Missing photos - duplicate volume

I'm running iPhoto 7.1.4 with my photo database on a MyBook USB 2.0 drive connected to a Time Machine, accessed wirelessly by iPhoto running on my Mac Book Pro. Previously my photos disappeared and on a Mac forum (not on this site) learned that when a USB drive is disconnected without unmounting it, some applications (e.g., iPhoto) will write to Macintosh HD/Volumes another instance of the missing volume (the errant USB drive) with a "-1" extension.
I down loaded a copy of TinkerTool so I could see the hidden files and fixed this first instance of the problem as described in the post. Sadly, the problem recurred this evening and I can't find the post. After searching this board again, I thought I'd leave a description of my problem.
While uploading vacation photos - between one session and another - somehow the connection to the MyBook drive was dropped and iPhoto created a "MyBook-1" entry in my Macintosh HD/Volumes directory. Now the last batch of photos shows up in iPhoto and all my older iPhoto images sport an exclamation mark.
What do I do to remove the "MyBook-1"? I can easily reload the photos I uploaded to that instance of the volume. I'm much more interested in getting back all the other pictures in the iPhoto database.
Thanks!

To fix a damaged library database file that has been corrupted by an interruption see the tip at the end of my signature below. It may help you recover from another interruption.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 6 and 7 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. Just put the application in the Dock and click on it whenever you want to backup the dB file. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.
Note: There now an Automator backup application for iPhoto 5 that will work with Tiger or Leopard.

Similar Messages

Missing photo links - changing name of external Hard Drive location

I have searched for the answer to this high and low without success if someone can help...
I have a large collection of photos that I store on an external firewire hard drive (too many to store on my macbook pro). My iphoto library is on my Mac and when importing photos to iphoto I did not import the files so the originals remain on the external hard drive and are therefore linked to in iphoto.
I did it this way, rather than storing the library database on the external drive, so that I could access the information and thumbnails when travelling and not connected to my external drive.
I've upgraded my external hard drive and it will have a different name. I need to transfer all the photos across to the new hard drive.
Is there a quick way to reconnect all my original photos when transferred to the new hard drive or a better way to transfer them? Having tried to copy them across manually, obviously as expected I get a missing photo exclamation mark and am asked to browse to the file to relink. This is OK to reconnect one or two photos, but would take me forever with 17,000.
I remember Adobe Photo Album had a command reconnect missing files, and it would go off and search for the files you may have moved location (or changed the directory name in which they were held). Is such a function available in iphoto? I've tried the iphoto re-build functions, but this doesn't look in other attached volumes for the photos.
Alternatively, is there a way to edit the iphoto library database to do a search and replace of the Volume name to the new name and reconnect the link to then photos? e.g. Can you manually edit the albumdata.xml file (and would this be the file to edit) for example, and rebuild the database with Photo Library Manager?
Can you re-import all the photos from the new location, and rebuild the links that way, or does this create duplicate entries and not merge album, keyword event data etc for each photo?
My last resort is re-importing all the photos again, but of course I'd loose all my keywords, albums, events and other info I've spent a long time entering into iphoto.
Thanks
Phil

I just wanted to close this off to say that my solution worked fine and my iphoto libraries are up and running in perfect order again. And to summarise the solution so you don't have to read the entire post above.
This solution is for those wanting to have the iphoto library on your Mac and store the original photos linked elsewhere on an external / network drive (i.e. not imported into the iphoto library). Then you want to change the location where the originals are stored (say for example you get a new bigger external Hard Drive - like I did), and that new location will have a different name. Most people recommend importing the photos into the iphoto library, keeping everything together, and this can then be moved anywhere and accessed.
So to summarise, if you are moving original photos linked into iphoto:
1. Back up everything you can first...
2. First try moving the files (not copying and deleting) - the aliases may reconnect, especially if they are on your main HD. You may need to manually reconnect one file in each sub-directory.
3. Move your photos to your external HD / network drive. Note if the new place has the same name as your old external HD then the aliases probably won't need to be fixed.
4. Download and install File Buddy or similar Alias 'fixer'
5. Go to your iphoto Library, right click, "Show Package Contents"
6. Copy the "Originals" directory to another location so that file buddy can read it.
7. Run File buddy, fixing the aliases in your copy of the Originals folder, pointing to where you've moved your photos too (restrict the directories as much as possible where you point file buddy to search for the missing files to speed it up). You will only have issues if you have multiple copies of the same file - i.e. that have the same file name and creation date, and file buddy will give you a list of these. This in itself is a good check to see you don't have the same file in two places - I only had issues with folders of photos that I'd been given from family in which there were multiple copies of the same photo. I've now cleaned these up, saved space and ran file buddy again to finish the job off.
8. Finally, move this now fixed "Originals" folder back into your iphoto library (package contents) - writing over / replacing the original "Originals" directory.
All being well, should be fixed!
Just to share with you the benefits I find of having my photos stored on an external HD and the iphoto library on my Macbook:
-- Saves space on my limited internal HD
-- others can access the photos, set up and manage their own iphoto libraries pointing at the same originals, and we don't need two copies of the original files
-- I can access the iphoto library and manage albums, add keywords, titles, etc when not connected to the External HD, though you're limited to viewing the (not too small) thumbnail pictures iphoto stores in its library
I'm loving iphoto even more now, it makes managing and viewing my 1000's of photos a pleasure.
Cheers
Phil

