Lightroom won't "find" more than one photo at a time.

[Mich_Mercer]

So I copied my lightroom catalog, along with the raw photos onto another hard drive.  My old hard drive died soon after I did this. I was able to back up everything thankfully... My problem is, lightroom can't find the photos. So, after selecting the location of a file, lightroom isn't finding the whole set of files. Its basically making me "find" one file at a time.  My other catalogs were fine and did them all at once. Of course, this one won't do the same. Has anyone ran into this before. I hope this makes sense. ha

[Rob_Cullen]

If your folder structure is the same, then re-linking entire folders will be a better answer.

If filenames have changed in the backup, then Lr will not be able to easily re-link files.

I suggest you read the link below for a full explanation on recovering photos in the catalog.

One piece of advice- Do not re-import anything! (this makes the problem worse)

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

[richardplondon]

It's a good idea to check this option:

if not, LR will only redirect the exact file or folder that you have identified.

Incidentally, it's the same for a folder as for a photo. The easiest way, is to re-direct the single parent folder that contains all of the photos. If that's not showing, you can use "show parent" on one that is showing - even if that folder is currently "not found", LR still knows what its full path used to be when it was found. So if even part of that can correspond with the new setup, you are all done.

RP

[Mich_Mercer · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot guys. I actually fixed the problem. After several hours, i accidentally deleted the folder the photos were Supposed to go in. When I did that, I got the "?" by the folder. I located the folder and boom! The photos were there. I could have swore I tried it before, but for some reason this time it worked. So it was a 2 second fix on something I tried fixing for 4 hours. Haha Thanks again guys!