Trouble Trying to Restore LR from Backup

[Saladsamurai]

Hello Folks

I am still quite new to LR so I am still on the steep part of the learning curve. Maybe someone can help me out here.

I recently erased my my hard disk drive and have since re-installed Lightroom 2 (I know...I'm behind the times...). I am currently trying to restore my photos. What I have done so far was to copy the entire "Pictures" folder (OSX 10.6.8) from my backup drive to the newly formatted hard drive in the "exact" same location. So the Lightroom catalogs and the Photos themselves are located in the "exact" same locations as before.

Notice the quotation marks It is almost the same location because when I re-installed OSX, I gave the home directory a different name because I was not thinking straight.

So I am thinking that the catalogs are having trouble associating the previews, "Develop" settings, and additional metadata with the original photos.

These are the symptoms: When I open LR, I see my preview thumbnails as I did before (i.e. as expected). However, when I go to operate on the photos (i.e. zoom in on one, etc...) I get the message:

the file named "_.dng" is offline or missing.

I am guessing that the catalog is pointing to something like:

users/OLD_username/Pictures/LR/_.dng

where in reality this data is located at

users/NEW_username/Pictures/LR/_.dng

Any thoughts on this? If I can't fix it, no big deal, but it would of course be much more convenient if I can.

Thanks!

[snberk103]

Originally Posted by Saladsamurai

Hello Folks

I am still quite new to LR so I am still on the steep part of the learning curve. Maybe someone can help me out here.
......
Any thoughts on this? If I can't fix it, no big deal, but it would of course be much more convenient if I can.

Thanks!

Congratulations .... and welcome to Lightroom. Keep in mind that this is for Lr4, so I'm hoping it is the same.

Open Lr in the Library module. Select "All Photographs in side panel" and then display them in a Grid. In the top right corner there is question mark - click that. It will tell you the image is missing, but should then ask if you want to locate the missing image. If memory serves, it will also ask you if you want to find any nearby missing photos.

Anyway, if this works as well as I hope it will then locate all of your images. Perhaps you may have to go through folder by folder.

Anyway... I'm hoping that will work for you. Things may be in slightly different positions of course, but hopefully have enough info to get started.

Good Luck.

[Saladsamurai]

Originally Posted by snberk103

Congratulations .... and welcome to Lightroom. Keep in mind that this is for Lr4, so I'm hoping it is the same.

Open Lr in the Library module. Select "All Photographs in side panel" and then display them in a Grid. In the top right corner there is question mark - click that. It will tell you the image is missing, but should then ask if you want to locate the missing image. If memory serves, it will also ask you if you want to find any nearby missing photos.

Anyway, if this works as well as I hope it will then locate all of your images. Perhaps you may have to go through folder by folder.

Anyway... I'm hoping that will work for you. Things may be in slightly different positions of course, but hopefully have enough info to get started.

Good Luck.

Hi snberk103

This seems to have taken care things just perfectly! Thanks for taking the time to point that out. I am hoping to upgrade to LR4 soon, since I have decided to not re-install iPhoto. I think LR will serve as a much better photo viewer with some serious additional power to it.

Thanks again

[snberk103]

Originally Posted by Saladsamurai

Hi snberk103

This seems to have taken care things just perfectly! Thanks for taking the time to point that out. I am hoping to upgrade to LR4 soon, since I have decided to not re-install iPhoto. I think LR will serve as a much better photo viewer with some serious additional power to it.

Thanks again

Excellent! That is really good news. Thanks for posting the update.