R
richard
Guest
Hi everybody, I have read the many other posts on the subject of misplaced files but I think my level of disorganization, disaggregation and work-flow mess is messier than most and I'm seriously at my wits end.
Without going into too much detail, my PC had a meltdown many months back, primarily due to a virus. As everything was imploding and looking distinctly terminal I did what comes naturally - panicked - and tried to save what I could. I copied whatever I could to wherever I could [some to external drives]. What a mess. One drive got dragged down with the virus - or Acronis stalling and formatting over the contents. As to the PC, some files didn't survive the disaster, while others did - but they're all over the place like a dog's dinner and had their file extensions changed and whatever. I can't say I'd previously given what was there much attention.
One consolation is my RAW images escaped unscathed, as did a couple of catalogs from an earlier LR and most in what I'm using now which is LR 1.4. They'll 'boot up' in LR. Here's the prob. In the Library under 'All Photographs' it announces 5'''+ photographs, while below that 'Missing Files' says 4''; yet EVERY photograph in the central viewing pane has a question mark [?] in the top r/h corner, denoting the file is offline. I've tried using the back-up, and syncing, and maybe I did it incorrectly, but I got nowhere.
My apologies for all this guys! I think it is just such a mess that the usual remedy might not be enough, say, copying back to the original location because in some instances it - the drive or whatever - ceased to exist.
So ... if I reinstall LR and auto-imported all the raw images, is there any way that the surviving catalogs can cross-pollinate - or will I have to search for every RAW and match the file? NB: As a possible alternative [and maybe save your time], I just got a MacBook - never trusting PC again - and Lightroom 2; would it be better to just forget trying to rectify the situation on the PC and transfer the catalogs onto the new Mac? Either way, to my uneducated mind, it still throws up the same hurdles, no?
Sorry if I haven't explained myself adequately here, I'm not a heavy user of this program [as you have surely already gathered (-:]. I really appreciate any advice - and thanks very, very much for your time.
Best wishes,
Richard Henderson
www.moneyshotstudios.com
Without going into too much detail, my PC had a meltdown many months back, primarily due to a virus. As everything was imploding and looking distinctly terminal I did what comes naturally - panicked - and tried to save what I could. I copied whatever I could to wherever I could [some to external drives]. What a mess. One drive got dragged down with the virus - or Acronis stalling and formatting over the contents. As to the PC, some files didn't survive the disaster, while others did - but they're all over the place like a dog's dinner and had their file extensions changed and whatever. I can't say I'd previously given what was there much attention.
One consolation is my RAW images escaped unscathed, as did a couple of catalogs from an earlier LR and most in what I'm using now which is LR 1.4. They'll 'boot up' in LR. Here's the prob. In the Library under 'All Photographs' it announces 5'''+ photographs, while below that 'Missing Files' says 4''; yet EVERY photograph in the central viewing pane has a question mark [?] in the top r/h corner, denoting the file is offline. I've tried using the back-up, and syncing, and maybe I did it incorrectly, but I got nowhere.
My apologies for all this guys! I think it is just such a mess that the usual remedy might not be enough, say, copying back to the original location because in some instances it - the drive or whatever - ceased to exist.
So ... if I reinstall LR and auto-imported all the raw images, is there any way that the surviving catalogs can cross-pollinate - or will I have to search for every RAW and match the file? NB: As a possible alternative [and maybe save your time], I just got a MacBook - never trusting PC again - and Lightroom 2; would it be better to just forget trying to rectify the situation on the PC and transfer the catalogs onto the new Mac? Either way, to my uneducated mind, it still throws up the same hurdles, no?
Sorry if I haven't explained myself adequately here, I'm not a heavy user of this program [as you have surely already gathered (-:]. I really appreciate any advice - and thanks very, very much for your time.
Best wishes,
Richard Henderson
www.moneyshotstudios.com
