Lightroom :: 4 Will Not Move Some Folders To New Drive?
Jan 5, 2013
I successfully moved most of my Lightroom photos from one external drive which was nearly full to a new 1 TB drive. However, 95 photos out of over 16,000 would not move. I figured out it was because I had originally copied them to the old drive from a CD and the permissions were read only. So I went into Finder-Get Info and changed the permissions on all 95 files to read and write. Now, however, Lightroom will not transfer the folders containing the files to the new drive. It says "A Folder Named . . . already exists at this location." However, the folder doesn't show up in Lightroom. Lightroom did create the folder, and it shows in Finder, but it does not show in the LR catalog and I can't import files into it.
I'm in the process of migrating from Windows (7) to an iMac which has been a partial success re Lightroom but I'm having problems with moving folders / files within LR (4.4).
On the Windows PC I had all of my photos on the hard-drive (with duplicate back-ups) and my intention was to move only a proportion of these onto the iMac, leaving older folders on an external drive - again with backups. To migrate to the iMac I had initial success as follows:
1. Installed LR 4.4 on the iMac.
2. Moved all photos onto an external drive from within LR.
3. Copied across the lrcat and lrdta files and the presets to the iMac
4. Started LR and loaded the copied catalogue - worked fine - see all my folders plus their question marks as expected.
5. Was able to re-linked the folders (still on the external drive) within LR - question marks disappeared, able to access & develop folders/files on the ext drive within LR - good.
6. Then the problems occurred when within LR I tried to move folders from the external drive to the iMac (into a top-level 'Lightroom Photos' folder I created within Pictures) but the following then happens:
When I drag a folder up from the ext to the main drive I get the usual 'moving files on disk warning' box, click 'Move' to confirm but then I get an error message 'Could not complete the folder move. An unknown error occurred', click OK and the folder has remained on the external drive. Oddly, when I check via Finder the folder has been created within my 'Lightroom Photos' folder although it doesn't show there in LR and no photos are included in it - they're still on the hard-drive.
I did think this might be something to do with the format of the ext drive - it is shows as read only and is NFTS and I now understand this can be a problem when writing to it from an iMac - but I appear to be able to 'develop' photos on the external drive.
I did find a 'workaround' - in Finder I copied a folder directly into the 'Lightroom Photos' folder on the hard-drive and managed to link to it by clicking on the question mark originally created by the lrcat copy. Seems a bit cumbersome and I would then have to delete the originals from the ext drive but does this sound okay? Why I can't move them from the ext drive from within LR but can work on them whilst still on that drive?
I moved images from my harddrive to an external drive.
I opened Lightroom.
Noticed there was a question mark by the photo folder I needed.
I synchronized the folders. Nada.
I rememebered I moved the images (first line ^^)
I re-imported the images from the external drive into Lightroom.
These images (other than one that was marked previously with a blue label) look completely untouched - completely original files - even though I spent hours working on them.
I am glad the images weren't deleted BUT re-doing 600 images will be a MAJOR FAIL if I can't figure out how to import the images with the settings / developments I did beforehand.
L/R 4 shows my folders and subfolders but oddly, when I go to folder 2012 on my hard drive, it shows 25,000 images loose in the folder, no subfolders. I did move these folders to an external drive and then put them back. Maybe that messed things up.
How can I export Photos to a similar fold structure on a ned drive? I don't want to simply copy the photos over I want to create a new but identical folder structure with processed versions of the photos to hand over on an external drive.
Computer (laptop) shut down while viewing images on ent drive, After restarting the computer, LR in not picking up the primary folders on the drive, only the latest sub folders.
only have 200 photos in V4. I made the mistake of moving and deleting folders on my hard drive and not in LR, now my folder organization is a mess and doesn't match. Can I delete the catalogue and reorganize my hard drive the way I want it then re - import it all to LR? If so how do I do this. Does this remove the folder organization in LR, as it is not correct either. My catalogue has not been backed up yet. I have HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook and Win 7.?
When I go to import to select the device from which to import in, it doesn't show me the folders in that device. So I click show subfolders and then it shows me my thousands of photosI want to be able to select the folders to look at from my External Hard drive but there is no drop down menu.
I use lightoom everyday, editing images from multiple external hard drives. These hard drives appear as their own folders, but today they are gone. Only my Macintosh HD is listed under folders. I can get to all the images through the Mac HD folder, but I am wondering why my hard drives are no longer listed as folders. They are not offline or missing.
how I ended up with a shared network drive duplicated under the folders area of Lightroom 3.6. Maybe it was a user error but now my network drive where I have 15,000 pictures appears twice in the folder area and it is constantly updating (since there are quite a few pictures).
How can I delete the duplicated drive? I have "removed" all the folders under the duplicated drive (and made it disappear) but the drive keeps coming back as the synchronization process will add all the folders that exist on that drive.
The two drives with "Volume_1" in the name are actually one shared network drive (I only have one). I actually removed my network drive mapping (N:) to fix the problem but that did not even work; LR still found a duplicate name for the same network drive and started to synchronize (again).
I just upgraded my external hard drive and named the new drive with the exact same name as the original, lets call this HD-1. My entire LR gallery is on this drive. After doing a complete backup to the new drive I opened LR and all Folders and Collects were in their place as they should be.
The Problem -
When I imputed new photos, a new duplicate hard drive appeared with the exact same name HD-1 and holding the newly imported images (which were placed in a subfolder at time of import)
- So now my Catalog shows two hard drives called HD-1. For sake of this discussion I will label them HD-1a and HD-1b. HD-1a has the original photos and HD-1b has the newly imported photos.
- I tried draging the new subfolder of photos for HD-1b to HD-1a but I get a message that the folder already exists, even though it doesn't show in the HD-1a folder structure.
- I created a new sub-folder in HD-1a and was able to drag the photos into it. I then deleted the empty folder on HD-1b. As soon as this was done the duplicate hard drive, HD-1b disapeared.
- I thought this solved the problem but as I was working on images by opening them from LR into Photoshop, the HD-1b drive reappered in my catalog with the PS created files in them.
- So it looks like LR will put any newly created or improted photo file into HD-1b. I can't seem to find a way around this. For some reason LR doesn't want to write new files into HD-1a even though it recognizes it and has no problem reading the existing files.
I am using Windows Vista and Lightroom 3.The drive letter for my external hard drive has changed from "J" to "L". I changed my import preset to "L", so I can now import and access new files. However, all of my previous imports are on this elusive "J" drive, which no longer exists. When I open J from the folders list in Lightroom it shows all my folders with the dreaded giant "?". I have tried to synchronize these folders by right clicking to "merge folders". This did not work. I can open all of these files from my back up folder, but I can't do anything with them in Lightroom. Half of my catalog is un usable.
I have LR 5.2 and I move files off onto a removable drive as a back-up and it allows me to share the pictures with them when they sometimes lose them. Windows 7 routinely assigns the drive to the letter M:, N:, and sometime P: and apparently I cannot see the folders unless the drive is assigned the same letter as it was when I imported the pictures into the catalog. The folders don’t even show up in the library, but if I do an import all of the folders appear as valid destinations within LR. How can I fix this? The first picture is a screen shot of the library; notice that the year 2013 is missing. The second screen shot is what appears when I go to import; note that 2013 appears. The folders simply do not appear in LR except when I attempt import.
When I look at N: in my “working catalog” it shows it as having catalog “AUMC” but the folders in it belong to the part of my working catalog that I have moved to a different external drive since they’re old picture I don’t use much. They all have question marks, but they are resolved with I attach the external drive with those folders on it.
I bachup with an external hard drive(ehd), itcotains folders fro 2007 to 2013 plus a "test"folder. when i plug it into my computer and open light room,in the left hand pannel where the ehd appears, it shows all the folders except 2009 ,2013 and the "test" folder. why doesn't L.R. read all of the ehd.,,
I try to move a complete folder from my internal to an external disk within LR. The directory will be created, but then it stops and shows "Unknown Error..." When I create the subdirs manually, I can move the single pictures.
For some reason I'm unable to move photos or folders from within lightroom 4. The drag and drop system from the library module does nothing for me. I'm pretty sure I just watched an AdobeTV demonstration where the presenter had no problem moving files inside the "Folders" panel in the Library. I've even tried highlighting the photos I want to move from the grid view, control+clicking on the folder where I want them to go, selecting "Move Selected Photos to this Folder" from the flyout, and nothing happens.
My cursor shows a green plus(+) icon when I mouse over the destination folder when dragging the photos, as if LR were going to add the files to the folder.... but then nothing happens.
Am I losing it, shouldn't this be a completely intuiative process? Is it possible I've locked my files/photos?
I bought a ReadyNAS and a few harddrives to go with it, and decided to move all my 35594 pictures to it.As Lightroom has some silly features like not being able to move multiple folders unless they have a root folder, I moved most of these files via Explorer and then had to sync them one by one for hand (which is annoying, as there's one folder for every day – however, that's another question). For the rest of the 20 000 photos, I decided to move them with Lightroom.
Results:
0 missing files from the files I moved with Explorer and resynced.
3049 missing files from the files I moved with Lightroom.
The files simply don't exist anymore, on neither of the disks. I've searched every single drive for them completely by file name, date, everything. They're gone.This has nothing to do with disk failure, or user error. Only the files I moved with Lightroom are affected.
Considering there's both client work and personal pictures among these, it's crucial that I get them back.
There's another thread about this problem here, except that I didn't have the luck of just 80 files.
How do I move numerous folders and subfolders of photos to a different hard drive?
The hard drive I want to move to shows up in the LR Library Left Panel under Folders, but I can't drag and drop the photos from the C Drive to this D drive.
I have been working with LR for about a month; and I've uploaded about 2000 photos I have taken since about a year ago; organized by folders for year and date. I just realized LR has been putting almost all my photos on my C Drive. There is one folder of photos in LR on the D Drive. I don't recall how I got that folder to go on the D Drive while the rest are on the C Drive.
I don't want any data on my C Drive. I use my C Drive primarily for my Operating Systems and applications.
I need to move a bunch of pictures located in different sub-folders on Drive C: to my new 2Tb Drive D:
I try to move it in LR via the import function with MOVE. But, they are all greyed out (not selectable) and when I try to move 1-by-1 by right-clicking on a picture, a message is displayed telling me that the picture is already in the catalogue. I know it is already in the catalogue. All I need to do is to move it to another HDD.
How would you do this? I have just thought of deleting all files in the catalogue and import them then, but it just does not feel right.
Lightroom wont allow me to move or rename either single images or folders within lightroom. Keep getting an unknown error occurred message. All images are currently on an external hard drive.
I have about 4 TB of images on an external drive: a DROBO (call it D1). I have another DROBO (call it D2) that is a mirror of D1 updated hourly by Chronosynch. How can I (hopefully easily) tell Lightroom to now use D2 instead of D1?
When I move a selection of image files from one folder to another within lightroom there is always an error with at least one image and it doesn't make the move and is left. I can then reselect this image and then move it again.
I need to create space on my laptop hard drive. How do I move my pictures to an external harddrive? Terrified I will losse them or get the dreaded ...?
