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Lost it all

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chilvr2

Member
Premium Cloud Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2019
Messages
61
Lightroom Experience
Beginner
Lightroom Version
5.x
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version 5.7
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I had a power outage overnight and when I went into LR the next day every one of my 80,000 files were missing! Every back up on my external hard drive came up with a blue file with a red circle with a minus sign in it. I’m using a MAC desktop and Apple doesn’t,t know LR, adobe offered no support at all and seagate had me restore my hard drive to no avail. I am completely heartbroken! Any advise as to where to go would be so appreciated!
 
It is a hard lesson to learn, but if you do not have backup copies of your Lightroom Catalog and all your photo files that are readable, then you are out of luck, I am sorry.
Your situation is like that mentioned here- A sad tale of hard drive disasters and Lightroom backups | The Lightroom Queen

I am not Mac familiar- but can you explain the "blue file with a red circle with a minus sign ". Or post a screen-clip, others may be able to explain the meaning of the icons. Was the external drive connected when the power outage occurred?
 
It is a hard lesson to learn, but if you do not have backup copies of your Lightroom Catalog and all your photo files that are readable, then you are out of luck, I am sorry.
Your situation is like that mentioned here- A sad tale of hard drive disasters and Lightroom backups | The Lightroom Queen

I am not Mac familiar- but can you explain the "blue file with a red circle with a minus sign ". Or post a screen-clip, others may be able to explain the meaning of the icons. Was the external drive connected when the power outage occurred?
I backed up almost every day. And yes the drive was connected but all my other files on the drive are perfect. I seem to be able to locate a few when using the search on the photo but with over 80,000 pictures I don’t think I’ll ever recoup my loss. I really thought my library was backing up perfectly each time
 
From your posts I do not have a clear idea of what you actually do have.
Can you open a Catalog? Do you have .LRCAT files?
Does it show previews in the Catalog Library? Are the previews marked as "Missing"?
Are you seeing the strange icons in Lightroom or Finder?
Can you see photo files in Finder?
Some more descriptive details from you, with screen-clips, may be helpful.
 
I had a power outage overnight and when I went into LR the next day every one of my 80,000 files were missing! Every back up on my external hard drive came up with a blue file with a red circle with a minus sign in it. I’m using a MAC desktop and Apple doesn’t,t know LR, adobe offered no support at all and seagate had me restore my hard drive to no avail. I am completely heartbroken! Any advise as to where to go would be so appreciated!
Can you post a screenshot of this “blue file with a red circle with a minus sign in it”?
 
From your posts I do not have a clear idea of what you actually do have.
Can you open a Catalog? Do you have .LRCAT files?
Does it show previews in the Catalog Library? Are the previews marked as "Missing"?
Are you seeing the strange icons in Lightroom or Finder?
Can you see photo files in Finder?
Some more descriptive details from you, with screen-clips, may be helpful.
Can you post a screenshot of this “blue file with a red circle with a minus sign in it”?
 
Here are some screen shots - I really blew it - after reading A sad tale .... I now believe I never saved actual photographs - just catalogs. But I never had all these missing before and the more I try to find them the more I’m messing this all up
 

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Here is the end result
 

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The more I try to find my missing pictures from LR the more problems I am causing! I have a catalog with over 80,000 pics that I didn’t back up correctly ( sadly I discovered that by reading blogs here). Can I rename my catalog and reimport pictures? I want to get LR Queens FAQ book and do it correctly. Any advise would be so appreciated,
 
Oh chilvr2, sorry to hear that. Don't worry about Lightroom at this point.

Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives? How did Seagate go about helping you recover the hard drive?
 
The more I try to find my missing pictures from LR the more problems I am causing! I have a catalog with over 80,000 pics that I didn’t back up correctly ( sadly I discovered that by reading blogs here). Can I rename my catalog and reimport pictures? I want to get LR Queens FAQ book and do it correctly. Any advise would be so appreciated,

Just hold fire until we have a clearer idea of what's going on in your other thread. Starting a new catalog is certainly a possibility if you can find your original photos, but may not be necessary. I'm going to merge this thread into your other one, just so we can keep track of the whole conversation, so we don't miss any important details.
 
Here is the end result
That folder icon means that the drive in inaccessible, either because you do not have permissions for it or because the power outage damaged the formatting. So the first question is the one that Victoria also already asked: Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives?
 
Oh chilvr2, sorry to hear that. Don't worry about Lightroom at this point.

Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives? How did Seagate go about helping you recover the hard drive?
Hi Victoria! Seagate would not help at all -they insisted that the key I purchased a few years back would not work - I ran it any way and the folders that had images still do and the grayed out catalogs are still grayed out. I believe many photos are in different iPhoto libraries so I can start in Finder. Thank you so much for your advise, I am for a miracle!
 
That folder icon means that the drive in inaccessible, either because you do not have permissions for it or because the power outage damaged the formatting. So the first question is the one that Victoria also already asked: Using Finder, can you find your photos on your hard drives?
Hi Johan, I haven’t been able to look for all my files as of yet but will this weekend. You mentioned permissions and formatting, I’m not sure because I did have iPhoto folders on that same drive that were not affected by the outage. Can permissions change for one program and not another? I’m so computer illiterate, I have no idea what happened or how to explain it:(. Thank you for reaching out .
 
