Major problem with LR, please help!

[Drayken]

Ok, I keep all my photos on an external HD. I put the drive as "P" drive letter. It works fine on my laptop. But when I hooked it up to my desktop, I guess it did not keep the drive letter of "P". It set as "J". Well, now that I hooked it back to my laptop, it shows that all my pics are in "J" and are missing. Is there a way to get this all corrected?

I went to my desktop and assigned the drive to "P" now, so both see it as "P". but LR thinks all the pics are in "J".

[johnbeardy]

Right click the J folder, and Update Folder Location.

John

[Drayken]

Right click the J folder, and Update Folder Location.

John

I can't. When I right click a folder, it says: find missing folder, remove, export as a catalog. That's it. It has a "?" on every folder.

[BobSmith]

choose "find missing folder".  You'll then be given a chance to show where that folder is on the correct drive.

Bob Smith

[Drayken]

choose "find missing folder".  You'll then be given a chance to show where that folder is on the correct drive.

Bob Smith

When I choose find missing folder, and choose one of the folders, it says that folder already exists. I assume it is referring to the folders that now have "?" marks on them. It seems the only way is to sync the entire HD, but I have a feeling that is going to import them all over again, and take like 5 hrs!   

[Drayken]

I wanted to make sure this was understood too. All pics were in drive "P". Somehow, LR now thinks they all should be in drive "J". There is no drive "J" anymore. I have no idea how it moved them. (It did not physically move them).

[johnbeardy]

Have you been hitting Sync to try to resolve the problem? It's not designed for digging you out of a hole, and can mean you have the same folder thinking it's on J and P. You're going to need to take time and care resolving a few folders one by one through that Find Missing Folders (Note - in future please state your LR version and OS) . Once you see what is happening, the rest will be easier.

John

[Ken]

Ok, I keep all my photos on an external HD. I put the drive as "P" drive letter. It works fine on my laptop. But when I hooked it up to my desktop, I guess it did not keep the drive letter of "P". It set as "J". Well, now that I hooked it back to my laptop, it shows that all my pics are in "J" and are missing. Is there a way to get this all corrected?

I went to my desktop and assigned the drive to "P" now, so both see it as "P". but LR thinks all the pics are in "J".

Corey,

Assuming you are on a PC, can't you just re-map the drive the J: to P:?  Right-click on My Computer and select Manage.  The desktop should hold the new drive letter designation after it has been re-mapped.

--Ken

[Drayken]

Ok, I keep all my photos on an external HD. I put the drive as "P" drive letter. It works fine on my laptop. But when I hooked it up to my desktop, I guess it did not keep the drive letter of "P". It set as "J". Well, now that I hooked it back to my laptop, it shows that all my pics are in "J" and are missing. Is there a way to get this all corrected?

I went to my desktop and assigned the drive to "P" now, so both see it as "P". but LR thinks all the pics are in "J".

Corey,

Assuming you are on a PC, can't you just re-map the drive the J: to P:?  Right-click on My Computer and select Manage.  The desktop should hold the new drive letter designation after it has been re-mapped.

--Ken

LOL, yes, I can and most likely will. I just have so many darn drives, I liked knowing my photo's were on "P". The main problem I have is, I don't know how it happened, so not sure how to keep it from happening again.

I am on windows XP on desktop and vista on laptop, with LR 2.5. I cannot use "find folder" because it says it is already there, yet not. I am pretty sure just setting the drive to "J" again will solve it tho. I will post back if it doesn't.

[peterkrogh]

Corey,
When you assign a permanent drive letter to a drive, I think that's just for the machine that you do the assigning on.  So computer 1 sees it as Drive P, but computer 2 assigns the next open letter. I write the letter I assign on the drive itself, and then make sure that I tell other computers to also use that letter.

Peter

[Ken]

Corey,
When you assign a permanent drive letter to a drive, I think that's just for the machine that you do the assigning on.  So computer 1 sees it as Drive P, but computer 2 assigns the next open letter. I write the letter I assign on the drive itself, and then make sure that I tell other computers to also use that letter.

Peter

Peter

I believe that you were reading my mind, or at least looking into my laptop bag.  That's what the blue painter's tape is for, at least on my external drives!

--Ken

[aniemann]

I may be way off  base here, but something similar happened to me a long time ago (so now a vague memory).

The problem was that I had no images in the root folder, and Lightroom therefor refused to do anything with that folder (other than delete it and some other things I can't remember). Once I put an image on the root I was able to 'relink' that folder to the new location and all subfolders went with it.

Andy