Disappearing Files When Updating Location

Question

It’s best to copy the photos first using your computer OS and after successfully updating the database (catlog) links you can then safely delete all the photos from your internal hard drive. This avoids the possibility of failure when using drag & drop from the LR Library as LR then has to copy and delete in the same operation. If possible copy the root folder and all sub-folders e.g. Pictures or My Pictures to maintain the same structure.
Then connect the external hard drive.
Launch LR
Right-Click on the existing folder in the LR Library (e.g. your original hard drive root folder)
Choose to update the folder location and navigate to and choose the new root folder on your external hard drive.
LR will update the database links (catalog) and the original folders will disappear from the original location in the Library to the new location.
Delete the original folder of images from your internal hard drive using your computer OS.
See this link for further information – tip 4 below figure 7.
I followed the above helpful advice but a problem has emerged: now certain files seemed to have disappeared. Before any further advice is offered I should clarify that I followed the instructions and although I didn't look too closely all seemed fine. I decided, however, that for the meantime I would continue to use my computer's hard drive as location. Accordingly I clicked on the external drive location and changed it back to my computer's internal hard drive.This was when things took a turn for the worse.
I noticed that there was a question mark on a file.
I did a control click to 'find lost file'
I found a file named as per the lost file, however, looking carefully it contained a different amount of files. Another file contained the correct number.
Unsure which to check as the lost file I decided to Update location a second time to the same location with the view in mind of a reset/refresh to try and locate the files correctly.
A pop-up informed me I had a folder at this location already and did I wish to merge? I foolishly decided to merge.
Now I have one master folder containing the very same master folder. The number of images contained within each folder are the sameonly there remains a question mark. It is not possible to open the second folder to view any individually labeled folders.
So now I am left with two issues - a merged root folder which fails to show individual folders and a question mark indicating missing folders.
My expectation was that I could re-locate and Lightroom would not lose folders that were clearly labeled in the root folder. And that relocation could be done as many times as one wished. This is clearly not the case. It's a hell of a waste of time and effort if I can vent for a moment.  And the number of images and folders contained is very small - 94 and 7.
That  vent over, can anyone offer any advice as to how to undo this suggestion and move-on.  Thanks.

Answer 1

The small green rectangle displayed next to the Macintosh HD indicates that Lightroom has detected that this disk is online. Absence of the green rectangle indicates that HD shown is not online (in this case, the HD containing the Lightroom Master). The question marks (?) are telling you that Lightroom does not know anything about the folders currently displayed other than that they did exist and at one point in time, and that at the time, images from those folders were added to the catalog. The numbers associated with each folder tells you how many images Lightroom believes are still stored in the catalog (in this case, there are 94 of them). This may not be correct but it is what Lightroom currently believes to be correct. From the Lightroom perspective, the folder structure located on the drive named Lightroom Master are considered missing. If you plugged in the drive, Lightroom will attempt to resolve the connection to those image files but if the folder itself is missing, all the images that Lightroom believes to be in that missing folder will also be flagged as missing.
At the next level are the images themselves. Lightroom will flag any image it has in it's catalog with an exclamation point '!'. Sometimes an image file may go missing because of some action such as copying, renaming or deleting an image file outside of Lightroom such as by using the Finder. If you rename something (folder or image file) in Lightroom, Lightroom will also make the same change to your HD. This does not work in reverse. If you change something on your HD via Finder, Lightroom will not be aware of the change and will report that object (folder and/or image file) as missing. If you happened to have renamed an image file with the Finder, you can right-click on the image in Lightroom, select Locate... and then navigate to and select the correctly named image file and Lightroom will adjust the catalog appropriately. You can do the same with folders and, when you select the correct folder, Lightroom will update the catalog and reconnect and/or connect to all of the images in the folder. But there is a catch.
When you import images, you can tell Lightroom to copy the image files to a selected location or, and this is the catch, tell Lightroom to leave the image files where they are and just update the catalog with the actual location they exist in. I am not trying to confuse the issue by bring importing into this discussion but, for good or ill, this is where Lightroom can hurt you if you are not aware. Because Lightroom can deal with image files anywhere on your Mac whether they exist on a local/internal HD or an external one, what you have in your Folders panel is not out of the ordinary. As far as Lightroom in concerned, you have an external/offline HD that has 94-image files on it as well as an internal/online HD that has 1,265-image files on it. Looking further, Lightroom is telling you exactly where all of these images are located. If you add up the number of image files found in each sub-folder of the folder DamonCook, you will see they total 1,265 and Lightroom believes all of these folders to be online but this does not mean all of the 1,265-image files are also online. If you right-click on the top level folder and select Show Parent Folder, you can navigate up the folder hierarchy to gain a complete picture of the structure. Not all of the images shown in your screen print are from your Pictures/Image Master/* folders. Click the triangles to open up the child folders to see what is contained within the parent folders currently being displayed.
To clean this up, you will have to go through each of the folders and see what each contains and then verify the content. Do not make changes via the Finder as this will only take you deeper into the Rabbit Hole. You can view folders/files with the finder but don't take any action such as renaming or deleting these objects. Do that work via Lightroom. Start at the top folder (DamonCook) and click the triangle to view the sub-folders there. If there is another triangle on any folder which indicates there are images contained there, click it as well. Keep going until the entire tree is open then start at the bottom and click the folder. This will display the images contained there. Check each image and make sure none of them are display with a question mark (?). If so, either delete that image if it is not supposed to be there (check the folder in finder) or Locate the file to reconnect it to Lightroom. Unfortunately, this is the only way to repair your catalog unless you want to just delete it and start over (not my first choice especially if you have made changes to images). Once you have done this, you should be able to start using Lightroom as normal.
One final thing...when you delete a photo from Lightroom, the default is to remove it from the catalog ONLY. Lightroom will give you the option to delete it from the disk as well. If you are not sure, just remove it from the catalog. that way, if you make a mistake, it is not gone. You can make a note and delete it using the Finder later (you can use Finder now because Lightroom no longer has any interest in the image). No harm leaving them on your HD other than there is always a change they can be re-imported. Once you have your internal HD correct, you can do the same with the external drive to insure that you are not missing anything. Time consuming but really the only way to insure you don't lose anything. And for the record, been there, done that and bought the t-shirt. Good luck with it.