# Lost it all



## chilvr2 (Jul 10, 2019)

I had a power outage  overnight and when I went into LR the next day every one of my 80,000 files were missing!  Every back up on my external hard drive came up with a blue file with a red circle  with a minus sign in it.  I’m using a MAC desktop and Apple doesn’t,t know LR, adobe offered no support at all and seagate had me restore my hard drive to no avail.  I am completely heartbroken!  Any advise as to where to go would be so appreciated!


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## Rob_Cullen (Jul 10, 2019)

It is a hard lesson to learn, but if you do not have backup copies of your Lightroom Catalog and all your photo files that are readable, then you are out of luck, I am sorry. 
Your situation is like that mentioned here- A sad tale of hard drive disasters and Lightroom backups | The Lightroom Queen

I am not Mac familiar- but can you explain the "blue file with a red circle  with a minus sign ". Or post a screen-clip, others may be able to explain the meaning of the icons. Was the external drive connected when the power outage occurred?


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## chilvr2 (Jul 10, 2019)

I-See-Light said:


> It is a hard lesson to learn, but if you do not have backup copies of your Lightroom Catalog and all your photo files that are readable, then you are out of luck, I am sorry.
> Your situation is like that mentioned here- A sad tale of hard drive disasters and Lightroom backups | The Lightroom Queen
> 
> I am not Mac familiar- but can you explain the "blue file with a red circle  with a minus sign ". Or post a screen-clip, others may be able to explain the meaning of the icons. Was the external drive connected when the power outage occurred?


I backed up almost every day.  And yes the drive was connected but all my other files on the drive are perfect.   I seem to be able to locate a few when using the search on the photo but with over 80,000 pictures  I don’t think I’ll ever recoup my loss.  I really thought my library was backing up perfectly each time


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## Rob_Cullen (Jul 10, 2019)

From your posts I do not have a clear idea of what you actually do have.
Can you open a Catalog? Do you have .LRCAT files?
Does it show previews in the Catalog Library? Are the previews marked as "Missing"?
Are you seeing the strange icons in Lightroom or Finder?
Can you see photo files in Finder?
Some more descriptive details from you, with screen-clips, may be helpful.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 10, 2019)

chilvr2 said:


> I had a power outage  overnight and when I went into LR the next day every one of my 80,000 files were missing!  Every back up on my external hard drive came up with a blue file with a red circle  with a minus sign in it.  I’m using a MAC desktop and Apple doesn’t,t know LR, adobe offered no support at all and seagate had me restore my hard drive to no avail.  I am completely heartbroken!  Any advise as to where to go would be so appreciated!


Can you post a screenshot of this “blue file with a red circle  with a minus sign in it”?


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## chilvr2 (Jul 10, 2019)

I-See-Light said:


> From your posts I do not have a clear idea of what you actually do have.
> Can you open a Catalog? Do you have .LRCAT files?
> Does it show previews in the Catalog Library? Are the previews marked as "Missing"?
> Are you seeing the strange icons in Lightroom or Finder?
> ...





Johan Elzenga said:


> Can you post a screenshot of this “blue file with a red circle  with a minus sign in it”?


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## chilvr2 (Jul 11, 2019)

Here are some screen shots - I really blew it - after reading  A sad tale .... I now believe I never saved actual photographs - just catalogs.  But I never had all these missing before and the more I try to find them the more I’m messing this all up


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## chilvr2 (Jul 11, 2019)

Here is the end result


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## chilvr2 (Jul 11, 2019)

The more I try to find my missing pictures from LR the more problems I am causing!  I have a catalog with over 80,000 pics that I didn’t back up correctly ( sadly I discovered that by reading blogs here).  Can I rename my catalog and reimport pictures?  I want to get LR Queens FAQ book and do it correctly.  Any advise would be so appreciated,


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 11, 2019)

Oh chilvr2, sorry to hear that. Don't worry about Lightroom at this point. 

Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives? How did Seagate go about helping you recover the hard drive?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 11, 2019)

chilvr2 said:


> The more I try to find my missing pictures from LR the more problems I am causing!  I have a catalog with over 80,000 pics that I didn’t back up correctly ( sadly I discovered that by reading blogs here).  Can I rename my catalog and reimport pictures?  I want to get LR Queens FAQ book and do it correctly.  Any advise would be so appreciated,



Just hold fire until we have a clearer idea of what's going on in your other thread. Starting a new catalog is certainly a possibility if you can find your original photos, but may not be necessary. I'm going to merge this thread into your other one, just so we can keep track of the whole conversation, so we don't miss any important details.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 11, 2019)

chilvr2 said:


> Here is the end result


That folder icon means that the drive in inaccessible, either because you do not have permissions for it or because the power outage damaged the formatting. So the first question is the one that Victoria also already asked: Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives?


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## chilvr2 (Jul 11, 2019)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Oh chilvr2, sorry to hear that. Don't worry about Lightroom at this point.
> 
> Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives? How did Seagate go about helping you recover the hard drive?


Hi Victoria!   Seagate would not help at all -they insisted that the key I purchased a few years back would not work - I ran it any way and the  folders that had images still do and the grayed out catalogs are still grayed out.   I believe many photos are in different iPhoto libraries so I can start in Finder.  Thank you so much for your advise, I am  for a miracle!


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## chilvr2 (Jul 12, 2019)

Johan Elzenga said:


> That folder icon means that the drive in inaccessible, either because you do not have permissions for it or because the power outage damaged the formatting. So the first question is the one that Victoria also already asked: Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives?


Hi Johan, I haven’t been able to look for all my files as of yet but will this weekend.  You mentioned permissions and formatting, I’m not sure because I did have iPhoto folders on that same drive that were not affected by the outage.  Can permissions change for one program and not another?  I’m so computer illiterate, I have no idea what happened or how to explain it:(.  Thank you for reaching out .


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 12, 2019)

chilvr2 said:


> Hi Johan, I haven’t been able to look for all my files as of yet but will this weekend.  You mentioned permissions and formatting, I’m not sure because I did have iPhoto folders on that same drive that were not affected by the outage.  Can permissions change for one program and not another?  I’m so computer illiterate, I have no idea what happened or how to explain it:(.  Thank you for reaching out .


Yes, I believe permissions can be different for different applications. It depends on how they were installed. iPhoto is an application that comes (came) with MacOS, so it could well have more default permissions than Lightroom has. Could you d the following: Click once on the disk icon of the Neff big5 disk to select it, and then choose 'Get Info' in the Finder. Look at the bottom of the window that comes up. Do you see this ownership info?:


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## chilvr2 (Jul 13, 2019)

Johan Elzenga said:


> Yes, I believe permissions can be different for different applications. It depends on how they were installed. iPhoto is an application that comes (came) with MacOS, so it could well have more default permissions than Lightroom has. Could you d the following: Click once on the disk icon of the Neff big5 disk to select it, and then choose 'Get Info' in the Finder. Look at the bottom of the window that comes up. Do you see this ownership info?:
> 
> View attachment 12764


Yes Johan that’s exactly how mine looks.


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## chilvr2 (Jul 13, 2019)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Just hold fire until we have a clearer idea of what's going on in your other thread. Starting a new catalog is certainly a possibility if you can find your original photos, but may not be necessary. I'm going to merge this thread into your other one, just so we can keep track of the whole conversation, so we don't miss any important details.


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## chilvr2 (Jul 13, 2019)

Good morning  Victoria, Oh my goodness! I found these on my external hard drive under my oringinal LR folder!  I just afraid now to try to move them!  I would appreciate the next step if you have any advise. I think I created multiple catalogs in my frantic and uneducated  search for my photos.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 13, 2019)

Your second screenshot shows a normal catalog with 82781 images. The only problem is that almost all the images are not where Lightroom thinks they should be. That is normally quite easy to solve, providing that you can find them yourself: Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen Do you still get that strange folder icon when you try these instructions? Try to relink folders, not individual images.


