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I had just spent quite some time copying images from external drives that weren't in my lightroom catalog through Lightroom CC Classic. The electric wire to my WD 14TB hard drive is not long enough and I managed to to trip over it, with the hard drive landing heavily on the hard floor of my kitchen/diner.

I have some new hard drives coming. Will I need to delete all the catalog files from lightroom before I start reimporting 15,000 images? Or is there a way of importing them bearing in mind that if I don't unblock don't import duplicates, it will not allow me to import the images to the new hard drives...

I had copied photos from several portable hard drives on to a powered 14TB desktop hard drive. I copied them through lightroom so they appeared in my catalog. I still have the files on their original destination as I copied rather than moved them. The 14TB drive is trying to spin, but I suspect it is damaged as it doesn't do a constant spin and doesn't appear in my list of devices on my MacBook. I want to copy the same files through LR on to the new hard drives I have. How do I do this since there are the previews already in LR? LR will see them as duplicates and fail to import them,

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    \$\begingroup\$ Your post is confusing. Can you describe in more detail where the files are and where you want them to be, what is the end goal ? If you killed the hard drive that the files are on then how are accessing them ? Please provide a much more detailed description. \$\endgroup\$
    – Alaska Man
    Feb 2, 2020 at 18:22
  • \$\begingroup\$ I had copied photos from several portable hard drives on to a powered 14TB desktop hard drive. I copied them through lightroom so they appeared in my catalog. I still have the files on their original destination as I copied rather than moved them. The 14TB drive is trying to spin, but I suspect it is damaged as it doesn't do a constant spin and doesn't appear in my list of devices on my MacBook. I want to copy the same files through LR on to the new hard drives I have. How do I do this since there are the previews already in LR? LR will see them as duplicates and fail to import them, \$\endgroup\$
    – Pottsy
    Feb 2, 2020 at 22:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ I suppose you could search your LR library by date and delete or move any files on the date that this happened and then start over. If you are just copying from one drive to another, is doing it through LR necessary ? Why not just point LR to your final storage drive. ( I don't use LR, and do very little digital work, so it is just a guess ) \$\endgroup\$
    – Alaska Man
    Feb 3, 2020 at 22:15

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This might help: If you were to start Lightroom and your catalogue including your previews and the original HDU with the photos is not available anymore but on a different HDU, then Lightroom will show you the folders with a question mark. Right click on the folder and use "find missing folder" and you can link the old folder to the new one.

Then you can tell Lightroom to update the location of the original photos and the the previews will be reconnected.

It might be tedious, though, as you may have to do this for every single directory. Good luck!

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