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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!
 
You are making things extra difficult for yourself, and for me. Your Lightroom screenshot showed that ‘Neff Big5’ disk (actually two of them), but in these screenshots it is gone. Probably disconnected or turned off. As I explained before, the problem could be that Lightroom sees two disks which are both called ‘Nef Big5’. The Lightroom screenshot also showed two different disk capacities. That is what we need to concentrate on. Not your Seagate backup disk and not your iPhoto disk.

Please turn on the Nef Big5 disk and make two screenshots. One of this disk in the Finder (like the screenshots you posted above), and one screenshot of Lightroom showing the folder panel. If you again see two Nef Big5 disks in the folder panel, then click on the black triangles behind the names so Lightroom shows what it thinks is on those disks.
 
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?
Hello again Johan,
I am
You are making things extra difficult for yourself, and for me. Your Lightroom screenshot showed that ‘Neff Big5’ disk (actually two of them), but in these screenshots it is gone. Probably disconnected or turned off. As I explained before, the problem could be that Lightroom sees two disks which are both called ‘Nef Big5’. The Lightroom screenshot also showed two different disk capacities. That is what we need to concentrate on. Not your Seagate backup disk and not your iPhoto disk.

Please turn on the Nef Big5 disk and make two screenshots. One of this disk in the Finder (like the screenshots you posted above), and one screenshot of Lightroom showing the folder panel. If you again see two Nef Big5 disks in the folder panel, then click on the black triangles behind the names so Lightroom shows what it thinks is on those disks.

Johan I am so sorry to frustrate you! Below is the Neff Big 5 shot from finder but when I tried to open LR I got the message in the second pic so I didn’t proceed.
 

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Read the message in the second screenshot. Your Lightroom catalog (or at least the last one you opened) is on your iPhoto disk, which you seem to have turned off now... Keep the Nef Big5 turned on, turn on the iPhoto disk as well and try again.
 
Hi Johan, this is chilvr2’s daughter. Thanks for all your help and patience thus far, I’ve read through the thread to get up to speed. I’m more familiar with LR and computers and am taking over so I can help get you the information you are requesting and hopefully solve her problem. Here are the two screenshots you requested showing Neff Big 5 in the finder and the LR folders. I’m only seeing one Neff Big 5. Would you like me to do the same for the iPhoto drive?
 

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OK, the fact that there's only one Neff Big5 disk showing in Lightroom helps a lot, because that means that this is a simple problem of 'missing folders' and not something more fundamental. Now we only have to find out where they are...

What Lightroom shows you in the folder panel is where it thinks that certain folders are. So for example; Lightroom thinks that there is a folder called '2016 April 30 - zoo...' (the rest of the name is not visible because the panel is too small) right on the Neff Big5 disk. If you look at the screenshot of the actual contents of this disk, you will see that there is no such folder. That is why Lightroom shows this folder with a question mark and with the name in italics.

The question is where that folder could be. It's possible that this is actually a subfolder, so look through the folders called 'Lightroom', 'Lightroom All', 'Neff Lightroom', etc. to see if you can find it. If it isn't anywhere on this disk, then it might be on another disk (like the Big6 disk). Let's assume that you have found it somewhere. What you then need to do is right-click on this folder in the Lightroom folder panel and choose 'Find Missing Folder'. In the dialog that follows you go to the actual location of the folder, and select it. Done, that folder is now 'reconnected'. The question mark will be gone and the name will be in normal letters again. Unfortunately you will have to do this with each missing folder...
 
Thank you so much, Johan. I just tried that out and found one of the folders on a different external drive’s LR folder. I can see the photos are appearing back in LR again and the grayed out folder with the question mark is gone. It will take a long time trying to find them all (they are scattered, unfortunately) but I really appreciate your help!
 
Thank you soooo much Johan, my daughter was able to relink99% of the files! I just have a question, she relinked all the files thru their import dates (pic 1) and they also appear in catagory folders that I made (pic 2). I don’ want to undo all the progress - it seems like everything is still on the external drive so do I just backup as is? Do the date and catagory “share” the same image?
 

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Good to hear! Lightroom simply shows the images in their real location, so on that external drive. It’s possible that you have duplicates because of all the problems. Backup that external drive if you want to backup your images, backup the catalog on the internal drive to backup all the edits, keywords, etc.

One thing still puzzles me: once again Lightroom shows the ‘Neff Big5’ drive twice!! Your screenshot shows the second one expanded, so you see all the folders, but above that is a another drive with the same name (but a different capacity, only 1 TB). Can you expand that too (click on the black triangle) so we can check what Lightroom thinks is on that drive?

12824
 
Here it is Johan :oops:. I did purchase theLR FAQ book and I’m trying to study it so I don’t make a mess again! I’m concerned because my desk top ( mac internal hard drive) is almost full. So if I understand correctly my photos are on NEFF Big 5 as well as the folders I made for different wildlife, locations etc and on the internal hard drive?
 

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OK, according to Lightroom there are only 15 images on this fantom disk, and they are all missing. The last 1%? I assume that this disk does not really exist, but that it is a left over from that crash. MacOS did not remove its details from the hidden Volumes folder where disk mounts are managed. If you recognise these folders (and you know where they really are), then reconnect them in the same way as all the others. They will most likely disappear from this fantom disk, and appear on the other one.

What I would do to avoid possible confusion if you do not know these folders (Lightroom uses paths to disks, so this is a potential problem) is to right-click on each folder on this disk and choose the menu to remove it. You will probably get a warning about removing images when you try to remove the folders that Lightroom thinks contain (missing) images, but do it anyway.

After you reconnected or removed the last folder, that disk should disappear completely.
 
For the future, I recommend an additional online backup as external hard drives fail, too. I highly recommend Backblaze which not only creates backups of the Mac, but also of the external hard drives. It saved my photos twice already in similar situations as yours. Well worth the 5 bucks per month.
 
For the future, I recommend an additional online backup as external hard drives fail, too. I highly recommend Backblaze which not only creates backups of the Mac, but also of the external hard drives. It saved my photos twice already in similar situations as yours. Well worth the 5 bucks per month.
Thank you! I will definitely do that! My current online backup is carbonate and it does not include external drives.
 
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