Lost folders, then found, annoyed.....

[picnic]

I looked through several pages in the forum and couldn't find anything that was close to this issue, so started anew.  Not a very good thread subject either, but this comes the closest (though I could have hyped 'annoyed' to what I really was LOL).

Maybe I use a sort of archaic type of system, but I use external drives for my archived files.  I have one per year (well, 2000, 2001 on one, 2002, 2003 on one--when files were smaller).  I don't keep them connected, but all drives are labeled with the year so its easy to connect if I want something from a previous year.  My current (2008) and last year are also 'backed up' on a dedicated internal drive and I just purchased a 1T external to copy all drives to for further backup (will never be used in LR) and stored off site, backed up weekly or monthly, since I'm already backed internally--and for major things, on DVDs also.

So--my organization is year/month/date/descriptive title for each folder.  I import and reference from the drives so many of my folders are perpetually red, but mostly keyworded and easily found.

Today--I wanted to print from my current external (2008), turned it on, found the tiff file in LR (had been roundtripped to PS), set up the print module and found the file 'missing'.  The drive was obviously hooked so I checked the library, found it had not 'found' the drive/folder, so went to 'find folder', browsed and found it--and LR never would make the folder usable.  I closed LR, came back--still nothing.  Then the folder actually disappeared and I also sat here and watched all my keywords say 0/242, etc.  Annoyed---that wasn't the half of it LOL.  

Ultimately, I checked through all my year folders and found it in 2006--still red--and don't know how it got there--different drive, etc.  I then went to 'browse/find folder' again, it ended up in use again, but dropped it down to another spot in the folder list.  I cleaned everything up--I think--but am not sure what happened--oh, and keywords returned.  I have had it not make folders usable before when I reconnected but always 'browse/find folder' did it.  Any idea what could cause this?   I'm not sure I put this in right order--when I found the 2008 under 2006 after dropping down, I selected one photo and asked to see folder.  When I found the folder, I did the 'find folder' thing and selected it on the correct drive.  This is my first real time consuming annoying thing with LR and since I don't understand what happened, not sure how to keep it from happening again.

Diane

[John.Murray]

Diane - I know you are running XP, are you connecting to network drives in addition to the local external drive(s)?  I had an issue where a network drive letter (let's say H:) ended up colliding with the drive letter of a previouslly connected external drive.  Needless to say, getting back access to the external drive took a bit of head scratching.  Try disconnecting network drives, and re-login to clear explorer's cache

hth - John

[jjj]

I'd go with John on this, unless each drive you conect in turn has a different drive letter, then LR may get very confused.
The solution, connect all your drives and give them all a separate Drive letter. Go to Disk Management and reassign there. Say 2006 is K, 2007 is L, 2008 is M, etc.
LR will then 'lose' the files so just get LR to find one in each drive and it should then find the rest.

BTW External drives are not the same as networked drives, external drives when connected appear identical to internal drives in Explorer.

[picnic]

I'd go with John on this, unless each drive you conect in turn has a different drive letter, then LR may get very confused.
The solution, connect all your drives and give them all a separate Drive letter. Go to Disk Management and reassign there. Say 2006 is K, 2007 is L, 2008 is M, etc.
LR will then 'lose' the files so just get LR to find one in each drive and it should then find the rest.

BTW External drives are not the same as networked drives, external drives when connected appear identical to internal drives in Explorer.
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No, no networked drives.  But--I wondered about the different letters.  If I only connect one, it is always E--have 2 connected, then it is generally E and G (since my internal is F).  Oh, and if I have my card reader connected, I get 4 more drives--so I need to assign--I guess beyond what my card reader brings up.

I'll try your recommendation.  That makes good sense to me.

Thanks,
Diane

[picnic]

Just an update on this.  Figured out how to rename my drives, then pointed at them in Lightroom and all is terrific again.  Everything works nicely--the names 'stick'--and I'm having no problems and my library is a lot easier to use.  Thanks for the recommendations and pointing me in the right direction.

Diane