Importing Issues

[laurenlipton]

Hello,

I am unable to import photos from my card reader as I get a message that says some of the images can't be read.  I am copying from my card to my hard drive like I always have.

I also had to clear up some space and delete some catalogs on my HD, and all my catalogs have ! next to them, and I am unable to recover the files.

Please help.

[dj_paige]

You have two problems. The problem importing is that your destination folder has accidentally been changed, or the permissions on that folder have accidentally changed so that you no longer have WRITE permission. So you either need to change the Destination folder back to what it was previously, or change the permissions on that folder to have WRITE permission.

The second problem with the ! Is that Lightroom cannot find your photos (probably because you moved them). To fix this, please follow the instructions at Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders

[laurenlipton]

Thank you for your help, you were right in that I needed to specify where my destination was within my HD.  As for the ! and ? next to my files, they are gone because I deleted them off my HD, but they are still viewable in LR, I just can't develop them.

Thankfully, I backed them all up before deleting. 

So, LR can't hold thousands of raw files?  How can I store as many as possible without it clogging up my HD so fast?  I will just have to continue to move everything over to an external HD and delete from LR?

Thank you so much for your help.

Lauren

[dj_paige]

So, LR can't hold thousands of raw files?

Where does this come from? I certainly didn't say anything like this. Some people have imported over 1/2 million files into Lightroom. And the file are NOT stored in Lightroom anyway, they are stored on one of your hard disks or network drives, somewhere.

How can I store as many as possible without it clogging up my HD so fast?

Your HD does have a limit to the number of files you can put on it.

I will just have to continue to move everything over to an external HD and delete from LR?

Again, this was never said nor implied.

You can copy the photos from one HD to another, without deleting them from LR. The document I linked to explains exactly how to do this. Furthermore, if space on the internal HD is a problem, don't import to the internal HD in the first place, import the photos directly to the external HD.

It is not clear if you actually moved/copied the photos to the external HD, or if you deleted the files using your operating system. Can you clarify this?

Deleting your originals is always a bad idea. And if you don't have backups, then those photos are gone forever. Do you have backups?

[laurenlipton]

what external hard drives do you use?  i am looking for one that formats easily with a macbook pro.

thank you!

[dj_paige]

I can't answer Mac questions.