Lightroom 6 images that I'm accessing from hard drive won't load and then turn grey

[tymev31695071]

Hello, just yesterday I downloaded Lightroom 6 on my Mac Computer. It was the second device this Lightroom 6 that I purchased has been downloaded on. After installing Lightroom, I plugged in my hard drive and imported some pictures from a Canon Mark III. I had to update Lightroom 6 so that it could interpret photos from my Canon Mark IV. After updating Lightroom, I finished uploading and had a total of around 1900 pictures from both the Mark III and Mark IV. When I tried to go through the pictures, it would show images perfectly clear and fast, but after maybe 30 images or so, they would become pixalated and said "loading," except they wouldn't load. I waited a LONG time to see if they would load and they didn't. So I quit the program and restarted it and the same thing happened, and eventually all the pictures turned grey (even though the hard drive was still plugged in). I read somewhere that because lightroom was having to pull up the full raw file because I didn't select Smart Preview in the importing process, it was taking so long. So I highlighed all the pictures and tried to make Smart Previews of all of them, but even after 12 hours, Lightroom wasn't even a fourth way done making the smart previews. So I force quit Lightroom, but then when I tried to reopen Lightroom, it wouldn't let me. It pulled up a message saying 'Unexpected Error Opening Catalog,' which led me to delete Lightroom, and then reinstall it. When I open the program the 1900 photos are still there, except all of them are grey--even though my hard drive is still plugged in. At this point I just wanted to delete all of the pictures off of Lightroom and try importing again (using Smart Previews of course), but Lightroom won't let me. It says the files aren't found and I need to relocate them, but I really don't want to have to go through each of the 1900 photos and manually relocate each one on the hard drive. So, what do I do? Thanks.

[dj_paige]

Are there exclamation point icons in the rectangle around the photo, as shown in this document: Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders ??

Can you show us a screen capture of the problem??

Smart previews won't help in this situation.

[tymev31695071]

Yes, it looks like that. I briefly read the article, and to clarify, it's basically saying that if I locate one photo all the rest should be located too? My only concern is that on the hard drive there are seven different folders for this shoot (one for each memory card used) so I'm not sure if that would create a problem when locating the photos. Anyways, I will try it. And if I am able to get all the pictures back, do you think the slow loading problem will be fixed? Or should I delete the photos and reimport them again, with changed settings (and you mentioned that Smart Previews wouldn't make a difference so what would I change?). Thanks!

[dj_paige]

I will take a wild guess about the slow importing, that all of your symptoms are compatible with an explanation the your photos were on the camera card and you imported using the ADD option (which leaves them on the camera card) rather than importing using the COPY option, which moves them to the hard disk.

Building Smart Previews will slow down importing.

Deleting the photos and re-importing solves nothing.

[Geoff the kiwi]

I don't think that is correct Paige as the path show in the error message starts with Volumes/Seagate Back up Dive

OP, is that drive connected??

Can you place a screen shot with the Library Panel showing like this so all Volumes are showing in the Folders Panel....

Thanks