Re-named drive causing BIG headaches...

[gunnar1]

Running a Mac Pro OSX 10.5.6 and LR2.2. The other day, I start LR and no folders show up. I have various drives that are recognized by LR but the main drive that I keep photos on is a second hard drive in my machine used ONLY for photos, nothing else. I back up to an external, but my photos are not referenced to that drive, only the installed drive. After a bit of sleuthing, I realized that the drive I use had been mysteriously renamed to a non-sensical series of letters and characters. The only thing I can think of is that one of my kids was screwing around and accidently re-named the drive. I remembered that it was called "storage hd", so I re-named it back again, and instructed LR to start locating photos again. That is where the problems started...

LR could not find anything on what I had re-named the drive, so I re-named it yet again, thinking that it was "storage HD" not "storage hd". Eventually, LR found around most of the images, and they are referenced properly. There are now two problems: One, there are still fully 3500 images that it will not reference in their existing location. By that I mean that I can get them to locate, but then LR creates a new folder, without my naming, and puts it under yet another "storage hd" designation on my folder tree. This leads to the second part of the problem: whenever I import now, even though I am importing to the exact same place as always, LR puts the new import under this mysterious new "storage hd" location, and will not use the file name that I give it when importing. That problem of not using the file name happens on locate as well.

I am now thoroughly frustrated. I have attempted to locate some sort of history of the drive re-naming but I don't really know where to look and I have tried every strategy I can possibly think of to no avail. If anyone has experienced anything like this PLEASE help. I may just resort to physical violence (not that that would fix anything but it might make me feel better) and my wife is starting to question my sanity.

Pat

[john beardsworth]

In Folders panel, have you tried right clicking the missing drive and choosing Locate Missing Folder? Other new options include Add Parent Folder, and Promote Subfolders.

[jjj]

I've also been having possiblythe same issue. I renamed drives and now LR thinks all my data storage HDs are actually inside the Mac HD. I hoped 2.3 would fix it, but no joy.

[Charles Waugh]

go to the top-most file you can find in the folder hierarchy and, in grid view, click on the '?' in the upper right of the image's thumbnail view.
LR will ask you if you want to locate the file.
Go find it on the now-renamed drive and then make sure you tell LR to find other files 'nearby'.

NOTE: It will only look in sub-folders, not in sister or brother folders (at the same level as the one in which you found the first file).

I know this works because I had 52,000 plus images on a 500GB drive that got full.
I copied them all to a 1GB drive and did this 'trick' to re-direct LR to the new drive.
It took a few hours for LR to grind through all the folders and 'find' all the files.

NOTE: I was estupido in that I also copied a backup of my catalog to the new drive and didn't move the previews - I am still fiddling with having LR build all the previews!


Charles Waugh
Charles Fine Art Portraits

[Charles Waugh]

I just noticed this from John, who replied to my post of a few days ago bemoaning the blunder I already mentioned:

[blockquote][blockquote]Does this help? Right click a directory, and choose Add Parent Folder, which shows the directory's parent and lets you point all its subfolders to their new location. You can go up more than one level if you want (and there's also a Promote Subfolders menu choice which reverses the process).

Another point, which you're learning by experience, is that once pictures are registered in Lightroom, use it to move files, not Explorer or Finder.

And didn't you have a backup of your catalogue before doing this?

John[/blockquote][/blockquote]

[gunnar1]

Regarding a backup- yes, I backup religiously my master files and my catalog. What I eventually ended up doing was "locating" all of the missing files, then adding a "parent folder" and then re-naming the parent folder to the original name that I used. I now have everything back again, but the odd part id that there are still multiple "storage hd" drives showing up in LR. One has a big chunk of original files, and one has all of the lost then found files on it. I will put a screen shot up of what the folder panel now looks like. I can't seem to get them all back om the same drive identification but I'll take what I can get at this point...[attachment=12374:Picture_1.png]

Thanks for your help,

Pat

[gunnar1]

Does anyone know if I can merge the two drives back into one in LR? All of my files are in their proper locations on the hard drive, but when I try to move them in LR they end up moving inside one another on my hard drive, creating strange folder trees that don't make any sense. Suggestions?

[flash]

Does anyone know if I can merge the two drives back into one in LR? All of my files are in their proper locations on the hard drive, but when I try to move them in LR they end up moving inside one another on my hard drive, creating strange folder trees that don't make any sense. Suggestions?

I think the easiest way is going to be to try a completely different name. It's obvoius that your OS isn't properly distinguishing between the upper and lower case variants.

1. You are sure you have all your images in the location you want.
2. Rename the location "photos 2009" (or pick your own but NO variations on "storage HD") and if possible assign a drive letter.
3. Reboot.
4. Start the LR catalogue you want to use. The in the folder tree (in grid view) right click on the highest level of the old drive name. Point this to the new name.
4. Redo this for all old drive names.

Gordon

[jjj]

Does anyone know if I can merge the two drives back into one in LR? All of my files are in their proper locations on the hard drive, but when I try to move them in LR they end up moving inside one another on my hard drive, creating strange folder trees that don't make any sense. Suggestions?

That sounds like the problem I've been getting. All my data drives [nearly 2TBs] with my images are in my MacHD [320G] according to LR.

[gunnar1]

I finally got everything relocated and straightened out; I used a variation of what Flash suggested above. I ended up moving everything within my internal drive and asking LR to find each successive file until it was all relocated. What seemed to work the best was to ask LR to find the parent. It would then locate the files that belonged to the parent. In all, it took an evening's worth of work. A pain for sure but it could have been worse. The eventual outcome is that my children are no longer allowed to touch that machine! (I'm not too mean tho- they have their own Mac...)