How does LR see files?

[Greatwhitewing]

Vista64, LR3. First post, Search didn't reveal any answers.

Changed the location of "Pictures" folder to point to a secondary hard drive, G in my case.

When I look at the file system I see a single folder in my user folder, I look at properties and the location is on the G drive, look at G drive the folder is really there..all is great till I use LR.

LR shows pictures on my C drive and G drive. The structure is not the same on both and neither has the same count of photos. I tried to move one common folder from the G to the C within LR and it's gone in LR but file system still shows it as being there.

Can someone explain the way LR "looks" at the file system? Or more directly how to solve this very confusing problem.

Thanks

[PierreVandevenne]

If you really want to understand everything, purchase the very extensive and nice Lightroom tutorial offered on this site.
(disclosure: I have absolutely no vested interest, direct in indirect, in that purchase - I just bought and liked the Lightroom 2.x tutorial) There's also a tutorial called "Where The #%*! Are My Pictures?" that seems perfectly tailor made for your case (but I haven't seen it)

If you aren't interested, simply remember that Lightroom isn't a file system explorer/manager. It is essentially a database manager that contains pointers to your pictures, thumbnails, and a lot of other info about keywording, edits etc...  what you see in the library isn't necessarily connected to what happens at the file system level. You can have a completely different organization at the file system level and at the library level, although both will converge if you use exclusively Lightroom to import files. As far as I am concerned, my organization is a total mess. I import pictures using 6-7 different programs on 5 different computers. On a roughly yearly base, I try to reorganize everything and consolidate all pics on one of my 2 NAS. At that point, I add all the pictures that haven't been edited (on the 3 computers I never use to edit stuff) to the NAS and simply reimport everything ignoring duplicates. I am of course a bit more careful with the two computers where I have edited files in Lightroom as I want to keep my keywording and edits. For that purpose it is RTFM, watch a tutorial on what you can/should do etc...

[Greatwhitewing]

I have watched some Lynda tutorials but nothing really tells much about behind the scenes operation.

I understand the DB operation also. Thanks for your suggestions though.

[Schewe]

Changed the location of "Pictures" folder to point to a secondary hard drive, G in my case.

So, you changed the location via the finder not Lightroom? Why would you expect Lightroom to pick up something that happened outside of Lightroom? It can't...unless you do the move within LR.

LR shows pictures on my C drive and G drive. The structure is not the same on both and neither has the same count of photos. I tried to move one common folder from the G to the C within LR and it's gone in LR but file system still shows it as being there.

When LR moves a folder, it doesn't remove the folder from the original location...LR does copies, not "moves".

Can someone explain the way LR "looks" at the file system? Or more directly how to solve this very confusing problem.

RTFM...if you had a properly organized folder/subfolder organization, you could have easily have moved the enclosing folder from one drive to another then linked LR to the new drive. Now, unfortunately, you've pretty much mucked everything up. Do you have all the files on the original drive? Can you correct the organization and redo your move to the new drive?

Really, RTFM...you seem to be flailing about and that can make your life hell...

[Greatwhitewing]

Before I started a new catalog I had the file system set up. When I was seeing pictures in BOTH locations I tried to move one of them. Now both are missing.

[John R Smith]

The Golden Rule seems to be -

Within your photography folders (and I just have one main folder on my C drive with all my photos in it below that level in various sub-folders) -

Make sure that you do ALL your file management and disk housekeeping from within Lightroom. That is, file moves, deletions, renames, folder names, the lot. Then all will be well.

You can do the rest of your housekeeping from Explorer or whatever. But for your photographs, make sure that Lightroom can keep tabs on it all.

John