LR Catalog problem or CC2015.7 and OS X 10.9.5 problem?

[AZstarman]

A very strange problem that I hope I can describe clearly.

Set-up: MacBook Pro, Mid 2009 (yeah, it’s old and will be replaced in the not-too-distant future! I wish a new Mac Pro would come out!!); 500Gb internal drive, 8Gb memory. OS X 10.9.5. External 4TB

Running LR 2015.7; I just read that this version is not supported by OS X 10.9.5, but all seemed fine until the problem to be described arrived. I do not know if that is the cause of the problem or not. (If Adobe did not want it loaded, it should not have updated!!)

The LR catalog is run from the internal drive; the photos are stored on a 4Tb external drive. All appeared to be working well with ~50K pics showing up in the catalog and the catalog showing 2.8Tb available in the 4Tb drive. The drive name is “G-Drive USB” (of course without the quotation marks!!).

At this point, I do not remember any details of how I noticed the problem or what was done before in terms of saving/opening or anything. In any case, I noticed that the catalog had question marks for all 50K pics! I then noticed that rather than saying the drive was “G-Drive USB” it said “G-Drive USB 1” and sometimes “G-Drive USB 8” which told me it was looking for a drive name that did not exist. How THAT happened is the question of the day!

My thought is that somehow the drive name in the catalog changed. I was hoping I could examine the FILE WOULD NOT OPEN!

One problem I was aware of was that the external drive would be improperly ejected when the computer went to sleep (apparently a known problem). While that’s not good (I’m now taking it offline manually with automatic sleep turned off), that should have had no effect at all on the database on the internal drive.

Only solution seemed to be to import all 50K images into a new catalog. I did that but much to my horror I noticed that the images I had “developed” since moving to CC this summer did not show my adjustments. Ends up that, also to my horror, the default in CC was to NOT have adjustments saved to XMP files as I had been doing in earlier versions. Thus, work has been lost (unless we figure a way to recover the previous database).

I have played with the backups but to no avail at this point.

So, the questions:

1. Anyone have any other bright ideas??!!!

2. Is the problem one of running LR 2015.7 on OS X 10.9.5? I am thinking something here might be the problem?? I have not wanted to update the OS because of the age of the computer, but perhaps I need to (finally).

Thank you.

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Hi AZstarman,

Are all your photos in the USB drive under one top level folder? If so, you're in better shape than you think.

Right click the top level folder with the question mark, and choose "Find missing folder." Navigate to the USB drive, choose the top level folder, and confirm - all the photos and folders under that level will be re-linked.

If you have multiple top level folders, you'll have to repeat the process for each top level folder.

Re-linking Files and Folders in Lightroom « Julieanne Kost's Blog

Mike

[AZstarman]

Thank you, Mike. While I feel really dumb not thinking of the find missing FOLDER, that certainly does bring back a properly named and structured HD for which I am indebted! (I have things organized by year and so needed to do each annual folder, but that was not a biggie!) If it happens again, I'll try the LIBRARY/FIND ALL MISSING PHOTOS and see what happens!

BUT, that does not help understand the problem to begin with!! In fact, last night everything was going along fine. When I quit, I did a backup, etc. When I ran LR this morning, I got "G-Drive USB 7"---a new number in the drive name! It was from there that I followed your great suggestion.

I'm thinking that, for now, I'll put LR on my wife's somewhat new computer and see what happens. Perhaps it is just an instability in the way this version of LR (perhaps stupidly, but I did load in the upgrade to 2015.8) and the old OS are interacting.

Thank you so much for your reply!

Steve

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Steve,

Lightroom doesn't rename the drive - that is being done by the OS. (At least, I've never seen LR name the drives on its own). Do you see the drive named that way in Finder?

If it is named that way in the OS, you might need to do some troubleshooting around Mac OS X 10.9.

Mike

[AZstarman]

I agree that LR should not be doing it. These changed drive names are NOT shown in the finder.

i decided up upgrade to El Capitan, which is the latest for this ancient hardware! I hope things do not run too slowly or other things that kept me from doing it earlier! Will see if the problem occurs again! I very much appreciate your input, Mike. (install of El Cap just ended; waiting for reboot too see how it goes!!)

Steve

[ManiacJoe]

Mac OS upgrades are often followed by volume and folder restrictions preventing write access. Use Finder to make sure you have read and write access to your old volumes and folders.

[AZstarman]

Thanks for commenting, Joe. Those changed volume names do not show up anywhere in the finder; it's just within the catalog! Since upgrading to El Capitan yesterday, I have not seen any problem (thus far!). I'm hopeful. Again, thanks for commenting.

Steve