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## Roelof Moorlag (Jul 13, 2019)

chilvr2 said:


> I found these on my external hard drive under my oringinal LR folder! I just afraid now to try to move them!


Don't move them! (A 'move' operation from one harddrive to another under the hood realy is a copy operation and than a delete operation.)
If you want them on a other drive just copy them. The delete part can be done later.

However, on this moment it's  better to first follow the steps Johan describes (relink folders, not individuel images)


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## chilvr2 (Jul 13, 2019)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> Don't move them! (A 'move' operation from one harddrive to another under the hood realy is a copy operation and than a delete operation.)
> If you want them on a other drive just copy them. The delete part can be done later.
> 
> However, on this moment it's  better to first follow the steps Johan describes (relink folders, not individuel images)





Johan Elzenga said:


> Your second screenshot shows a normal catalog with 82781 images. The only problem is that almost all the images are not where Lightroom thinks they should be. That is normally quite easy to solve, providing that you can find them yourself: Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen Do you still get that strange folder icon when you try these instructions? Try to relink folders, not individual images.
> 
> 
> Johan Elzenga said:
> ...


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 13, 2019)

It’s not folders, it’s disks. Your ‘Nef Big5’ disk is shown twice in the Lightroom folder panel. Once as a 4.5 GB disk, and once as a 1.5 GB disk. That will definitely cause a problem, because Lightroom uses the disk name in the path to the image, so now it doesn’t know which disk to choose. Which one is correct, or do you really have two disks with the same name mounted?

The other screenshots do not show much, except that you should be more careful with what you’re trying to do. The screenshot where Lightroom tells you that you have selected the wrong image is correct. You did select the wrong image. You were trying to locate a photo named ‘IMG-0044.DNG’, but you have selected a photo named ‘IMG-0047.JPG’, so that is the wrong name and the wrong image type. Making mistakes like that, and then telling Lightroom that it is correct, will mess up things even more. So please stop trying to reconnect single images until we have found out what is wrong with that disk!!!!!


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## chilvr2 (Jul 14, 2019)

Johan Elzenga said:


> It’s not folders, it’s disks. Your ‘Nef Big5’ disk is shown twice in the Lightroom folder panel. Once as a 4.5 GB disk, and once as a 1.5 GB disk. That will definitely cause a problem, because Lightroom uses the disk name in the path to the image, so now it doesn’t know which disk to choose. Which one is correct, or do you really have two disks with the same name mounted?
> 
> The other screenshots do not show much, except that you should be more careful with what you’re trying to do. The screenshot where Lightroom tells you that you have selected the wrong image is correct. You did select the wrong image. You were trying to locate a photo named ‘IMG-0044.DNG’, but you have selected a photo named ‘IMG-0047.JPG’, so that is the wrong name and the wrong image type. Making mistakes like that, and then telling Lightroom that it is correct, will mess up things even more. So please stop trying to reconnect single images until we have found out what is wrong with that disk!!!!!


Ohhh jeez I just realized the different picture I’d,s - I’ve been staring at the computer too long today!  I have to free up space on my MACs internal hard river as it is almost full.  I will delte all the bad shots from my hard drive this weekend.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 14, 2019)

You didn’t answer two most important question: do you really use two external disks with the same name?


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## chilvr2 (Jul 14, 2019)

Johan Elzenga said:


> You didn’t answer two most important question: do you really use two external disks with the same name?



Good morning Johan.   I have 4 external drives -
Each have a different name-

Neff Big 5 - 5 TB - where I stored copies of my IPhoto Libraries, LR backups and what I thought was my LR program.
Big6 - has copies of my iPhoto libraries, and a few backups of LR
Seagate Backup Plus Drive 3TB - this was for my time machine backups but when seagate tried to help me “repair”  Neff Big 5 it looks like this photo below 1st pic
iPhoto’s -iPhoto  libraries and  I have no idea wth I did but I see LR folers ( 2nd pic).  

Honestly I think I am beyond help!  I am thinking I need to  get all my photos on one drive.  What do you think?


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## chilvr2 (Jul 10, 2019)

I had a power outage  overnight and when I went into LR the next day every one of my 80,000 files were missing!  Every back up on my external hard drive came up with a blue file with a red circle  with a minus sign in it.  I’m using a MAC desktop and Apple doesn’t,t know LR, adobe offered no support at all and seagate had me restore my hard drive to no avail.  I am completely heartbroken!  Any advise as to where to go would be so appreciated!


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 14, 2019)

You are making things extra difficult for yourself, and for me. Your Lightroom screenshot showed that ‘Neff Big5’ disk (actually two of them), but in these screenshots it is gone. Probably disconnected or turned off. As I explained before, the problem could be that Lightroom sees two disks which are both called ‘Nef Big5’. The Lightroom screenshot also showed two different disk capacities. That is what we need to concentrate on. Not your Seagate backup disk and not your iPhoto disk.

Please turn on the Nef Big5 disk and make two screenshots. One of this disk in the Finder (like the screenshots you posted above), and one screenshot of Lightroom showing the folder panel. If you again see two Nef Big5 disks in the folder panel, then click on the black triangles behind the names so Lightroom shows what it thinks is on those disks.


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## chilvr2 (Jul 14, 2019)

chilvr2 said:


> Good morning Johan.   I have 4 external drives -
> Each have a different name-
> 
> Neff Big 5 - 5 TB - where I stored copies of my IPhoto Libraries, LR backups and what I thought was my LR program.
> ...


Hello again Johan,
I am


Johan Elzenga said:


> You are making things extra difficult for yourself, and for me. Your Lightroom screenshot showed that ‘Neff Big5’ disk (actually two of them), but in these screenshots it is gone. Probably disconnected or turned off. As I explained before, the problem could be that Lightroom sees two disks which are both called ‘Nef Big5’. The Lightroom screenshot also showed two different disk capacities. That is what we need to concentrate on. Not your Seagate backup disk and not your iPhoto disk.
> 
> Please turn on the Nef Big5 disk and make two screenshots. One of this disk in the Finder (like the screenshots you posted above), and one screenshot of Lightroom showing the folder panel. If you again see two Nef Big5 disks in the folder panel, then click on the black triangles behind the names so Lightroom shows what it thinks is on those disks.



Johan I am so sorry to frustrate you!   Below is the Neff Big 5 shot from finder but when I tried to open LR I got the message in the second pic so I didn’t proceed.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 14, 2019)

Read the message in the second screenshot. Your Lightroom catalog (or at least the last one you opened) is on your iPhoto disk, which you seem to have turned off now... Keep the Nef Big5 turned on, turn on the iPhoto disk as well and try again.


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## chilvr2 (Jul 14, 2019)

Hi Johan, this is chilvr2’s daughter. Thanks for all your help and patience thus far, I’ve read through the thread to get up to speed. I’m more familiar with LR and computers and am taking over so I can help get you the information you are requesting and hopefully solve her problem. Here are the two screenshots you requested showing Neff Big 5 in the finder and the LR folders. I’m only seeing one Neff Big 5. Would you like me to do the same for the iPhoto drive?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 14, 2019)

OK, the fact that there's only one Neff Big5 disk showing in Lightroom helps a lot, because that means that this is a simple problem of 'missing folders' and not something more fundamental. Now we only have to find out where they are...

What Lightroom shows you in the folder panel is where it *thinks* that certain folders are. So for example; Lightroom thinks that there is a folder called '2016 April 30 - zoo...' (the rest of the name is not visible because the panel is too small) right on the Neff Big5 disk. If you look at the screenshot of the actual contents of this disk, you will see that there is no such folder. That is why Lightroom shows this folder with a question mark and with the name in italics.

