An unknown error occurred while moving a photo

[xraysur]

In Lightroom 2.4:

I click on a folder on the F: drive. Then I type <Ctrl>a to select all of the photos in that folder. I click on one of the photos and drag it to a folder on the C: drive.

I get the following error message:

“An unknown error occurred while moving a photo.”

One of the files does not appear to have been moved in Lightroom and now there is a “?” in the upper right corner of that image. However, when I look at the directories, both the .NEF and the .XMP files seem to have been moved from the source directory to the destination directory. I don’t see this problem happening with .JPG files, just raw files and their associated sidecar files.

When I get this error message, none of the other files in the selection after the file with the “?” gets moved either.

I’ve seen this problem many times and it has even happened when no other programs are running. I also tried turning off Norton Internet Security, but I don’t see any difference.

 

[sizzlingbadger]

If the actual files are being moved at the OS level then maybe it is an issue at the catalogue level. Have you tried a restart & optimise to see if that helps. Can you reconnect/re-sync the image?

 

[xraysur]

Thanks for taking time to reply and make suggestions.

I’ve tried to get around this problem in the past by restarting and optimizing the catalog, but I tried it again, just to make sure. Then, I tried to move a group of photos. Once again, I got the message:

“An unknown error occurred while moving a photo.”

The very first file that I tried to move now had the “?” in the upper right corner. (Let me add for completeness, that I don’t get this error every time I try to move files using Lightroom. It does happen frequently enough that it has upset my current project to reorganize my disks. Unfortunately, I can’t identify anything common to the failed transfers other than it always seems to involve a .NEF raw file. Since I shoot raw most of the time, I have lots of .NEF files.)

I can left click on the “?” and reconnect the photo to folder where it now physically sits. That folder is the correct destination I used in the original move. At this point, things seem to be good. I can highlight the destination folder and use the Library> Synchronize command. This appears to work. BUT… when I go back to the original source folder and try to move a group of photos, the whole error process repeats itself. So, while I can fix the catalog reference for a single photo, I have to do this over and over, which takes a really long time. Since the folder I am trying to move contains several hundred images, this is not a strategy that will help me get the job done in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Denis Pagé]

[quote author=xraysur link=topic=7744.msg52956#msg52956 date=1252334414]
... Since the folder I am trying to move contains several hundred images, this is not a strategy that will help me get the job done in a reasonable amount of time.
[/quote]

In this case, the fastest and easiest way will be to move them Lightroom closed with Windows Explorer. Once done, back in Lightroom, Just right-click the folder you moved as a "?" mark will appear and choose to "Update Folder Location". This will link all moved images back.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I know this thread is a few days old... I'm just catching up.

Other thing to check is file and folder permissions - I often see this when I've imported files from my FTP server and then try to move them without changing the permissions first.

 

[xraysur]

I upgraded to version 2.5, hoping it would help my situation, but I don’t see any differences.

I tried moving the files to the C: drive with Windows Explorer and making sure that both the files and the directory were removed from the F: drive, where Lightroom thinks they should be. Then, back in Lightroom, I right clicked on the icon of a folder with a “?” on the F: drive. Next, I clicked on “Find Missing Folder…” and navigated my way to the folder on the C: drive where I moved the files. Then Lightroom gave me a warning message that said “The selected folder or a folder it contains is already in Lightroom.” At this point, all I could do is click OK. I don’t think anything changed. Lightroom still shows the folder icon with a “?” on the F: drive and all of the photos in that folder have a “?” in the upper right corner.

Let me explain what I am trying to do:
I have the same folder “2''5-12” on both my C: drive and my F: drive. I recently bought a much larger C: drive and I am trying to consolidate all of my photos on one drive rather than have them divided between internal and external drives. My guess is that Lightroom won’t let you use the “Find Missing Folder…” option if it already knows about a folder with that name on the drive you specify.

I tried one other strategy that I’ve seen written about here. I clicked on the “?” in the right corner on the photo I moved. I clicked on the “Locate” button and then pointed to the photo in its new directory. I made sure the “Find nearby missing photos” box was checked and clicked the “Select” button. Eventually, the selected photo disappeared from the current screen, but all the other 2''+ photos on the screen remained, with a “?” in the upper right corner. So, I succeeded in synchronizing 1 photo in Lightroom’s catalog, but this technique doesn’t scale when there are 1''’s of files to relink.

Victoria:

Can file/folder permissions cause problems on a Window XP machine or is that Mac foible? I am working on a non networked Windows XP machine, so I have not run into permissions problems before. If you have seen this as a problem with XP, could you point me to a reference that explains how it happens or how to fix it.

 

[sizzlingbadger]

XP can have permissions problems on it's folders too.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

So is that folder already showing in LR? That would explain the problem. Don't panic, that's easily fixed if that's the case.

Do you know how to do a screenshot? A shot of your folders panel would enable us to give much more specific instructions to get you sorted in no time.

 

[xraysur]

Here are 2 screen shots of my folders panel. One shows the internal disk (the destination for the move) and the other shows the external disk (the source for the move).
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Another strange thing happened when exited from the Lightroom program. At least 6 hours after I re-linked 2 photos into the folder on the internal drive, I clicked on the Close window button and got this Confirm message.

‘Quit Lightroom? There are 2 tasks in progress: “Searching for nearby missing photos” and “Searching for nearby missing photos”.’

This seems to indicate that Lightroom still thought that it was re-linking photos, but nothing appeared to be happening. Does this shed any light on the original problem I had moving files from one disk to another? Can anyone suggest an explanation why Lightroom is behaving badly?