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Archive 2014 · LR edits are missing

  
 
lighthound
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · LR edits are missing


I recently moved all my photos that had been edited in LR from my C Drive over to my D Drive and now all my Lightroom edits are missing. Are they gone forever?


Oct 07, 2014 at 05:40 AM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · LR edits are missing


How exactly did you move them?


Oct 07, 2014 at 06:03 AM
schlotz
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · LR edits are missing


Far too little information provided. What did you move, the actual photos only, the entire lrcat catalogue? What do you currently see when you open LR? Are the thumbs still there and do they have a small '!' in the top right hand corner? If so, click on it and do what it says to re-locate (re-find) them.


Oct 07, 2014 at 08:11 AM
lighthound
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · LR edits are missing


Sorry for the lack of info.

I moved them outside of LR simply using Windows 7. My LR was running very slow so I "thought" this was a good idea at the time as my C drive was nearly full.
BTW, the D: drive is simply a partition on my main C: Drive if this helps.
There were over 35,000 photo's all in separate folders under a single folder called Photo's. I just dragged and dropped this folder over to the D: drive to move them.

The first time I went into LR after that no images or thumbs were shown. This was a couple of weeks ago but if I recall correctly LR then created a new catalog of all the images it found on the D: drive. I think this is where I may have screwed myself.

As for moving the entire lrcat catalog, forgive me, I have no idea. I'm fairly new to LR (rookie) and in all honesty I really don't have a firm understanding of this whole catalog thing. My entire 32 years of using computers has always revolved around putting things in folders to keep them organized so this catalog thing has been hard for me to wrap my old brain around.

Thank you both for your help.
If there is no hope of getting these edits back then it is what it is. There were only about 100 - 200 or so photo's that I have done in LR so far. But those took me many many hours and I'd love to get them back if at all possible.



Oct 07, 2014 at 12:26 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · LR edits are missing


lighthound wrote:
Sorry for the lack of info.

I moved them outside of LR simply using Windows 7. My LR was running very slow so I "thought" this was a good idea at the time as my C drive was nearly full.
BTW, the D: drive is simply a partition on my main C: Drive if this helps.
There were over 35,000 photo's all in separate folders under a single folder called Photo's. I just dragged and dropped this folder over to the D: drive to move them.

The first time I went into LR after that no images or thumbs were shown. This was
...Show more


yeah thats pretty much the wrong way (but all will not be lost )

Wrongs:
1. you moved files and folders OUTSIDE of LR. move within LR and it knows where stuff moves to .
2. you created a NEW LR catalogue . as your edits are kept within the cat file and you didnt export the images (LR will send the edits with them) then LR will only see the files as unedited raw files . If you run xmp sidecars then LR could have used that info (but its not complete so its better to have the LR cat)

how you can recover and move on.
LR can run multiple catalogues (1 at a time)
search for a file called .LRcat . it will have a name that you called your catalogue .
if you deleted the Cat file but allowed LR to backup the cat file (it asks if you want to backup on exit typically) then find the most recent file .
double click the LRcat file and LR will launch using that Catalogue . you will have to point LR at the images but your edits will be intact

hope it helps



Oct 07, 2014 at 01:49 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · LR edits are missing


also by the way a few pointers to better use of your drives and LR .

your D drive is a partition on your main drive :

while its OK to have your drive partitioned as C & D (never really felt the need of that personally) your still really dealing with 1 drive . if that drive cr@ps out on you you still loose everything . Do you have a solid backup plan .
absolute minimum would be backing up your images and LR cat file (im only talking about Photography backup here . but same goes for everything else important to you) to an external drive .

but really you want more than one backup with something that can be stored off site so if you have a houise catastrophe you have something elsewhere. I swap my backup drive (I backup using time machine as im on a mac) out and leave the swapped out one at my parents when I visit . .

as for LR itself :

LR uses 2 or 3 files for a catalogue . the important one is the LRcat file (the others are previews that can be rebuilt) . you should be backing this up on a regular basis and moving the backup to that external drive . even better if you have the space on a cloud (its probably about 500mb for 35K of images) save the most recent one to a cloud .

if you have a copy of the cat file and the images you have everything LR needs to open the catalogue .



Oct 07, 2014 at 02:21 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · LR edits are missing


If you do have a copy of the "original" catalogue file then you should still be able to use it if when you copied the images from C: to D: you did not change the folder structure that holds those images. Just double click on it and Lr will open it and find 35,000 missing files. Right click on the top-most folder that is missing and select find missing files. Tell it where the new folder is (on D. All of the previews and edits will be available.

Normally you should only relocate part of your image collection or rearrange its structure from within Lr, but when you have to move it all you can do so outside Lr and find the missing files later. If you mess with the structure or shift odd files from here, there and everywhere then you will spend ages telling Lr where those missing files are.

If you no longer have a viable copy of that original Lr catalogue then you are out of luck. You might, however, be able to restore a lot of edits from .xmp files and/or metadata stored in the image files - but probably not if you've already messed with them.


If all is lost then you'll have to start from scratch. Do yourself a favour and do just that - do not spend time and anguish trying to precisely duplicate previous edits. Just treat each image as if it was a brand new one with no history and edit it accordingly. It will be far less frustrating this way.

