Harddrive not mounting but I have photos in my catalog I need

[kyleeh91559968]

So my seagate harddrive will no longer mount and I have spent hours trying to troubleshoot it now. I am at the point I am wanting to just salvage what I have done in my Lightroom catalogs already. But they say files not found since the drive isn't working. Can I reupload the photos and save what I have done in Lightroom. 

I'm just trying to find a way so I don't have to start from scratch. I would appreciate any and all help. Thank you so much. 

[JohanElzenga]

Do not try to reimport anything! Do you have a backup of the photos? If so, you can 'redirect' Lightroom to that drive: 

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

[josephlavine]

Have you tried to mount the drive to a different computer or perhaps a different cable? I've had a caple or two go bad and cause mounting issues.

warmly/j

[gary_sc]

Hi Kylee,

Sorry but I've nothing to add to the previous two answers but I do have advise for the future. It all boils down to the addage: "There are two kinds of hard drive users. Those who've had a hard drive crash and those who've not had a hard drive crash YET."

Over the years I've had several hard drives crash and yes I've lost stuff. Here's what I now do:

I have a 4 TB drive that holds all of my images and many documents. I have a 2nd 4TB drive that I use to back up my first drive. I manually do this at least once a week or more often if I've done a lot of work.

I have a 3rd 4TB drive I use for Apple's Time Machine.

I also use a cloud service incase the house burns down. Am I paranoid? No, just a realist. In a worst case scenario, I would not lose much, at worse some time. 

[Note: the 4TB is entirely based on what I need. Your needs may demand more or less hard drive space. Whatever you think you need, double it.]

Good luck!!

[TheDigitalDog]

I'd add: "There are two kinds of hard drive users. Those who've had a hard drive crash and those who've had a hard drive crash and have a backup of that data."

I agree with trying differing cables and even computers. Be useful to know the OS as we might be able to recommend some utility to fix the drive issue IF possible. But all this would be very simple if everything on the problematic drive were cloned (backed up) to one, ideally two other locations. 

"There are two kinds of data: that which you can afford to lose and that which you can't afford to lose hence you have multiple copies of that data."

[kyleeh91559968]

Hey Gary! 

I definitely am part of the population that has had many hard drives crash! I have about 15 different drives because I try to save each wedding I do forever. 

This instance just sucked because, I had multiple copies of these weddings I was editing, however Lightroom only connects to the one so when this drive stopped working all of my edits on Lightroom don't really matter anymore. 

I do think I found a work around, it will be time consuming but I at least will not have to redo everything. 

Thank you for commenting, I do always love to hear what others workflows and backup flows are 🙂 

[gary_sc]

Hi Kylee,

What do you mean that LR doesn't donnect to this drive? Are you saying that it can't figure out that the image you've clicked on in your catalog is not available to you in that drive (but it is!)?

Assuming that you've kept the same folder structure, you should be able to click on your image where the exlamation point is ("!") and offer to find that image. Then go into the backup hard drive, locate that image manually, and then the rest of your images should fall into place.

Please elaborate on what's happening.