Help please - unable to open missing photos 'browse' dialogue box

Hi All,
new to the forum, but long time LR user.
I have a problem with LR v.3.4.1 I have a few missing photos (quite a few actually) in my catalogue from when I moved hard drives in v1. I jumped from v.1 to v3. But used to be able to find them still.
Now when I click the ? icon the browse dialogue box won't open. Double clicking only switches from thumnail to full size - though there are no index images of these photos.
I've checked the drives, the images still exist. I tried re-iporting the images to see if that would bring them up as duplicates, but the LR finder would not see any images there.
Since switching from v.1 to v.3 I have done quite a few shoots, and I'd be sad (no mortified!) to loose either bit of editing work.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Many thanks
Damian

I should say, this is the case for both my Macbook Pro running v10.5.8
and my new today, iMac running v10.6.7

Missing Photos Already in Catalog

Photos in one of my Collections are shown as Missing, and I can not update them because Lightroom thinks they are Already in Catalog. In fact there are two versions of all these photos in the Catalog grid view: one is shown as Missing and the other is not missing. How can I update the Collection photos without manually recreating the Collection?
In detail: I had some photos in my Lightroom Catalog. I added them to a Lightroom Collection. All was well.
Later, outside of Lightroom, I decided to copy the photos to a new folder on a new hard drive. Then I deleted the original photos and folder.
The LR Catalog now shows two instances of these photos, a good one and a Missing Photo. When I ask to Locate in Finder the good one, LR accurately shows it s location on my hard drive. Both instances of the photos have identical names and thumbnails. The LR Collection shows only one instance of the photos and they all show Missing Photos icons.
When I try to Locate the Missing Photo, I get this message "Already in Catalog. the file "xxx" is associated with another photo in the catalog. Each file can only be associated with one photo." In other words, I am unable to get the LR Collection to recognize the new location of the digital file.
If I delete the photo duplicate with the Missing Photo icon, the photo is removed from my Collection. This is not acceptable for two reasons: I have now 449 "Missing" images in this Collection and I do not want to manually list, delete and then replace each one. I think this is the job of an asset management database like Lightroom, and I depend on it to keep accurate track of everything.
It has been 17 days since I opened a Customer Support case and I have had numerous exchanges with the Adobe reps, including a 1.75 hr. phone conversation, and still no solution. Sometimes there seems to be a language problem but at other times a lack of product knowledge. Is there anyone out there that can help?

Ok, thanks for clarifying.
Lightroom does not create duplicates on its own. They arise usually because the user did something, perhaps accidentally. By any chance, did you ever tell Lightroom to "Synchronize Folders..." ?
Lightroom does not follow or find your photos if you move them outside of Lightroom. My recommendation for newcomers to Lightroom is to always move or rename files and folders from inside of Lightroom.
If I understand your situation properly, I think the solution to your mess is as follows: First ... in Windows or Mac Finder (the only time I ever recommend moving things in WIndows or Mac Finder is to fix or unfix previous moves in Windows or Mac Finder) ... move (cut and paste, not copy and paste) the photos back to where they were. This should connect the copy that is now "bad", and fixing the problem in your collections. Second, in Lightroom, delete the copies on the new hard drive, which should now be disconnected. Now, you should have one copy of everything (including in your collections) that is connected and usable in Lightroom. Finally (optionally), if you want your photos to reside on the new hard drive, then inside Lightroom, move them to the new hard drive.

