new hard drive and LR lost mapping

[LtFDrebbin]

Hello,
I store LR and my catalog on my hard drive. I store all of my photos on an external hard drive.
I recently added 8GB more RAM to my computer. I used LR for a week or 2 and all was fine.
I then added a Samsung 960 EVO SSD. The computer runs much faster, and LR worked great.
After about 2 weeks, the mapping to my photos has been lost.
Using Windows Explorer, I can find the files on the external drive, and they pull up fine. But LR can't see them any more- as evidenced by the exclamation point in the top right of the thumbnail. I can re-map these by clicking the exclamation point and pointing it to the right spot, but I have hundreds of folders and to fix all of these would be very time consuming.

I'm not sure how I broke this, but I'm very interested in knowing the best way to fix it and to stop it from happening again.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[Jim Wilde]

First thing is to stop trying to relink individual photos. Instead, open the Folders Panel and note that most if not all of your folders will show a "?" mark to indicate they are all missing. Starting with the topmost "parent" folder, right-click on it and select "Find Missing Folder", in the resulting file browser navigate to and select the folder on the hard drive. That will relink all the images in that folder and all of its sub-folders. Repeat for any other parent folders.

BTW, the problem likely occurred because the drive letter of the external drive was changed, which resulted in Lightroom losing contact with the photo folders.

 

[LtFDrebbin]

Thanks for the response.
I did as you said, and it worked for quite a few of the photos. I had to map many of the folders individually, but it still saved a lot of time.
I'm down to 4000 photos left. Most of those are in F:/Photos/MyPictures/Filename
Lightroom thinks they are in F:/Photos/Filename
When I map it, and click the box which states "Find nearby missing photos", it will map the single photo, but not the others.

Any ideas?
PS-all of the question marks on the left navigation bar are gone.

 

[LtFDrebbin]

I'm still working through this. I appreciate the help I've gotten so far. It's saved a lot of time.
I've gone through the list of folders, and opened every folder and subfolder and mapped those.
I'm stuck on what appears to be pictures that are in the folder named photos, but not in a subfolder. I've got 2200 pictures left to map, so it is still too time consuming to do one by one.
Any ideas where I could find a larger group, if they are not in any folder or subfolder on the left rail?

Thanks!

 

[Tony Jay]

Does the folder named "photos" have a question mark after it in Lightroom?
I am a bit confused as to why you cannot do this process on a folder-by-folder basis or even just clicking the top-level folder in the image library.
You mentioned that there is a difference in the high-level folders between what Lightroom expects and reality.
Shouldn't you fix that first?
If you do and then click on the top-level folder then maybe Lightroom will figure the rest out itself (this is actually how it is supposed to work).

Also, how did this discrepancy come about in the first place that an extra level in the folder hierarchy suddenly appeared?
I suspect that this was something you did.
If you change things outside Lightroom this is the result.

My reason for raising these points is not to be accusatory but to provide food for thought and possible solutions.
I also apologise that this issue was not commented on before.

Tony Jay

 

[LtFDrebbin]

Thanks for your response, Tony Jay.
The discrepancy came about when I installed a new hard drive into my computer. It's much fast now, but it's taken me a month or "faster" work, and I'm not even back to even....

I attached a file above showing that Fhotos does not have a question mark by it.

I feel your comment about fixing the folders (outside of LR) is correct. Before I make a bigger mistake, let me ask a question.
LR is looking for Fhotos/filename. In Windows Explorer, the file is actually located at Fhotos/My Pictures/Filename
Should I use Windows Explorer to drag all of the files from Fhotos/My Pictures to Fhotos?

Before you say yes, keep in mind that I've moved all of the folders that are under My Pictures, so now 30,000 photos are mapped correctly in LR, and only 2000 are mapped incorrectly.

Thanks,
Sam

 

[LtFDrebbin]

It appears the forum is changing : P without a space into . That's also confusing, and I apologize.

 

[Tony Jay]

It appears the forum is changing : P without a space into . That's also confusing, and I apologize.

Actually I thought you were just being exceedingly creative!
We have had one or two interesting glitches with the forum software this last weekend - maybe this is one of them.

With respect to your mapping crusade if you have got this far and can continue to complete the process - all good and well.

In a bigger sense issues like this always give pause for thought.
For yourself you should be certain how the problem came about so you can avoid it in the future.
It is also a good opportunity to read around related subjects to cement a larger understanding.

I can tell you from my perspective trying to problem solve on a forum like this is not conducted from a position of absolute knowledge. Frequently we need to research the issue, experiment to try to recreate what the OP is describing, and sometimes feel our way around in the dark until we find a glimmer of light. Obviously the more one knows the better one can construct the framework in which the problem resides.

Tony Jay

 

[LtFDrebbin]

Tony Jay, the problem at this point is that the 2000 unmapped pictures are not represented by a question mark in any folder whatsoever.
Even though I have clicked "Find nearby missing photos", it is not doing so when I map a picture. So, I'm still left with the issue of mapping 2000 pictures one by one, which will likely take more time than I have already in mapping the other 30,000.

So... If I use Windows Explorer to move all pictures from F: photos/my pictures/filename to F: photos/filename, do you think LR will do a good job of remapping the 30,000 photos (many of which are in folders) back to how it was before?

Thanks again

 

[Tony Jay]

The mapping only works if the folder structure in which those images are placed exactly matches the folder structure that Lightroom is expecting.
Lightroom will not make assumptions.

Tony Jay

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Actually I thought you were just being exceedingly creative!
We have had one or two interesting glitches with the forum software this last weekend - maybe this is one of them.

: P but without a space is the shortcut for that smiley, just like : ) without the space gives you a smiley face. Happens on various web software automatically these days.