LR doesn't see my photos on my ext HD

Status
Not open for further replies.

LMP24

New Member
Joined
Sep 3, 2015
Messages
11
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
I have two OWC ext drives that are carbon copies of each other. LR recognizes my photos (48K) from one of the drives but only sees some of the photos on the other. I have tried adding the missing photos back to the catalog but LR says they are already imported, which is correct, but it doesn't see them and the folders have only a fraction of the images in them. LR sees all the photos with the other ext drive. I could understand if a few photos have been corrupted or if I had moved them outside of LR etc but the vast majority of the photos are not found by LR. Any suggestions appreciated.
 
You say that the disks are carbon copies. Apparently Lightroom sees that too. That is why it says that the images are already imported, but it can't show you one image in two locations at the same time.

And if these disks are carbon copies, why would you want Lightroom to show you the images on both disks? That would give you two copies of each photo in the catalog...
 
You say that the disks are carbon copies. Apparently Lightroom sees that too. That is why it says that the images are already imported, but it can't show you one image in two locations at the same time.

And if these disks are carbon copies, why would you want Lightroom to show you the images on both disks? That would give you two copies of each photo in the catalog...


Thank you for replying. I don't have both external drives on at the same time. LR has always seen the photos on whichever drive happens to be connected.
 
Thank you for replying. I don't have both external drives on at the same time. LR has always seen the photos on whichever drive happens to be connected.
You can only have one volume mounted at a time and the EHDs need to have the same identical volume name for them to be interchangeable in the LR catalog.
If the volume names are different, then LR the path that LR stores in the catalog file will mis match the other EHD and because of the path mismatch, LR will only show image files where the path matches the path recorded in the catalog

I am still confused as to why you would want this. You need one and only one group of master images. These are stored on the original EHD. The Carbon Copy EHD is useful as a backup only when the original EHD fails. Only then would you want to connect it to the LR catalog.
 
You can only have one volume mounted at a time and the EHDs need to have the same identical volume name for them to be interchangeable in the LR catalog.
If the volume names are different, then LR the path that LR stores in the catalog file will mis match the other EHD and because of the path mismatch, LR will only show image files where the path matches the path recorded in the catalog

I am still confused as to why you would want this. You need one and only one group of master images. These are stored on the original EHD. The Carbon Copy EHD is useful as a backup only when the original EHD fails. Only then would you want to connect it to the LR catalog.


I think you are correct that the name of the volume might not be exactly the same. Because of your reply I now recall that I may have inadvertently changed the name somewhat. Thank you.

As far as why I want this....The second drive is exactly that, a backup. I just wanted to confirm that the backup disk could be read by LR should the first one fail. Thanks again for your help. I will double check the naming of the drive and hope that that solves the problem.
 
I think you are correct that the name of the volume might not be exactly the same. Because of your reply I now recall that I may have inadvertently changed the name somewhat. Thank you.

As far as why I want this....The second drive is exactly that, a backup. I just wanted to confirm that the backup disk could be read by LR should the first one fail. Thanks again for your help. I will double check the naming of the drive and hope that that solves the problem.

You don't need a carbon copy as backup. If the need arises, all you have to do is launch Lightroom and 'reconnect' the images on the backup disk.
 
You don't need a carbon copy as backup. If the need arises, all you have to do is launch Lightroom and 'reconnect' the images on the backup disk.

That's the problem. I tried again after confirming that the disc is a carbon copy with name etc and it still won't reconnect the images. I can't figure out why or what has changed to cause this problem.
 
I never bothered to look further into the problem. I had the same issue, I have two external WD drives. Both identical, both with the same name. Lr somehow knows that the drives are not the same. I did fool Lr though (being a techie has some advantages). I created a symbolic link in the file system to a specific sub folder on the drive. Lr looks at the link and follows it and does not know any better. I could mount and unmount either drive and map them to the symbolic link and Lr never knew.
After doing all this, I just went and got a bigger internal drive... :)

Tim
 
I never bothered to look further into the problem. I had the same issue, I have two external WD drives. Both identical, both with the same name. Lr somehow knows that the drives are not the same. I did fool Lr though (being a techie has some advantages). I created a symbolic link in the file system to a specific sub folder on the drive. Lr looks at the link and follows it and does not know any better. I could mount and unmount either drive and map them to the symbolic link and Lr never knew.
After doing all this, I just went and got a bigger internal drive... :)

Tim

Haha. Pretty clever! I have learned the reason is LR can only reference one disc drive. Not just one at a time ( which is what I originally thought) but only one period. And if that one fails LR will then reference the second one.
 
That's the problem. I tried again after confirming that the disc is a carbon copy with name etc and it still won't reconnect the images. I can't figure out why or what has changed to cause this problem.

I don't think you understand what 'reconnect' means in this case. It means that you make a normal copy of the data disk, and Lightroom doesn't know anything about that disk. You keep it that way until you need that disk because you have a problem with your original disk. Then you simply mount the backup disk. Lightroom will of course tell you that all images are offline, because the original disk is not mounted and it doesn't know the mounted backup disk. Then you Ctrl-click on the top folder and let Lightroom know that from now on, it should look for that folder on the mounted backup disk. So the 'trick' is that you do not give the backup disk the same name, because you don't want Lightroom to know it.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top