Lightroom External Drive Issue

[Joanne117]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic 10.1.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi,

I use several external drives in Lightroom Classic - all connected- for a few years. Today, Lightroom is only recognizing one of the drives in the Library. I checked the drives and they are working and can be accessed through Windows but no longer in Lightroom. I haven’t made any changes or done anything different. I think I could re-import these drives - but what a job! I wouldn’t mind if there was a reason for this or something I did wrong but this just happened “out of the blue.”

I’d really appreciate any ideas, suggestions, or input you may have.

Thank you.

 

[Replytoken]

Welcome to the forum! Do you happen to know if your machine has assigned new drive letters to these drives? If so, LR will not recognize them as it is expecting them to have the drive letters when you set up the catalog and imported the files. Windows will sometimes do this and it is easy to correct, but first let's see if it is the problem. And, as you did not mention any issues with accessing the drives on your desktop, I am assuming that the drives are showing up there and are viewable. If not, report back as you may have a different issue.

--Ken

 

[Joanne117]

Hi and thank you for the welcome and for responding. I wanted to double check and was able to confirm that the drives are still labeled correctly, they did not change. Lightroom just recognizes my most recent two external drives. The ones that are now not visible are older and I believe they may have been under a different catalog. Lightroom used to come up with the names of my older catalogs and I could switch easily if I needed to - but now it only comes with the latest catalog which Lightroom changed to with the (either the November or December) upgrade. I didn’t notice if the drives were missing then, but I haven’t used Lightroom much since so it is possible they were missing since that upgrade.

Do you know of a “not too difficult” fix for this or do I have to import all over again?
Thanks, again.
Joanne

 

[Gnits]

Sometimes, adding a usb fob and then plugging in your external drives will change the drive letters. Unplugging everything in that situation does not mean that the drive letters will revert to the initial condition..

I allocate my external drives to letters beginning with "M" as "M" is the second half of the alphabet.

 

[Joanne117]

Thanks - I never unplugged them - they stay plugged in to a usb port which stays plugged into my pc - turns on and off with pc. I‘ve had that issue in the past (drives names changing) to I’ve been extra careful about moving the drives, etc. which is why I don’t understand why this happened.

 

[Replytoken]

Hi and thank you for the welcome and for responding. I wanted to double check and was able to confirm that the drives are still labeled correctly, they did not change. Lightroom just recognizes my most recent two external drives. The ones that are now not visible are older and I believe they may have been under a different catalog. Lightroom used to come up with the names of my older catalogs and I could switch easily if I needed to - but now it only comes with the latest catalog which Lightroom changed to with the (either the November or December) upgrade. I didn’t notice if the drives were missing then, but I haven’t used Lightroom much since so it is possible they were missing since that upgrade.

Do you know of a “not too difficult” fix for this or do I have to import all over again?
Thanks, again.
Joanne

If the catalogs were created in an older version of LR, I would suggest finding them on your desktop or in File Explorer. If you can find them, try to open them from the desktop and see what happens. If you get a message that LR wants to copy the catalog and update it to the new version, you should be good to go (as LR always leaves the older file alone when it does a catalog upgrade to a new version). Give it a try and report back.

--Ken