# LR Erased ALL of My Photos! HELP!!



## nefi.boren (Jul 31, 2019)

I got on Lightroom today to save the photos I had just spent 12 hours editing, and...everything was gone! The folders and albums were still there, but they showed that I had never added any pictures to them. 
I've had Lightroom for about a week now. It was amazing, and I used it to edit a wedding I shot on Saturday. Because of complications with the hard drive I normally use to back up my images, I had to wait until I got home today before I could save the edited pictures from lightroom to a hard drive. As soon as I could, I opened lightroom to do that, and that's when it happened. 
As soon as I opened it, everything vanished, well, everything that I needed anyway. There were still pictures I had edited while using the free trial of the program about a month ago, but everything since I purchased the program was gone. There were no error messages. When I tried to find a solution online, they all told me to click on menu items that don't exist in my version of Lightroom, and I don't know what to do. I was just about done editing the wedding's photos, and I don not want to spend another 12 hours or more doing the same work I just finished doing.  I haven't found a tutorial for helping Lightroom relocate the catalog that actually had steps that I could follow on my lightroom. Has this ever happened to you? What do you suggest I do? I'm not 100% sure what the root of the problem is, but if there's a way I could restore the photos with the edits, that would be more than amazing! Thank you soooo much for your time! You rock.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 31, 2019)

Lightroom 2.3 is the cloud based version of Lightroom, meaning the version that stores originals online. That means you have to be logged in to your online account to see the images. Could it be that you are now logged in to a different account?


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## nefi.boren (Jul 31, 2019)

Thanks for the reply. 
I'm logged into my only account, but I ran out of cloud storage before I even finished the free trial...could that be what caused this?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 31, 2019)

Yes, that could be the problem. Lightroom needs to store the images online, so there needs to be enough online space for that. If the images weren’t uploaded because of that, then they should still be on your local disk. You could try what happens if you disconnect your internet connection (don’t log out of the Adobe account, disconnect your internet connection entirely). That may force Lightroom to use the local images again.


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## nefi.boren (Jul 31, 2019)

Thanks. I tried turning off the internet, and it didn't help. I may just have to re-import the images and edit all of them again from zero. Should I be using Lightroom Classic instead, then? And if I don't have any room on my computer, would there be a way to run it with everything stored on an external hard drive without any problems?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 31, 2019)

Lightroom Classic stores images locally, but this can be an external drive or a NAS too.  Lightroom vs. Lightroom Classic | Adobe


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## PhilBurton (Jul 31, 2019)

nefi.boren said:


> Thanks. I tried turning off the internet, and it didn't help. I may just have to re-import the images and edit all of them again from zero. Should I be using Lightroom Classic instead, then? And if I don't have any room on my computer, would there be a way to run it with everything stored on an external hard drive without any problems?


Just guessing here.  If you want to become a professional photographer, you will accumulate thousands and thousands of photos, every year.  (Just ask the professionals in this group.)  I can't imagine that you would be willing to pay Adobe's prices for cloud storage.  Also, you will probably need functionality that is in Classic, but not cloudy.

Yes, you will need external hard drives, including extra ones for backup.  Be sure that your external drives are made by Western Digital (WD), not Seagate.

Phil


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## nefi.boren (Jul 31, 2019)

Thanks for all your help! This really did help me a lot. Have a great day!


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