ELEMENTS 8 "MISSING FILES"

I have a 10 year old Dell Laptop with Elements 8 installed on Windows 7 64 bit with about 14,000 photos installed in Organizer from photos taken over the last ten years (2009 to 2019).

I was just reviewing the photos and noticed that a whole block of approximately 2100 of the photos taken between 9/16/12 & 10/17/2012 ALL have a "?" (question mark) in the upper left corner and are "Missing Files" (see attached screen shot). I have 3 questions:

1. The attached screen shot appears to indicate that a photo taken on 09/16/12 is in an offline storage drive F:\ which on my computer would be a removable flash drive. I did not transfer these 2100 photos to a flash drive so I'm not sure how it got this designation but I know I don't have a flashdrive from which to recover it or the other 2100 photos. Any thoughts as to how this & the others have gone "Missing"?

2. Is there any practical way (short of re-searching each of the individual 2100 photos) to find these "missing" photos? (is it possible that there could also be a copy of these on my hard drive somewhere even though I have not set up a backup?......where would I look, how would I find and retract them?)

3. In looking at the attached "Reconnect Missing Files" sreen shot, is there any other information here that will help me find this photo, and hopefully the other 2100 photos?

By way of information, on occasion over the past 10 years, a photo in my catalog would show up with a "?" mark & be "missing", but I have never been able to recover any one of these or know why they went "missing" in the first place.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Crabbich (Ken)

(not sure that my attachment is really attached, but here goes my post)