Change in Drive Letter vs. Catalogue

[walter.sk]

I'm not sure whether this should have been posted on a different forum, but it came up after I imported my 3 500Gb external drives into the LR2 library.

A few days later, my WinXP computer decided to rename two of my external drives, resulting in question marks  on zillions of images.

I spent a long time trying to redirect LightRoom to find the correct folders, but the process was complicated because other drives now had the drive letters that the drives in question had used.

Conferring with a friend who is more computer-savvy than I, I found that it would have been possible, and much easier, to rename the drives that had changed:

1: Right-click on the My Computer icon.
2: Click on Manage.
3: Click on Storage>Disk Management to bring up a graphic of your drives.
4: Find the drive in question (whose letter has been changed).  Check that no other drive now has its old letter.  If there is one, its drive letter must be changed first or you won't be able to correct the situation.
5: Change the drive letter by right-clicking on the graphic of the drive involved.  Then click on Change Drive Letter.  A dialogue box will open that has a dropdown menu containing free drive letters.  Choose the correct one for your drive, and you're done, without having to redirect LightRoom!  It takes about 10 seconds to do.

I've been using XP since it came out, and thought I knew how to use all of the system-related tools, but nowhere did I learn this!

[picnic]

I'm not sure whether this should have been posted on a different forum, but it came up after I imported my 3 500Gb external drives into the LR2 library.

A few days later, my WinXP computer decided to rename two of my external drives, resulting in question marks  on zillions of images.

I spent a long time trying to redirect LightRoom to find the correct folders, but the process was complicated because other drives now had the drive letters that the drives in question had used.

Conferring with a friend who is more computer-savvy than I, I found that it would have been possible, and much easier, to rename the drives that had changed:

1: Right-click on the My Computer icon.
2: Click on Manage.
3: Click on Storage>Disk Management to bring up a graphic of your drives.
4: Find the drive in question (whose letter has been changed).  Check that no other drive now has its old letter.  If there is one, its drive letter must be changed first or you won't be able to correct the situation.
5: Change the drive letter by right-clicking on the graphic of the drive involved.  Then click on Change Drive Letter.  A dialogue box will open that has a dropdown menu containing free drive letters.  Choose the correct one for your drive, and you're done, without having to redirect LightRoom!  It takes about 10 seconds to do.

I've been using XP since it came out, and thought I knew how to use all of the system-related tools, but nowhere did I learn this!
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I didn't either Walter until I had exactly the same issue with 1.4.  I have quite a number of external drives (archives to 2000) and didn't have my drives named.  I asked the question here and on the PC forum at drpreview and got the same answer--name my drives.  That's solved my problem and your little 'tute' should answer it for anyone that has the same issue (I actually used a bit differnent method, but it comes out to the same).  

Its likely that many will eventually have more than one external drive--so it makes good sense to start out doing this with even the first external drive (I also have each of my drives marked so I can easily find the correct drive when i want to work with older files).

Diane

[sergio]

What will happen once you run out of letters? I began naming my drives with names and numbers but the system asigns a letter. These drives I store offline (with an exact duplicate drive as backup) and hold all my images. I started out with drive Z then Y the X and so on. What will happen when the alphabet ends? Will LR go crazy if letters repeat in different drives even if they have different names?

Any ideas to solve the upcoming conundrum?

[walter.sk]

...Will LR go crazy if letters repeat in different drives even if they have different names?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=218089\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

What would happen if another drive took the drive letter of one of your offline drives is that 1) Lightroom would put questionmarks on all of the files and folders of the offline drive, and 2)would probably import the new files and folders from the online drive under the old drive designation in the Folders panel, and continue to report the old files as missing or off-line (my best guess).  I also would guess that when you plug in the old drive you would have to either remove or rename the new drive, and then make sure that the old drive gets its old drive letter.  Then, you could take the root folder or folder closest to the root, and tell LightRoom where to find the folder.  If that works, the files from your newr drive will have the question marks.

Again, these are my guesses.  I'd like to hear, as well, from somebody who really knows.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could assign a drive letter and designate it as a permanent letter?

[sergio]

Maybe not only that we can assign a letter but a combination of characters or whatever just so we are not limited by the amount of letters in the alphabet. I am pretty sure there has to be a way of working around this limitation.

[wolfnowl]

This may be a stupid question, but in Windows at least A,B, C drives are pretty much taken.  That leaves 23 other letters.  How many people have 23 external drives in use at one time?

Mike.

[picnic]

This may be a stupid question, but in Windows at least A,B, C drives are pretty much taken.  That leaves 23 other letters.  How many people have 23 external drives in use at one time?

Mike.
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I'm actually up through P but that still leaves me 10 more letters--10 more years the way I have my archives set up.  I expect I will deal with things when I come to them.  In 10 years the way we deal with archives may be obsolete to some degree and Lightroom will also have changed a great deal by then no doubt.  Others may be using a lot more drives so may have an issue sooner, but for now, it works.

I also have all of these drives backed up on another very large drive offsite.

Diane

[sergio]

This may be a stupid question, but in Windows at least A,B, C drives are pretty much taken.  That leaves 23 other letters.  How many people have 23 external drives in use at one time?

Mike.
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It is not that you have them in use all at the same time. I'll explain my method so you can understand what I mean.

I have 500gb drives I fill with images that I import into LR database. They are always offline because they are in a drawer. When I need an image I look it up in LR, it obviously tells me it is offline and has the question mark in the thumnail. In the Folders panes I can see, for example, Z:ARCHIV_001A which is the letter and name of the HD where some of my files are. When I run out of letters, I will have then 2 HD named Z: and that will probably screw everything in LR.