What happened? Strange duplication and fragmentation of folder structure during folder move attempt

[3d Eye]

MacPro os x 10.9,  Lightroom 2015.8

Using Lightroom, I tried to move a large folder structure of 24,000 photos from the primary internal drive to a secondary internal drive, which had enough space .  In Lightroom, I  dragged the parent folder and dropped it into the new hard drive.  After a long time of processing, an error message popped that LR could not complete the move.

Strangely, what I have now is two complete identical copies of the folder structure framework (names of folders properly positioned).  However, 17,000 of the pics are scattered in the new location, and 7,000 pics remain scattered in the original location - all in their correct folders in one or the other location.  The folders in the original location that still have unmoved pics do not have all their pics.  Some or all were moved from each folder and some left behind.  Only about 70% of the original folders had all their pics moved.  The other 30% of original folders still have some, but not all, of their pics.

Further strangeness is that In Mac's Finder, the old folders are completely empty.  The folders are in Finder but none have pics.  This is confirmed by Get Info, which shows a folder size of only 240 KB for the entire structure.  But there really are 6,000 pics left in the old folders on the primary drive as shown in Lightroom "Folders".  Even more strange, under Lightroom "Folders" for the original folder structure, the folders that had their pics moved have their names greyed out but they do not have question marks.  However, most the folders that still have some of their pics are greyed out and have question marks.  And a few original folders with some remaining pics are not even greyed out, though most of their pics were moved.

The folder structure in the new location has a Finder size of 563 GB.  Unfortunately, I do not know the size before I attempted the move.

Question:  How do I join the original folder structure with its remaining pics into the structure in the new location?

Thanks in advance for the answer.

[dj_paige]

Restore the entire set of photos/folders from your backups to the primary internal drive, in their exact location where they were previously.

Restore the LR catalog file from your most recent backup before this move.

Delete the entire folder hierarchy from the secondary internal drive.

Then ... very important ... DO NOT MOVE ENTIRE FOLDER HIERARCHY IN LIGHTROOM ... DO NOT MOVE ENTIRE FOLDER HIERARCHY IN LIGHTROOM (see I repeated it and typed it in ALL CAPS to show how important this is). The procedure to follow is:

1. COPY (not move) the photos to the secondary internal drive using your operating system
2. Reconnect the top level (parent) folder to the new location on the secondary internal drive by right-clicking in Lightroom on the parent folder on the primary internal drive and selecting Update Folder Location and then pointing to the top level parent folder on the secondary internal drive
3. Once you are 100% sure this has worked properly, you can delete the copy on the primary internal drive.

The entire procedure is explained in detail, with screen captures, in "Part 2 -- Updating Folder Location" of the following document: Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders. No more moving entire hierarchies of photos from one location to another in Lightroom.

[3d Eye]

DJ,

Thank you for the instructions.  I shall get to work.  Odd that the official method for moving turns out to be bad news.  A couple of follow-ups, if I may:

You say: "Restore the entire set of photos/folders from your backups to the primary internal drive, in their exact location where they were previously."

Right now in that previous location is the completely empty shell of the folder structure - all the folder names properly located, but not a single photo in them. 

Qu: Do I delete that empty hierarchy before doing the restore from backup?  I use Mac Time Machine.

Next, you say: "Restore the LR catalog file from your most recent backup before this move."

Sorry to be dumb about this, but could you give some more detail, please?  Do I delete the current catalog, then find yesterday's version in Time Machine and insert that?

Thanks again,

TT

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

Qu: Do I delete that empty hierarchy before doing the restore from backup?  I use Mac Time Machine

You can do whatever is easiest, as long as the result is that the photos are replaced and in the exact same folder hierarchy.

Next, you say: "Restore the LR catalog file from your most recent backup before this move."

Sorry to be dumb about this, but could you give some more detail, please?  Do I delete the current catalog, then find yesterday's version in Time Machine and insert that?

That works.