# New/First post - need advice!



## HappyDad3 (May 13, 2018)

Good morning everyone and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

I'm new here and pretty new to Lightroom, though I  have some of the basics down... But, I need some advice!

Here's my problem: 
I purchased Lightroom Classic CC last fall because I wanted to get my photos organized and in one place. I have had photos/videos scattered over various external hard drives with no real structure or organization. I purchased an 8 TB external hard drive to house all of my photos after importing them into Lightroom. Unfortunately after importing everything (almost 60,000 photos) with a much better organizational structure on the single external hard drive, I never backed up those files and about 2 weeks ago, my external hard drive is no longer being recognized by windows and I can't access the files directly. So Lightroom of course can't see the files - but I do have smart previews and I am at least able to see what I imported.

As you can imagine I was pretty devastated. I have over 15 years worth of photos of my kids, engagement, wedding, etc. It was a lot of hard work getting everything organized in one place and I have certainly learned my lesson when it comes to backing up files. 

I have some copies of the photos, but they are scattered over 4 or 5 smaller external drives and dropbox. The problem is I can't remember if I "copied" or "moved" when I imported so I am not exactly sure what I still have where. And like I said before there is no real organization in what I have on those various hard drives and dropbox.

It seems like trying to reconnect the photos in my current catalog will be cumbersome. Should I just go buy another external hard drive, create a new catalog, and start all over with whatever I can find? Is that the easiest solution? 

I am in the process of trying to recover the data from the external hard drive that isn't working, but there is no guarantee it will work, so I am preparing for the worst case scenario.

I appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thank you in advance!


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## Hal P Anderson (May 13, 2018)

External drives consist of an enclosure plus a disk drive. The enclosure has circuitry that interfaces the drive with the computer. Perhaps the enclosure died, but not the actual drive. You can buy another enclosure and plug your drive into it and see if it works. If it does, you'll evidently save yourself a lot of hassle. 

In any case, in future you ought to back up all your images.


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## BarrySchwartz (May 14, 2018)

There are units that will read bare drives. I have a Voyager from Other World Computing that I use all the time for backups.  If the problem is with the physical part of the drive, here's a trick I learned a long time ago that may work: put the bare drive in a good freezer bag that seals well, and put it all into your freezer.  After an hour or so, try again with the bare drive; since most drives have a spinning disk (not SSDs), the extreme change in temperature may help the thing spin around again.  You'll only get a short window before the drive warms up, at which point you put the drive back into the freezer and keep removing data incrementally.  A bit of a pain, but it may work.


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## Replytoken (May 14, 2018)

Sorry to hear about your drive issues.  While I agree with Hal's advice, I first have to ask if you tried the drive on another machine?  Sometimes ports can go bad on a computer, and it is best to rule out the machine before tearing apart your drive.

Good luck,

--Ken


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## HappyDad3 (May 14, 2018)

Thanks for the replies. Yes I have tried the drive on 2 different computers. I also took the drive to a local computer store and they attempted to get the drive working with a Linux based system, as well as trying to connect the drive without the enclosure. Nothing worked. I'm currently running the EaseUS Data Recovery Software on the drive and so far it has found over 30k files (around 60k total were on the drive) and it is still reading (its been running a little over a week), so its encouraging that its finding the files, we'll see if they're actually able to be recovered once the scan is done.

I'm not competent or confident enough to mess with the actual drive itself on my own, so if this doesn't work. I guess I will have to just start from scratch.


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## Replytoken (May 16, 2018)

HappyDad3 said:


> Thanks for the replies. Yes I have tried the drive on 2 different computers. I also took the drive to a local computer store and they attempted to get the drive working with a Linux based system, as well as trying to connect the drive without the enclosure. Nothing worked. I'm currently running the EaseUS Data Recovery Software on the drive and so far it has found over 30k files (around 60k total were on the drive) and it is still reading (its been running a little over a week), so its encouraging that its finding the files, we'll see if they're actually able to be recovered once the scan is done.
> 
> I'm not competent or confident enough to mess with the actual drive itself on my own, so if this doesn't work. I guess I will have to just start from scratch.


Sounds like you are taking all the right steps.  And you are wise to not get your hopes to high on the file recovery process.  I hope things turn out well.

Good luck,

--Ken


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## HappyDad3 (Jun 3, 2018)

Hello again -

Can someone remind me how to save the data/images created from Smart Previews? I know the files are not the same size/quality of the original photo, but if I can extract what I've got in Lightroom, it would be helpful. I know I read that it was possible in Victoria's book, but I do not remember where I saw it.

Thanks!


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 3, 2018)

HappyDad3 said:


> Hello again -
> 
> Can someone remind me how to save the data/images created from Smart Previews? I know the files are not the same size/quality of the original photo, but if I can extract what I've got in Lightroom, it would be helpful. I know I read that it was possible in Victoria's book, but I do not remember where I saw it.
> 
> Thanks!


Smart previews are like smaller originals. You should be able to export an image from a smart preview just like you can do from the original, except you should not try to go beyond the size of the smart preview to compensate for the fact that they are smaller.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 4, 2018)

Page 440 is the one you're looking for!  
For smart previews, go to File menu > Export. Choose DNG as the File Format (leave the checkboxes unchecked) and export them to a folder on the hard drive


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## HappyDad3 (Jun 4, 2018)

thank you very much!


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