IPhone 6 Missing Photos

Hello everybody,
I recently bought the new iPhone 6. (running iOS 8.0.2)
I'm pretty sure it's just a bug, but I'm surprised that I couldn't find any discussions related to this one.
My problem is when I take a photo using the volume rocker (note: I hold it for a second or two and the burst mode indicator shows 001right on top of the shutter button) the photo is captured and put into the little shortcut that leads you to your photos. (top right corner of the screenshot)
yet when I tap on the photo that has been taken and then on "all photos" which takes me into the photos app it doesn't show the picture. The picture is no where to be found the iPhone.
The one photo that appears is the screenshot (the first photo)
I have found a partial work-around. I went into 'Image Capture' on my Mac and found the missing photo. There I was able to delete it.
I just wanted to know if anybody else has this problem, if I'm doing something wrong,or if the photo is actually tucked away somewhere else. If this is actually a bug can this be reported to able to fixed? I heard that iOS 8.1 is going to be released on Monday... will it be fixed by then?
Thank you

Dunno about the photo not appearing in photos/collections.
Try a reset of iPhone.
Quit all open apps.
Double tap Home & swipe up on all apps.
Then reset iPhone.
Press & hold both Home & Power until you see Apple logo.
the hyph wrote:
My main worry is that after the photos leave my Recently Added album in 30 days, the 3rd photo will be lost
You should regularly sync you photos back to you computer.

PSE 6 Missing Photos How Can I merge ALL photos to PSE6?

I have three versions of elements on my pc..
starter 3
PSE4
PSE6
in all the programs there are photos missing with the (?) or the torn photo image..
in PSE6 when I click on the (?) the program searches and finds the photo quickly BUT I dnt want to do that for thusands of photos.
I WANT to free up space on my hard drive and delete copies of my photos and ran a duplicate photo program which found some photos to have as many as 6 copies most have doubles..
I have 54,000 files of photo duplicates and about 120GB of space taken up.
I am sure that is double the amount of actual photos but as I started to delete the ones with 5-6 duplicates first saving just one copy I realized the
duplicate finder is not perfect...sometimes the one duplicate to be saved is in an odd location compared to the ones it listes as the duplicates.
I have deletd about 5,000 duplicates so far and got back about 10GB of space on my hard drive but I am afraid I am making it harder for the PSE6
to find all the photos. There is a one click button that will highlight ALL the duplicates and delete them in one swoop but I am worried PSE6 will not be able to find them and with just a (?) and a date I have no idea what photo is missing or how to find it.
I just deleted a trial version PSE6 and was finally able to install the one I was given on CD.
but when it loaded hundreds of photos have the (?) and so I opened ALL 3 versions of PE to see if the photos are still on my hard drive or if I deleted
them with this duplicate finder program.
I really just want to have ALL the photos in ONE place and delete the early versions of PSE4 and starter but I am afraid I will be deleting the photos
that are loaded in that catalog....
How can I merge ALL my photos to PSE6?

Here's a method for finding duplicates using PSE 6:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Find_and_delete
The advantage of this method is that you can control which duplicate you want to delete based on catalog information (e.g. one duplicate may have been tagged, the other not). And you don't need to worry about reconnecting files after you delete.
This method requires that all the files be imported into your PSE 6 catalog.

Missing photos in Aperture 3.1.3

I opened Aperture today to discover that all of my photos that are older than about 6 months are now missing from the library. The thumbnail/preview of missing photos show as an outline now. If I right click on a missing photo and select Show In Finder, I will see this error:
"The file (name) could not be found because the volume on whioch it resides is currently offline.
Volume: Macintosh HD"
It seems that iPhoto, with an older set of photos, is working normally still. This is a somewhat new iMac that was created from a Time Machine backup from a MacBook Pro. I haven't really changed anything and the photo library has always been on the same local HD.
Any ideas? Should I just go back to iPhoto?!

Well, it seems that I just found part of the answer here. The path to the files in my iPhoto library has changed somehow - perhaps due to an update.
/User/username/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/... etc
...has changed to...
/User/username/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters/... etc
File > Locate Referenced Files... will allow me to find and fix this but it seems like only one photo at a time. Is there a better way to do this?

