Adding 2nd external HD to LR classic

[amandav16516931]

Hello

I went on a 2 month vacation and backed up all my photos to an external HD.  I did not use LR to do this.  Now that I am home I want to add those photos to my catalog. When I plug in my 'vacation" external HD it thinks it is my 'old' external HD and has all those folders with ?'s because it cant find the actual photos.  It is not seeing my 'vacation' external HD as a new HD. 

How do I tell LR I am introducing a new HD?

Amanda

[JohanElzenga]

You have to be a bit more specific. You say you ‘backed up’ your photos, but I get the feeling that you actually moved them? That would explain why Lightroom shows them as ‘missing’. Lightroom still expects them to be in their original location. You would either have to move them back to their original location, or ‘reconnect’ the missing folders: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

And did you also add your new holiday photos to this disk? Those photos would still have to be imported.

[amandav16516931]

Thanks for the help.

This is a completely new HD and new photos. LR has not seen either of them before. on my vacation I used a different computer to save the photos from the SD card directly to this new external HD. I didn’t save them on the computer or use LR at all.

I do need to import the new vacation photos into LR, but when I plug in my new HD it thinks it is my old external HD. So I can’t see any of my new photos.

Does this make more sense?

[dj_paige]

Can you have both HDs plugged in at the same time?

If not, then you will find that the folders on the old HD have ? when you plug in the new HD.

But where are you importing to? Where do you want the photos to be after import, on the internal drive or an external drive? Are you using the ADD option, or the COPY option?

[JohanElzenga]

amandav16516931  wrote

Thanks for the help.

This is a completely new HD and new photos. LR has not seen either of them before. on my vacation I used a different computer to save the photos from the SD card directly to this new external HD. I didn’t save them on the computer or use LR at all.

I do need to import the new vacation photos into LR, but when I plug in my new HD it thinks it is my old external HD. So I can’t see any of my new photos.

Does this make more sense?

I assume you use Windows? If you connect only the new drive to your computer, or if that drive is recognised by Windows faster than the old one, then the new drive gets the drive letter that the old one had. That would explain it. Reboot your computer with only the old drive connected. Then only after the startup process has been completed, connect the new one as well. That will make sure the drive letters are in the right order.

For this reason it is better to assign fixed drive letters and use letters that are much higher in the alphabet: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-assign-permanent-drive-letter-windows-10 Then ‘reconnect’ the folders as in the link I already gave you.

Lightroom will see the new disk after you have imported the photos on that disk.