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Archive 2016 · File Path! File Path! File Path!

  
 
veroman
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · File Path! File Path! File Path!


I rarely post here. Can't remember the last time. But today I have a reason ... a very GOOD reason.

A couple of days ago I copied all of my files, including my Lightroom Catalogs and Previews, to a new hard drive. No big deal. I've done it many times over the years. Yesterday, for some reason or another, I decided to change the Window Views on my Mac from "None" to "Arrange by Date Modified." I did this on my main boot-up drive as well as all external drives ... a total of about 185,000 images spread across roughly 8TB.

Yeah ... experienced ones know what happened. All of the files and folders in my Lightroom Catalogs had the dreaded question mark. It took me hours and hours and hours to realize what changing the Views had done, i.e. it changed the file path for all those files, making it impossible for Lightroom to find them. Actually, I woke up in the middle of the night last night and said to myself, "Hey ... maybe I should change the Views Option back to where it was."

File Path! Remember those two words at all times.

- Steve



Jan 17, 2016 at 10:35 AM
OntheRez
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · File Path! File Path! File Path!


Steve,
As one politico used to say, "I feel your pain." I did something similar with a much smaller data set so I would add to your mantra : Lr is not a database, Lr is not a database. Unlike say, Aperture, that did have a real database at its file core, Lr is just a list. I'm currently experimenting with alternate cataloging systems that actually are built on databases. Been a lot time since I was a DB manager, but a "get" or "put" should be the simplest of all commands, but fail with Lr.

So remember "File path! File path!" and Lr is not database!"

Robert



Jan 17, 2016 at 11:06 AM
howardm4
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · File Path! File Path! File Path!


I'm more than willing to bet that Aperture uses the exact same SQLite db that LR does.

Adobe uses SQLite as the application file format for their Photoshop Lightroom product. SQLite is also a standard part of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). It is reported that Acrobat Reader also uses SQLite.

Whether you do or do not consider SQLite a true db is another matter.



I'm actually sort of surprised that LR lost track of them. The way you view/arrange them should not be dependent on filepath (or viceversa)


Edited on Jan 17, 2016 at 11:43 AM · View previous versions



Jan 17, 2016 at 11:29 AM
veroman
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · File Path! File Path! File Path!


howardm4 wrote:
.... I'm actually sort of surprised that LR lost track of them. The way you view/arrange them should not be dependent on filepath (or viceversa)

Well, all I know is when I changed the view option back to "none," all of the files and folders that had question marks in front of them were suddenly accessible again. Go figure ...

- Steve



Jan 17, 2016 at 11:35 AM
colinm
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · File Path! File Path! File Path!


As Howard mentioned, the "Arrange By" option purely affects the way Finder displays the files in Finder windows. Nothing is touched or moved on the disk.

Now, if you're still using spinning rust to store your files, fighting for access to the disk (changing "Arrange By" can thrash while re-rendering the views on larger collections of files) can cause Lightroom to temporarily lose track of files due to timeouts. But the file path is the same as it ever was and, given time, Lightroom would find the files right where it left them.



Jan 17, 2016 at 09:27 PM
mhayes5254
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · File Path! File Path! File Path!


I have to agree with Howard, that the sort order has no impact on the path. I have no doubt about what you observed, but cannot see any way the OS x sort order could have caused the issue. I just changed my "filename" sort order to "date modified" then "none" with no impact in Lightroom. A strange mystery I guess.


Jan 30, 2016 at 02:59 PM





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