Can't reconnect 'missing' photos

After importing all my photos from PS Elements 8, taking the suggested defaults, I was presented in the Library grids many cells with the broken icon in the upper rh corner. Upon running the 'Find Missing Photos', I received a report saying there are some 13,678 'missing' photos. I then followed the procedure outlined in a help file to Locate the missing photos, which described their last path. However, there was no reconnection done once I completed this procedure. I then went into PS Elements 8 and performed a Search for one of the filenames that were reported 'missing'. The result showed two different photos, in two different locations, but having the same .JPG name. I recognized both photos as being valid, but wonder how to proceed with what seems to be a reason why the 'missing' notation, as I figure the software can't deal with dupicate filenames. I surely didn't expect this many images reporting 'missing', so seems there's plenty of recovery work to be done, maybe in the realm of renaming one of the duplicated images; eg. filename_1.jpg.
Have you seen this problem, and what would you recommend to fix it?
Thanks very much.
Fred

dj,
I'm impressed you're up so early responding to Forum folks like me!
OK, my Olympus DSLR is the E520 model with latest firmware installed. My version of Lr4 is 4.4.1, updated right after I installed the program.
Leave the disconnected photos to me, as I think there will be lots of work ahead of me to go through my plethora of saved media cards (my secondary backup sources) to bring in those missed photos.
As for the .ORF extension photos, here's what I've found (prety interesting).
Initially, I did a search of the new Lr4 catalog for '*.ORF' files, and got the report that no files existed of that type.
Today, I inserted a USB key on which I had placed several photos for processing at Costco, some of which were .ORF files.
I had Lr4 open in the background, when suddenly it came onto the screen with cells filled with all those photos on the stick.
It identified both .JPG and .ORF files, and here's the kicker;...after awhile, it "grayed out" all the photos, saying there was already a duplicate of ALL those files in the Lr4 catalog. This was in the COPY panel I saw this.
So, it seems Lr4 does recognize my .ORF files after all, however, strange the SEARCH function reported nothing existed.
Sorry for all these notes, but hopefully I'll be cured and OK very soon, with your help :-)
Regards,
Fred

"Missing Photos" in Library section of Library

Hi,
Mac OS X 10.5.2, Lightroom 1.3.1.
Somehow, I have an entry in the Library section of Library (this is not in the Folders section) which says I have about 6,000 missing photos. I'm trying to understand what this means. The photos are there, and I can right click on them and see the photos in the Finder.
What do these 6,000 "missing files" refer to? Are they missing from the catalog? I was recently tinkering with the "Synchronize Photos" function as it looks like I have some cruft in the library where I tried to delete rejected photos, but only deleted them from the library and not from disk (I'd love to be able to easily doing this now... but I can't find how to do that either).
Note these are NOT files that were moved outside Lightroom. These are not red folders... the files are there but Lightroom is calling them "Missing" for whatever reason. I can't see any reference to it in the documentation... but I haven't purchased a LR book so don't know where a good document for this is.

Have a look at these two threads:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c06476f/0
and
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c05eed5/0
It looks like this is a database problem/bug; the files are not really missing but Lightroom thinks that they are! If all the files reported as missing, still exist then you can correct the problem by removing them from the catalog. (If you try to re-import them (or a few of them), and check "Don't re-import suspected duplicates" on the Import Photos screen, Lightroom should not import any files; instead it should give you message saying that they already exist in the catalog.)

Missing Photos and jumbled library and sub folders

Hi. I am having trouble opening photos in iPhoto. The thumbnails are squashed out of shape and when I double click on the image, a different photo appears. There are also blank squares in place of some thumbnails. All the photos in my library are also out of order, most of my subfolders are now empty and if there are photos in a subfolder, they do not correspond to the folder name. Everything appeared to be okay two weeks ago.
Any help in retrieving my lost photos and resetting the subfolders would be appreciated.