In terms of improving Lr performance, I suggest that you install a second drive and transfer the image files to that. Having them on a second volume/partition on the same drive that holds C: may well slow slow things down by causing the drive read/write heads to travel greater distances to and fro between C: and D:. That is one of the slowest things that a HDD can do.


I would put nothing on the cloud. I don't like it. I don't trust it. And my stuff is for me. Plus it can be expensive in terms of internet bandwidth, depending on your plan and your ISP.

- Alan



Oct 08, 2014 at 04:54 AM
lighthound
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · LR edits are missing


Thank you all for your help and encouragement to hopefully find my edits.

I haven't had a chance to try any of your suggestions yet but when I get the time (hopefully tonight) I will look for the LRcat file or at least any .xmp files. I have a really bad feeling though as I also "cleaned" up my system with a few programs such as ccleaner and then ran a back up on my external drive. And yes btw, I do back up my entire system including my photo's every week onto an external drive and swap it out with another one every other week similar to what Ian is doing. And I agree with you Alan about the cloud storage thing. I'm a little wiggy about all my stuff floating around in cyber space. I must be showing my age.

The reason I moved them outside of LR is because I still feel like I have blinders on when working in LR and things seem way over complicated.

Heck it took me hours just to figure out how to "Save" a .jpg image when I first started using it.
Export No, wait, what? That's something I do with Catia solid model CADD files when I need to send them to customers.

Thank you all again for the help and I'll let ya know how I make out once I get the chance. Worse case like Alan said.... I'll just start all over from a fresh new start with a lot more knowledge the second time around.



Oct 08, 2014 at 12:26 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · LR edits are missing


It worked! I found the LRcat file(s) and clicked on one of them and followed your directions. I couldn't figure out how to make it find all of them in one shot so I just kept clicking on any (!) I could find and then went and found the file in the current location. I did check the box to "find nearby edits" and that helped a great deal. A little tedious but at least I'm getting my edits back!

Question.
Why do I have several (about 8) different LRcat files? I think some of them contained the same image data for photos I had already relocated.
If these LRcat files are simply back-ups that have been saved then logic tells me the LRcat file with the most recent date would have ALL edit data to date. Correct?

Also, I'm a clean freak and was wondering if I (once I know I have all my edits back) should delete these old LRcat files and only keep the most recent one. Or do they not hog up much HDD space and as such just leave them in there?


Thank you folks so much for your help.
I had grossly underestimated the quantity of edits I had made when I told you that there were only about 100 - 200 edits. Time flies when your having fun must be. I was WAY over that last night as I was locating them one at a time with finding nearby edits.




Oct 10, 2014 at 08:59 AM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · LR edits are missing



It worked! I found the LRcat file(s) and clicked on one of them and followed your directions. I couldn't figure out how to make it find all of them in one shot so I just kept clicking on any (!) I could find and then went and found the file in the current location. I did check the box to "find nearby edits" and that helped a great deal. A little tedious but at least I'm getting my edits back!

Brilliant .

Question.
Why do I have several (about 8) different LRcat files? I think some of them contained the same image data for photos I had already relocated.
If these LRcat files are simply back-ups that have been saved then logic tells me the LRcat file with the most recent date would have ALL edit data to date. Correct?


yeah they are probably the backups (as long as you've not created lots of catalogues ) . You can specify a different location for the backups to be placed .


Also, I'm a clean freak and was wondering if I (once I know I have all my edits back) should delete these old LRcat files and only keep the most recent one. Or do they not hog up much HDD space and as such just leave them in there?

As long as you have the most recent then you can probably get rid of them .
Not going to preach here as there are many ways to work with LR and backing it up .

A good way to do things is to let LR create a backup on exit , or at least when you've finnished doing an editing session or imported a new set of files . I let LR send its backups to a folder on my images drive (and that gets backed up by time machine) . I delete stuff that's over a month old (I may keep 1 from each month )

It's hard to say how much room your backups would take up . Mine (a catalogue of about 100k images) is just over 1gig . The amount of edits and things like keywords have an effect on the size as well .

Thank you folks so much for your help.
I had grossly underestimated the quantity of edits I had made when I told you that there were only about 100 - 200 edits. Time flies when your having fun must be. I was WAY over that last night as I was locating them one at a time with finding nearby edits.








Oct 10, 2014 at 12:04 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · LR edits are missing


Had you copied the entire photo-holding folder structure to a backup drive then you would only have to find one of the missing images and Lr would find the lot. Changing the folder structure outside Lr is what makes it messy.

I have Lr do a backup at the end of every session. Each oine goes into a folder with the appropriate date in its name. Every so often I clean them out.... I keep the last few, then say weekly for a while and monthly for a while.

Why keep the backups?
(1) so that you can recover from stuff-ups like you just experienced
(2) so that you can recover from less-deliberate stuff-ups, such as accidentally making changes to many selected images instead of just one - which you would do by not realising that they were all selected. Remember there's three grades of selection: unselected, selected and most-selected.
(3) just in case the program crashes in a bad way and ruins the main catalogue file.

These backups are really not very secure while they are on the one and only drive with the original catalogue file. You need to copy them to another physically separate drive that is normally off-line. The more backups the better.

- Alan



Oct 11, 2014 at 02:25 PM





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