# Lightroom syncing hard drives/ missing photos



## hellopc (Jan 19, 2018)

hello all,

I’d really like some help on this.

I’d like to be able to work with Lightroom on photos that are on a hard drive. 
I’ve worked and edited them, but would like to be able to access them while I travel without carrying my hard drives around.

Is there a way to sync up my external hard drive with Lightroom without it being there? 
Many of them have missing exclamation marks. I know where they are located on the drive and they pop up when they are plugged in but would like to just be able to upload the worked files into Lightroom without needing the drive. 

I feel like I’ve tried everything and I don’t want to “sync” without losing the work.

Help please?


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## Umberto Cocca (Jan 19, 2018)

hellopc said:


> hello all,
> 
> I’d really like some help on this.
> 
> ...


Build smart previews of the files you intend to work on and that's all you need. The exclamation mark will still appear, but you will be able to work on your files, of which you will see a reduced size version. If you need to do work at 100% zoom, my approach would be to temporarily move the "working folder" to the internal HDD / SSD through lightroom interface. 

Sent using Tapatalk


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 19, 2018)

Smart previews are indeed the answer. The exclamation mark should not appear. A smart preview mark should.


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## hellopc (Jan 22, 2018)

Hey to you both,


Thanks! I thought I checked the lightroom smart previews box ... but my photos still show up blurry and with an exclamation mark.
When I go to the import section - the photos are all greyed out because they've already been imported. 
But I can't work on them with my smart previews ... 
So confused. :|

"If you need to do work at 100% zoom, my approach would be to temporarily move the "working folder" to the internal HDD / SSD through lightroom interface." - Can you explain this a bit more as well?

Also:
I should always be importing my photos onto a harddrive and not just into lightroom, correct?
It's just frustrating because I have to bring my hard drive with me everywhere and haven't yet figured out my workflow ...


Thanks Lightroom Gurus!


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 22, 2018)

hellopc said:


> I thought I checked the lightroom smart previews box ... but my photos still show up blurry and with an exclamation mark.


You have to create the smart previews first, and for that Lightroom needs to have access to the originals. Sounds like you haven't done that yet.



hellopc said:


> When I go to the import section - the photos are all greyed out because they've already been imported.


Of course they are. Having smart previews or not has nothing to do with that. You have imported these images, so you can't import them again and you have no reason to want to do that.


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## Umberto Cocca (Jan 22, 2018)

hellopc said:


> Hey to you both,
> 
> Thanks! I thought I checked the lightroom smart previews box ... but my photos still show up blurry and with an exclamation mark.
> When I go to the import section - the photos are all greyed out because they've already been imported.
> ...



Hi hellopc,
In order to build smart previews, your external HD has to be connected. Then you can create smart previews. This will work if you haven't messed up with your photos locations outside of lightroom. If connecting your HDD your photos still show a question mark, then you should try and re-link the catalogue with the position of the photos.




hellopc said:


> "If you need to do work at 100% zoom, my approach would be to temporarily move the "working folder" to the internal HDD / SSD through lightroom interface." - Can you explain this a bit more as well?
> 
> Thanks Lightroom Gurus!



I don't know what photos are you taking and what you need to do to them while your HDD is not connected. For example, if you want to check the focus, you would zoom in to 100% on your subject and see if it is a good shot. For that purpose I would recommend to work on the original files.

One LR Catalog can refer to pictures that are in the internal HDD and also in an external HDD. If you know in advance that you will be working on a specific set of photos that reside in the external drive, I would therefore recommend you to move that folder to the internal HDD via LR, work with them and once you are finished, move them back to the external one, again through LR. Is it an optimal work flow? I don't think so. Does it work for you? Well, you let me know! I can tell you it works fine for me.




hellopc said:


> Also:
> I should always be importing my photos onto a harddrive and not just into lightroom, correct?
> It's just frustrating because I have to bring my hard drive with me everywhere and haven't yet figured out my workflow ...



Importing photos have multiple options. You can chose to COPY the files to the specified folder, or you can ADD the photos to the catalog without moving them from the actual position (you don't want to ADD photos from a camera card, you want to COPY them to your HDD, internal or external you chose). There are a huge number of topics in his forum referring to how to import photos, I would recommend that you search for the topic and learn what suits you best.




hellopc said:


> Thanks Lightroom Gurus!



I am far from being a guru, I am just sharing my experience and what works for me, which could be not be the best for your work flow.

Enjoy LR and let us know if you need further help! 

Sent using Tapatalk


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 22, 2018)

hellopc said:


> I should always be importing my photos onto a harddrive and not just into lightroom, correct?
> It's just frustrating because I have to bring my hard drive with me everywhere and haven't yet figured out my workflow ...


You can't just import photos from a memorycard into Lightroom and not onto a hard disk. The Lightroom catalog does not contain physical photos, only a link to them. You can compare Lightroom to an address book. The names and addresses of your friends are in there, but your fiends do not physically live in your address book.

So yes, you will always have to copy the photos from your memory card to a hard disk, but this does not have to be an external hard disk. You can copy them to your internal disk temporarily, and then when you get back home you can move them to their final destination.


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