My Raw Files Keep Getting Lost Or Transferred Even Though It Is Still In Original Drive. Help Please?

[Bernard_Photojournals]

Hi,

Any Lightroom experts can help me with how LR seems to mess up my file locations even though they still in the original drive? Let me share in detail my experience....

Today LR decided the 28k raw(about 2Tb worth) files I shot in 2nd half of 2017 (including 2018) is in my E drive(64Gb flash drive that obviously cannot store that many files) instead of my F drive(4TB external). The older files from first half of 2017 were untouched, The amazing thing is that my E is not always connected to the computer & is too small but this morning E was connected & F wasn’t when I powered up ..... and now LR decided to “change the location”. When I click on files in the E drive they all have an ! mark and says “The folder could not be found”. I can still see all these files in my F drive when I open it, which means somehow LR got confused.

Please help? Thanks in advance.

[dj_paige]

Most likely, it is Windows that is doing this and not Lightroom. Windows can change drive letters depending on the order that you plug them into USB ports.

The easiest solution is to change the drive letters back to what Lightroom thinks they should be. If Lightroom thinks the photos are on the E: drive, then change the letters on your drives (E to something higher in the alphabet like T U V, and F to E)

[Bernard_Photojournals]

Appreciate the reply, Paige. However, not all in F were 'misplaced"(1st half of 2017 is not affected) and not all in E(i have other documents) that was "misplaced" form F needs to be relocated back to F. So I cannot just change the drive names:(
On LR, I tried to physically relocated the individual dates back to F which worked but now have them merged by year 2018. So all the few days i shot is no longer seen in F as seperate days.

[dj_paige]

Change the affected folders to the proper drive by following these instructions:

Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders