Lightroom :: Rebuilding A Folder Structure Lost After Restoring From Backup
Aug 20, 2013
The external hard drive I was storing four years worth of photos on crashed the other day, and I learned the hard way that they weren't on the backup drive like I thought they were. Luckily I was able to recover at least most of them using FileSalvage. Unfurtunately, my ~15,000 images are now in three folders based on file type (JPG, TIF, DNG/NEF), don't have their original file names, and aren't in any particular order.
Is there any way short of manually sifting through the files for me to rebuild the year/month/day chronological folder structure I was storing them in? I'm running Lightroom 4.0 on a OS X 10.8.4.
I had folders on my internal drive that used the same structure as the populated folder structure on my external hard drive. I just went through and keyworded all the internal drive photos (which happened to be iphone photos), then, on the internal drive, I selected the 2013 folder, selected all the images in that folder and dragged them to the 2013 folder on my external drive. (all steps were done within LR5) Now, on the ext drive, when I choose 2013, I see all of the photos, but most of the subfolders now say 0. How can I get my images back into the folders they were already in?
I am trying to restore my LR4 catalog from a backup. Here are the details.
- Lightroom installed on Windows 7 main drive - C:
- Entire photo collection stored in a separate internal hdd - F:
- LR4 catalog backed up on an external drive.
I had to reset my C: drive back to factory status, wiping out all of my installed programs. After the factory reset I had to reinstall my secondary HDD and it was recognized by Win7 with one problem. It is now listed as E: rather than F:.
After reinstalling Lightroom I copied my catalog backup into the appropriate folder and launched LR. It recalled the catalog with no problem but couldn't find any of my photos! Is there any way to tell Lightroom where they all are rather than reimporting? The photos are all in the exact same location as previously. The only change is the drive letter from F: to E:.
I tried to go into Windows and change the drive letter from E: back to F: but Windows won't let me name it F: for some reason.
I have lost my primary copies of all my photos due to a hard drive crash. The only copies I have now are in the folder structure created upon import backup (photos imported on...). My catalog is stored on a third drive, and is uneffected with the exception of all the photos being missing.
How can I match up my catalog with the files that are now not in the folder structure of the origionals? I have 65,000 photos in the cagalog, and locating each folder is daunting.
I recently managed to crash my PC by upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7. I continually get a BSOD with exceptionally vague insight into what is causing the problem. Anyhow, I've decided that the best thing to do at this point is to simply wipe my hard drive and do a clean install of Windows 7 (which has a much higher probability of working).
I have my entire Lightroom Catalog and all of my photography backed up to an external drive, so my data is safe. My plan is basically to wipe my PC's main hard disk, do a fresh install of Windows 7, install Lightroom 3.6, then copy all of my Lightroom files (catalog and RAW files) from my external backup drive to my PC's main hard disk.
My question is: Should my Lightroom catalog open without a problem after restoring it in this manner? Should expect any major problems during this process?.
I have opened LR5 and found ALL the pictures have lost development settings that cost me hours of work.when I open a folder in the Catalog the pictures are first shown for a couple of seconds with the edits (for example BW) than as originally imported. All the development settings are gone and can't be found anymore. The history is empty.The last thing I did when I last used LR was a backup.I opened the backup Catalog, but also this one doesn't show any edit.Is there any way to recover.
I am honestly tempted by throw this software to the waste bin.
Currently moving from pc to mac for my LR. Why do I have to move my Backup folder and how do I do this because I do not want to move all of my photos I have on my old computer?
I have been using Lightroom 3 for a number of years quite happily. My folders in Lightroom nicely reflected the folder names for their respective photo folders on my external drive. The top level folders were the years (e.g. 2012, 2013, etc) with subfolder names which reflected various photos taken that year e.g. Christmas 2013, Johnny's birthday, etc.
my last photo import my folder structure has changed in Lightroom and instead of showing the folder names it shows the number of photos in the folders. So instead of showing Christmas 2013 the folder name displays as 45 if there are 45 photos in the Christmas 2013 folder. The structure and hierarchy of the folders are still correct but the names have turned into numbers which is nonsensical and makes navigation between folders a headache.
This happened in LR3.7 and continued when catalog was imported into LR4.I import by date in these folders: year/month/date..So imports today would go into the 2012 folder - March subfolder - March 30 subfolder
But recently this happens: At the import screen, the correct sub-folder (March 30) is chosen on the right side with the correct number of images. But when the import is executed and I look at my folder structure on the left side in Library mode, the March 30 subfolder has appeared twice--once where it should be as as a subfolder to March, and once above March, and sometimes above all of 2012. The March 30 subfolder of March is listed as empty. The folder in the wrong place has the images. If I try to move the images to the proper folder, it says the images are already there! If I look at the system finder, indeed the image files are where they are supposed to be, and the phantom folder does not exist.
I'm keeping my photos in a "sort of" date based structure, i.e 2013.04.28_EVENT NAME
Previously I'd just copy the photos from the camera card into the folder on the hard drive and then run a catalog "import in place" to get LR to find the files. I have now upgraded to a Canon 7D and thought I'd try the "Import from card" function after this weekend's shoot. I had too folders to import to, but in each case LR created sub folders under each of these as "2013" and "2013.4.28". I see from other posts that this may be a default folder structure that LR imposes. Is it possible to turn this function off and just import from the card directly into the folder of my choice.
Failing this I'm faced with the prospect of moving all the files back to the "root" sub-folder and then re-cataloging, or going back to my previous method of copy first (in explorer) and then cataloging.
While managing my folder structure I inadvertently hit the button of the parent folder on my Folder Navigator box. As a result ALL of the time dated folders were deleted in the navigator tool. the Catalog file is still solid and the original source photos on my hard drive are in tact. No lost source data other than I no longer have a date structure for the folders to navigate.When I try to retrieve the folders and their accompanying structure by just clicking the button it doesn't allow me to retrieve, or reestablish, the links to the hard drive folder source files. I assume it is because they already are imported in my catalog so there is nothing to import?
I am adding them to my LR catalogue, and while moving them to one external drive, also copying the files to a backup drive.
The files are named and put in the correct folder on the main drive, but the photos backed up to the second drive are put in a folder called "Imported on October 6, 2012".
I need to export a large number of photos as jpegs (about 5000). I also need to preserve the original folder structure to burn them onto DVD (as the folder names say what the photos are whereas the filenames are meaningless as generated by the camera)
How do I do this - I am using the trial version of LR4 - Doing it individually for each folder one at a time is getting tedious.
i have made changes to folder structure in lightroom 4. basically condensed folders, merged, deleted, etc. the only corresponding changes that i can see when i look at folders in My Pictures on my mac is that some of the folders are deleted. otherwise all the folders look the same as before i made my changes.
Is there a way to preserve the folder structure of a catalog when exporting JPGs of everything to a new location? I know there is an option to save the export into the same folder as the original file, but i am talking about a completely new location.
I just merged two catalogs from my work laptop and my home desktop.
One has this folder structure: YY/MM/DD
One has this: YY/YY-MM-DD
I'd like to get them together into one unified YY/MM/DD set of folders, preserving labels and collections from both catalogs.
If I delete images out of the catalog and re-import (to get LR to automagically move/create folders) I lose labels and collections.
If I export as catalog then import as catalog (to keep labels) the folder structure doesn't change.
Creating folders manually in the finder or Lightroom would take foooorever. Is there a way to get Lightroom to move everything into the structure I want, keeping labels, etc?
I have managed to have to re-load my Lightroom 5 catalog which unfortunately is a month out of date. During that month I changed my folder structure and whilst I can see the folders and images on my hard drive, my Lightroom 5 catalog is as it was a month ago without the new folder structure and with a lot of photos missing. Obviously the link between the images and Lightroom has been lost because I changed the folder structure without backing up the catalog. re-link my photos and album structure to Lightroom ?
I have +25k images organized in a folder structure today. This structure has served me well for many years, but I realize that it has it limits.Testing Lightroom made me decide to go for a new approach, but having some 'nightmares' of how to include my images from my old folder structure (25k images....)
I know I can keep my folders intact in Lightroom, and I have done this. But I also want to have some kind of description on EXIF/IPTC. Today this description is in the folder name, and only there.
How can I automatic include the images current folder name into the image file IPTC Caption or any other EXIF/IPTC field? I want to do this for all images and folders in one batch, and not select each folder manually.
The old images will be more in line with images I import from now on, and they will at least be universal searchable based on the old folder name.
Is there any software that's ready to go for this? Could it be a task for Automator?
I have access to both PC and MAC for this kind of batch operation.
I have experienced that when restoring a catalogbackup, all data connected to each picture is gone, and i have to use many hours to organize once more.
I took a trip yesterday and wanted to tag my images with gps data. I used my Samsung Galaxy 8.9 tablet's camera to record gps info by taking a shot at each location. The gps data is in the jpegs. I copied the images into my folder containing the images from my camera. I can use Photo GPS Extractor to view the image's location on Google Maps. The image location is also indicated on Google maps when viewing on the tablet. But, when I synchronise the folder to add the images to the Lightroom Library, the gps info is no longer available. The gps info is not available to ANY program after synchronising the folder in Lightroom. It seems as if Lightroom is removing that info from the metadata.
My first objective is to get a directory and its sub-directoried to agree as far as total file count is concerned and I'm not getting there. I have a directory the shows a total of 1082 files. When I totaled the number of files in the sub-directories I had 1080 files. I found two files that did not belong in the directory. I removed the tags from the two files (pictures) and then removed them from the catalog but not from the hard disk. They belong to a different catalog. When I totaled the sub-directories I got 1080 which meant the two files were gone from the sub-directories. But, the directory total was still 1082 and noted that two files were not shown. If they arn't in the sub-directories why are they counted in the main directory?
I somehow accidently closed and deleted the left-side file panel(with the file three structure) in inventor 2011! And i cannot find where to activate it again in any of the menus.
hiya! so my master media library is running off a 1 tb outboard drive to lightroom and i have a 2 tb outboard drive as a master backup, i drag new media over to the drive through finder on a mac- will this be able to connect to lightroom's catalog in case of the primary drives eventual failure? is there a better way?
I have CS3 and finally I can update to CS6. I have this plugins
AV Bros Puzzle Pro 3.0 L'amico Perry - Luce Nik Software (Color Efect Pro 3.0 Complete - Dfine 2.0 - Sharpener Pro 3.0 - Silver Efex Pro - Viveza) Redfield (arround 15) Topaz Labs (Adjust - Clean - DeNoise - Detail - Remask - Simplify)
I have a problem with CS3 since many time ago[URL]...But I have one question: If I backup the folder plugins, I really can use it with CS6 before I install it?
I lost my mac os hard drive, but my data or clips are in other place, i have a backup folder of discreet folder from /usr/discreet,
i make a new install of snow leopard and smoke 2012, how to relink this projects without restore/archive method, i not archive any file from library menu, I have the discreet folder and metadata in raid disk.
Since Lion or Mountain Lion, we have had an annoying problem where the last folder location is not remembered in Illustrator. For example when updating links on multiple files, would like for the folder location to return to the last one used, but this would go to some folder 3 levels higher/
URL....Also the software seems to not have bneen updated in a long time, adn don't wnat a solution that won't last. Am on 10.8.2.
We are copying our original files to a sub folder to make revisions that have only happened after bidding. We want to keep our original bid documents intact. I have created a sub folder called 'Conformed Documents' and added Constructs, Sheets, Elements, ect.
I copied the files over and used the Reference Manager to repath the files. However, all of my schedules and room tags now use the 'NA' prefix because it is not reading the project information. How can i reconnect this folder to the project folder?
I recently deleted a few files in cleaning up my desktop, however, in doing so managed to delete a few folders that had some really important photos on them. In lightroom I still have the previews for them, but can't work out if/how I can restore the photos from the previews.