Hi Johan, I haven’t been able to look for all my files as of yet but will this weekend. You mentioned permissions and formatting, I’m not sure because I did have iPhoto folders on that same drive that were not affected by the outage. Can permissions change for one program and not another? I’m so computer illiterate, I have no idea what happened or how to explain it:(. Thank you for reaching out .
Yes, I believe permissions can be different for different applications. It depends on how they were installed. iPhoto is an application that comes (came) with MacOS, so it could well have more default permissions than Lightroom has. Could you d the following: Click once on the disk icon of the Neff big5 disk to select it, and then choose 'Get Info' in the Finder. Look at the bottom of the window that comes up. Do you see this ownership info?:

12764
 
Yes, I believe permissions can be different for different applications. It depends on how they were installed. iPhoto is an application that comes (came) with MacOS, so it could well have more default permissions than Lightroom has. Could you d the following: Click once on the disk icon of the Neff big5 disk to select it, and then choose 'Get Info' in the Finder. Look at the bottom of the window that comes up. Do you see this ownership info?:

View attachment 12764
Yes Johan that’s exactly how mine looks.
 
Just hold fire until we have a clearer idea of what's going on in your other thread. Starting a new catalog is certainly a possibility if you can find your original photos, but may not be necessary. I'm going to merge this thread into your other one, just so we can keep track of the whole conversation, so we don't miss any important details.
 
Good morning Victoria, Oh my goodness! I found these on my external hard drive under my oringinal LR folder! I just afraid now to try to move them! I would appreciate the next step if you have any advise. I think I created multiple catalogs in my frantic and uneducated search for my photos.
 

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Your second screenshot shows a normal catalog with 82781 images. The only problem is that almost all the images are not where Lightroom thinks they should be. That is normally quite easy to solve, providing that you can find them yourself: Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen Do you still get that strange folder icon when you try these instructions? Try to relink folders, not individual images.
 
I found these on my external hard drive under my oringinal LR folder! I just afraid now to try to move them!
Don't move them! (A 'move' operation from one harddrive to another under the hood realy is a copy operation and than a delete operation.)
If you want them on a other drive just copy them. The delete part can be done later.

However, on this moment it's better to first follow the steps Johan describes (relink folders, not individuel images)
 
Don't move them! (A 'move' operation from one harddrive to another under the hood realy is a copy operation and than a delete operation.)
If you want them on a other drive just copy them. The delete part can be done later.

However, on this moment it's better to first follow the steps Johan describes (relink folders, not individuel images)
Your second screenshot shows a normal catalog with 82781 images. The only problem is that almost all the images are not where Lightroom thinks they should be. That is normally quite easy to solve, providing that you can find them yourself: Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen Do you still get that strange folder icon when you try these instructions? Try to relink folders, not individual images.
Your second screenshot shows a normal catalog with 82781 images. The only problem is that almost all the images are not where Lightroom thinks they should be. That is normally quite easy to solve, providing that you can find them yourself: Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen Do you still get that strange folder icon when you try these instructions? Try to relink folders, not individual images.
Hello Again Johan,
I seem to have 2 Folers now named big 5- I have no idea how I created that problem and neighter folder will bring back missing pictures. I eventually find the picture by name and then get a message that the file has a different name and then when I confirm, the picture is still missing and not able to be edited etc.
 

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It’s not folders, it’s disks. Your ‘Nef Big5’ disk is shown twice in the Lightroom folder panel. Once as a 4.5 GB disk, and once as a 1.5 GB disk. That will definitely cause a problem, because Lightroom uses the disk name in the path to the image, so now it doesn’t know which disk to choose. Which one is correct, or do you really have two disks with the same name mounted?

The other screenshots do not show much, except that you should be more careful with what you’re trying to do. The screenshot where Lightroom tells you that you have selected the wrong image is correct. You did select the wrong image. You were trying to locate a photo named ‘IMG-0044.DNG’, but you have selected a photo named ‘IMG-0047.JPG’, so that is the wrong name and the wrong image type. Making mistakes like that, and then telling Lightroom that it is correct, will mess up things even more. So please stop trying to reconnect single images until we have found out what is wrong with that disk!!!!!
 
It’s not folders, it’s disks. Your ‘Nef Big5’ disk is shown twice in the Lightroom folder panel. Once as a 4.5 GB disk, and once as a 1.5 GB disk. That will definitely cause a problem, because Lightroom uses the disk name in the path to the image, so now it doesn’t know which disk to choose. Which one is correct, or do you really have two disks with the same name mounted?

The other screenshots do not show much, except that you should be more careful with what you’re trying to do. The screenshot where Lightroom tells you that you have selected the wrong image is correct. You did select the wrong image. You were trying to locate a photo named ‘IMG-0044.DNG’, but you have selected a photo named ‘IMG-0047.JPG’, so that is the wrong name and the wrong image type. Making mistakes like that, and then telling Lightroom that it is correct, will mess up things even more. So please stop trying to reconnect single images until we have found out what is wrong with that disk!!!!!
Ohhh jeez I just realized the different picture I’d,s - I’ve been staring at the computer too long today! I have to free up space on my MACs internal hard river as it is almost full. I will delte all the bad shots from my hard drive this weekend.
 
You didn’t answer two most important question: do you really use two external disks with the same name?

Good morning Johan. I have 4 external drives -
Each have a different name-

Neff Big 5 - 5 TB - where I stored copies of my IPhoto Libraries, LR backups and what I thought was my LR program.
Big6 - has copies of my iPhoto libraries, and a few backups of LR
Seagate Backup Plus Drive 3TB - this was for my time machine backups but when seagate tried to help me “repair” Neff Big 5 it looks like this photo below 1st pic
iPhoto’s -iPhoto libraries and I have no idea wth I did but I see LR folers ( 2nd pic).

Honestly I think I am beyond help! I am thinking I need to get all my photos on one drive. What do you think?
 

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