Hi Ben,
First try a rebuild:
Try this:
Before doing a rebuild make sure iPhoto's trash bin is emptied. You can do this by control clicking on the trash bin, or from the menu bar under iPhoto.
Close iPhoto
Duplicate the iPhoto Library folder
Drag the duplicate to the desktop (hopefully you have enough room on your hard drive for the duplicate.)
Launch iPhoto holding down the Command and Option keys until you see the rebuild options screen.
Choose the first three options. If you were missing photos in your library, also choose the last option. Be advised that you will get a roll of orphaned photos and it might be quite huge. Most of them will already be in your iPhoto library, but use caution when deleting anything from this roll until you are sure the photos are still in your library in another place. It might be a good idea to share/export this roll of photos just in case you need to import them again.
Back to the rebuild, depending on the size of your library it might take some time. When it is done, hopefully your photos will be there.
You might see some unexpected results as I did when I did a rebuild. Photos had been moved to wrong dates, video clips had lost their duration info and some were even orphaned from the jpg pointer file. It took me some time to straighten it out again.
This is the reason to make a duplicate before you rebuild, in case you do not like the result. If you don't like the result, close iPhoto, then delete the rebuilt library and drag the duplicate back into the Pictures folder making sure the name is iPhoto Library. Launch iPhoto and it should open the library in the Pictures folder.
iPhoto 4 or later: Rebuilding the iPhoto Library
If that doesn't work, create a new library:
Close iPhoto
Rename your messed up iPhoto Library to "iPhoto Library_old"
Drag this library to your desktop
Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto
This is the window you will get
Create a new library or choose a library to open
Choose to create a new library
Once this new empty library is open it is time to import the images from your old library
Go to File>add to library
Navigate to the old library on your desktop and highlight it in the window, then click the "import" button.
iPhoto will start importing the images from your old library
This is what to expect:
Your images will be imported in nice dated rolls. (make sure your view is set to sort by rolls to see it) There are a couple of caveats to this. You will get rolls named "Originals" These rolls will contain your video clips and your original images that you had edited. If you had RAW files they would be in those rolls too (I don't do RAW, so I don't know for sure) Delete what you don't want from those rolls. You will also get the jpeg pointer files to your video clips imported. They will just be jpegs and will not point to the video clips anymore as iPhoto made new ones when the clips were imported again. You can delete those. they should be in a roll right next to the newly imported video clips so they are not hard to find. The thumbnail files don't get imported as iPhoto makes new ones when the images are imported.
Once all you images have been imported, check through the library and make sure everything looks ok.
You can now start making your Albums, and do your keywords or any other organizational steps.
You can also delete the old library on the desktop.
It is also a good time to backup this new library to CD/DVD by burning the iPhoto LIbrary folder in the Finder, or copying the iPhoto Library folder to an external drive formatted for Macs, or copying the iPhoto LIbrary folder to an iPod.
Good luck!

Synchronize Folder problem - LR finds missing photos that aren't missing

A bit of background:
I decided to dive in and clean up a big 40K catalog I have. This involved:
Moving images around
Creating new folders
Renaming existing folders
Renaming all photos
All of this was done within LR to avoid problems. But now, everything is working fine, LR does not complain that there are missing photos EXCEPT when I try to synchronize a folder.
The strange this is there is no question mark on the images and when I use the Find Missing Photos, LR tells me that there are no missing photos.
But when I try to synchronize a folder (any), it finds all the images as new images and suggests to remove the missing photos (both matching the exact number of images). Obviously I don't want to do that and loose my edits...
I found some information here, it seems to be an old bug but no solutions work for me... I really don't want to go back and redo all this work. Is there a magic trick?
Thanks!

Thanks but this a completely different problem. You are referring to the "Treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separated photos" setting that I have unchecked purposely and I do not shoot RAW + Jpeg anyways.
Your issue is a normal behavior. LR assumes that Jpeg+RAW shooters will only required the RAW to be imported in LR unless you change that setting.
My problem was a very specific instance where the volume name did not match case with the folder names in LR. As soon as I fixed that, it went back to normal.

