hard disk?
As noted in another reply the Move Option at the top of the import window might of been selected without you realizing it.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Of course it was my mistake: my question is "how is possible to do a big mistake like this?" and "what was the mistake?".
Firts of all, yes, you can create backups of images using Lrc, if you check the dedicated option in the import dialog. I do this every time.
And of course I know that I can un-check all images when I have to select, is what I do every tima. Last saturday I forgot to uncheck all images, so, I only wanted to import one, but when I tapped on "import" I realized it was importing all of them (my mistake), so I stopped importing.
At that point something had happened, I don't know what, however, and in the folder of origin on the hard disk there were no more photos of 3 days of work. I delete the memory cards after I import the job, I still have just the last day (saturday) in memory card.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Whatever the cause, in the end this all boils down to not having a proper backup system. I don't mean the built-in catalog backup in Lightroom, or the secondary copy on import, but a proper backup system that backs up your entire hard disk at least once a day. You say you lost images of 3 days work. Any proper backup system (Apple Time Machine, Windows backup, some third party) would have made it dead easy to retrieve those images.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Yes... I know...
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
We have all learned this lesson at some point. I was lucky in that it happened early on, so I've had "backup" hard-wired into my nervous system ever since. There's a lot of file synchronizing software available out there, and the best of them build on native operating system scripts/routines (like Windows RoboCopy) and are very reliable. They can be configured to cover almost any imaginable scenario.
Then it's just a click. Or an automatic schedule.
My own regime secures three copies of every file, one normally off-site. I run backups at least once a day, and always immediately after finishing a particularly important job.
I never format the card until backups are confirmed OK.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
How many images in total did you have in Lightroom before this last debacle?
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
I don't know... tons