# Photos scattered all over 3 internal hard drives and missing from LR cat.



## Ewokchef (Nov 17, 2017)

Operating System: Win 10
Lightroom CC 2015.12 Release

After I upgraded to the newest CC version, I began to get an error message and a LR shutdown. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the exact message but it was basically that there is a conflict and LR will attempt to resolve it upon restart. (So sorry that I didn't get the exact wording.)  I restarted LR several times and then later my system but it continued to have the same message.  Lightroom wouldn't open except to show the message.  I went online to Adobe and attempted to fix the error following some instructions posted there.

That did allow me to open the LR catalog but nothing is where it belongs. Right now I have 3 internal hard drives, 2 of them solid state, one with 49.3 GB free and the other with 24.5 GB free.  The third is a 2 TB regular one (with 801 GB free) where I'd like my photos to live so as to not eat up my SS drives. I think I have 351 GB of pix but that is an estimate and probably way low.

I have a backup on an 4 TB external drive that is basically full.  I have NEF, jpg and DNG files scattered over all the drives.  Ideally, I would have LR itself on a solid state and the files themselves on the big storage drive. Also, ideally, I would buy a new computer and transfer everything.  That won't happen right now. I'd also happily hire someone to sit in front of my desktop and fix it all!

I don't know if I've provided enough info or too much.  Can I somehow start over with a new catalog and import the files correctly?   ARRGGHH!  I'm at the I'LL DO ANYTHING anyone can tell me that my charge card will allow.


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 17, 2017)

Ewokchef said:


> That did allow me to open the LR catalog but nothing is where it belongs.


What does that mean exactly? Do you not see any pictures, or do you see 'missing' pictures, or what?

Of course you could start again by creating a new catalog (which you can place on any drive you like) and import all the photos again, but that means you will lose all your edits and added metadata like keywords.


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## Ewokchef (Nov 17, 2017)

I'm really confused, I know.  I find no pictures prior to 2007 in the folders under navigator, my pictures.  In the main screen they are greyed out or have question marks and under navigator is mostly question marks but when I select one individual photo, they do come up but only randomly.  I would hate to lose the post-processing data.


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 17, 2017)

Can you post screenshots that show Lightroom and its folder panel, and the drives withbtje photos in Windows Explorer? Lightroom has lost the connection to your photos, which could be a simple matter of drives having a different drive letter than Lightroom expects.


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## Ewokchef (Nov 18, 2017)

This is the folder structure in Lightroom. Sorry for the duplicate. I couldn't get rid of it.  I'm trying to get a shot of Windows directory, too.


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## Ewokchef (Nov 18, 2017)

This is part of the large storage drive, labeled G in my system:


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 18, 2017)

The screenshot of the drive doesn't show enough, but it gives some information. Lightroom thinks there is a G: drive, with a root folder called 'A My Pictures'. As you can see in the screenshot of the drive, that is correct and so that folder is fine in Lightroom. However, Lightroom also thinks there should be a folder called '2009' inside the 'A My Pictures' folder, but it can't find it. The screenshot of the drive does not show enough, but it probably isn't there otherwise Lightroom would have found it.

The screenshot of the drive also shows a lot of folders that Lightroom doesn't seem to know. All the folders from '2001' through '2007-08-19 tagged' (and beyond) are not in Lightroom, at least not in the correct place. I can't tell you whether these folders are not in Lightroom at all, or whether these are copies of folders which are somewhere else. For example inside the 'Pictures' folder on your internal drive. That folder contains 6145 images, but because it is shown collapsed, I don't know what the subfolders look like.

What you need to do is compare the two in the same way I just did. Look for folder names in Lightroom, and try to find the corresponding folder on your drive(s). Then look for folders on your drives that you know contain images, and see whether or not there is a corresponding folder in Lightroom somewhere.


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