The question is where that folder could be. It's possible that this is actually a subfolder, so look through the folders called 'Lightroom', 'Lightroom All', 'Neff Lightroom', etc. to see if you can find it. If it isn't anywhere on this disk, then it might be on another disk (like the Big6 disk). Let's assume that you have found it somewhere. What you then need to do is right-click on this folder in the Lightroom folder panel and choose 'Find Missing Folder'. In the dialog that follows you go to the actual location of the folder, and select it. Done, that folder is now 'reconnected'. The question mark will be gone and the name will be in normal letters again. Unfortunately you will have to do this with each missing folder...


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## chilvr2 (Jul 14, 2019)

Thank you so much, Johan. I just tried that out and found one of the folders on a different external drive’s LR folder. I can see the photos are appearing back in LR again and the grayed out folder with the question mark is gone. It will take a long time trying to find them all (they are scattered, unfortunately) but I really appreciate your help!


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 14, 2019)

Good to hear that the folders did not get lost completely!


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## chilvr2 (Jul 20, 2019)

Johan Elzenga said:


> Good to hear that the folders did not get lost completely!


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## chilvr2 (Jul 20, 2019)

Thank you soooo much Johan, my daughter was able to relink99% of the files!  I just have a question, she relinked all the files thru their import dates (pic 1) and they also appear in catagory folders that I made (pic 2).  I don’ want to undo all the progress - it seems like everything is still on the external drive so do I just backup as is?  Do the date and catagory “share” the same image?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 20, 2019)

Good to hear! Lightroom simply shows the images in their real location, so on that external drive. It’s possible that you have duplicates because of all the problems. Backup that external drive if you want to backup your images, backup the catalog on the internal drive to backup all the edits, keywords, etc.

One thing still puzzles me: once again Lightroom shows the ‘Neff Big5’ drive twice!! Your screenshot shows the second one expanded, so you see all the folders, but above that is a another drive with the same name (but a different capacity, only 1 TB). Can you expand that too (click on the black triangle) so we can check what Lightroom thinks is on that drive?


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## chilvr2 (Jul 20, 2019)

Here it is Johan . I did purchase theLR FAQ book and I’m trying to study it so I don’t make a mess again!  I’m concerned because my desk top ( mac internal hard drive) is almost full.  So if I understand correctly my photos are on NEFF Big 5 as well as the folders I made for different wildlife, locations etc and on the internal hard drive?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 20, 2019)

OK, according to Lightroom there are only 15 images on this fantom disk, and they are all missing. The last 1%? I assume that this disk does not really exist, but that it is a left over from that crash. MacOS did not remove its details from the hidden Volumes folder where disk mounts are managed. If you recognise these folders (and you know where they really are), then reconnect them in the same way as all the others. They will most likely disappear from this fantom disk, and appear on the other one.

What I would do to avoid possible confusion if you do *not* know these folders (Lightroom uses paths to disks, so this is a potential problem) is to right-click on each folder on this disk and choose the menu to remove it. You will probably get a warning about removing images when you try to remove the folders that Lightroom thinks contain (missing) images, but do it anyway.

After you reconnected or removed the last folder, that disk should disappear completely.


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## five.photos (Jul 21, 2019)

For the future, I recommend an additional online backup as external hard drives fail, too. I highly recommend Backblaze which not only creates backups of the Mac, but also of the external hard drives. It saved my photos twice already in similar situations as yours. Well worth the 5 bucks per month.


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## chilvr2 (Jul 21, 2019)

five.photos said:


> For the future, I recommend an additional online backup as external hard drives fail, too. I highly recommend Backblaze which not only creates backups of the Mac, but also of the external hard drives. It saved my photos twice already in similar situations as yours. Well worth the 5 bucks per month.


Thank you!  I will definitely do that!  My current online backup is carbonate and it does not include external drives.


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