Recovering missing photos-PLEASE HELP

Im desperately trying to find missing photos. Finder locates parts of the missing files when given the album names: (data, albums which contain only aliases), nothing that can be opened up as an image: says cant find the original.
I've posted another question relating to this which contains more details of my delima.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=3277048#3277048
I'm learnning a huge lesson the hard way, and I know you can all relate with the emotional loss of photos containing precious images of the history of yours and your families' life. I'm just sick over it.
Please someone help me!
iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

My original "claim" of "lost" photos was because one morning I awoke, to continue working on an iPhoto project, to be informed, that iPhoto couldn't find my library. I located my library folder, created a duplicate and named it library.old. I attempted under the guidance of Apple phone support, to drag the entire library folder back into iPhoto. Didn't work, so begain draging folders one by one back into iPhoto. This, was determined to be the only recourse. It was time consuming, but seemed to be going quite well. The new library seemed just fine, when I would do spot checks, on its viability and functionallity.
A week later I awoke to continue the reconstruction project and was once again notified that iPhoto could not find my library...it was empty.
This is when I really begain loosing any semblance of standardization. I just simply lost faith... got scared (freaken paranoid is more like it), and started getting a little lost.
Thank you for the wake up message. I know now that the photos really aren't "lost". Still don't know why my library got lost twice though. I've created a lot of mess that I've got to clean up...and I will! At this point I figure I just need to update my 2.0.1 version with the new iLife, get an external drive for backup and to free up my main drives memory...and then clean house. I'm considering eventually reinstalling the system and getting rid of the partitiones on my hard drive. To extreme?
Regardless I'm learning a lot ...mostly what not to do it seems!
iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Consolidate duplicate Volume

The lightroom 3
I have 2 MACS with lightroom 3.6 installed (separate serial#). Sometimes I need to use the lightroom catalog on a 2nd computer (laptop) and copy the catalog and database to the 2nd Mac. I have an external SMB NAS Drive with images that the lightroom folder view points to. The Lightroom Catalog sometimes thinks it has 2 volumes it is sourcing from even though there is only one external mounted SMB drive. Probably has to do with the method of connection or slightly different directory paths between the 2 mac computers. Both Volumes are identical and point to the same folder, ie if I click on the find original from both volumes it will show up correctly on the desktop. I only sync the catalog on One of the macs so it doesn't catalog all the images as new.
The question is can I consolidate the 2 volumes and maintain reference collections, cropping etc? I've seen suggestions for when there are 2 separate volumes, but in this case the problem relates to the way the Macs source path is defined. Part of the problem may be that one of the MACS is 10.6.8, and the other is 10.8. That may be why the paths are defined separately.

I have this problem as well. In my case at least, the duplicate volumes are due to case sensitvity in the path name:
/Volumes/photos
/Volumes/Photos
I would like to remove the lower case one but have been unable to find a way to do so.

What are missing photos

Besides my main iPhoto library, I have a secondary library that holds 74.000 pix.
I have now run this (huge)library through Duplicate Anihilator and it found (besides tons of duplicates which I then erased) a few thousand "missing photos".
a) what are they?
b) what should I do about them?
Thanks!
Pol

Pol, missing photos are probably photos, were the original image file is missing. try to edit or export one of them, if you cant, the original is missing. You have only the preview of the version left. Sometimes you can reconnect the originals by rebuilding the library with iPhoto library manager. If not, drag the thumbnails of the images in question to a folder on your desktop to save the previews as jpegs.

How to reset paths (NOT missing photos)

I have created a new folder with all my photos. Within it are individual folders named by year (2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009...).
I have several old catalogs with photos pointing to different files on several external HDs. I want to relink them nice and neatly so that they all point to the photos on my newly created folder on a dedicated external HD.
How can I relink all the photos? I've searched all over the internet but the only information that I can find are those related to "missing photos and question marks in the corner (and not just "resetting paths" as in Expression Media/iView). I have attempted to FORCE the question mark and relink it that way but Lightroom will not find nearby files. It only finds photos taken on the same day.
There must be some easy way like in Expression Media/iView to simply reset the path, i.e., manually relink in big batches (all photos in one folder).
I'd be so grateful for any insight and solutions anybody could offer me.

You've a couple of routes - for individual images, or for folders.
With individual images, it depends on the image being missing. If it has a little question mark or exclamation mark in the corner in grid view, click the missing file marker and point to where the photo is now located. Ensure "Find Nearby" is ticked, and press OK. LR will read the filenames of other missing files and try to find them too. This route is no use if the image is not missing.
With folders, you can right click any folder. You get a question mark if the folder is missing, and right click - "Find Missing Folder". If the folder is not missing, the context menu is "Update Folder Location". In each case you can now point to the new folder location.
To make it easy on yourself, right click a parent folder and update its location. Its child folders will then be updated too.
Does that help?
John

Missing photos - duplicate volume

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