comp[uter renames external hard dirve, lightroom problem

[arjen van de merwe]

<p>When I start up, depending on how I connect different devices, my computer sometimes names an external hard drive G: sometimes H:, sometimes K:. That changes the path to my photos. So far I never paid attention to this, until I started working with Lightroom. If the drive is named differently, Lightroom looses track of the photos. I can use "find missing folder", but I find it inconvenient. Is there a way around this?</p>

[frank_skomial]

<p>Before you start Lighroom, verify what dive letters are assigned.<br>

You could possibly assign drive letter yourself, if the letter is not used already, or do more renaming.<br>

Not knowing what system you use, I will stop short of providing detailed instructions how to do it..</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>Thats the problem with a PC.. the external device get rename.. and Lightroom dont like that. Im not a PC expert, but i had to deal with that not so long ago with a client.. whe *force* the drive to be call Z, Y, X (the further letter in the alphabet the better.. in case you add 20 device ; )</p>

<p>i dont recall exactly how or where to do it but it was somewhere like property / device / hd / and in the bottom of the menu you could apply the letter and locked it.. someone else will be able im sure to give you better instruction about how to.</p>

<p>Until then, if you dont do so, you will mess up your Lightroom catalog.</p>

[William Kahn]

<p>Assuming it's a PC: With the external drive running, go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Disk Management. Right click on the external drive, select "Change Drive Letter and Paths", and follow the instructions. The drive letter you select will be permanently assigned to the drive, even on a different computer.</p>

[William Kahn]

<p>Also, Patrick is right about selecting a drive letter that's far down the alphabet, Like "Z", to avoid collisions with other drives with permanently assigned letters. I've never seen that happen, but it can't be pretty...</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>oh believe me its not cool at all!.. a client of mine, a architect office use Lightroom to managed all there image taken before / during / after a project.. million $$ project. The owner of this 200+ employees is a fan of photography and Lightroom for is personal use.. so he decide to implemented it in is office also.. i train 2 people for weeks, whe define a loonnnnnnng list of keyword going from who create the project, who work on it, who was the contractor to what have been use, ISO 9000, how many floor, inside garage etc... something that use to take them days if not week to create a research for application on a new project take them now minute only.. (i feel like i use Google with there Lightroom.. they have like 50 keyword per image or so) everything is in Lightroom.. resume also of each major architect is in there.. each page save as jpeg, stak to create a kind of document (hopefully PDF is about to be supported?) .. crazy but it work.</p>

<p>Long story short, they have 2 station with Lightroom, one is where they make all the change during normal day, the other is the conference room .. a computer plug to a mega huge screen.. of course, during a meeting they need to mark some image, add some keyword etc.. so whe decide to put everything onto a external RAID HD (auto backup itself on both drive + a regular weekly backup off site ) so she can move the entire catalog and image form computer A and B.</p>

<p>The problem is whe didn't set the HD to a fix letter.. i don't have this problem on my mac as you can call your HD, MOBILE for example, and even if you have 20 HD call MOBILE they will all appear on your desktop.. but it doesn't work like that in the PC world it seem.. since they need different E_D_G_F letter.. she have sometime a ipod, a SD card and other things like that connect to is main PC.. so the letter from the mobile drive keep moving.. but when you have zillion of image all in distinct folder is a real pain to have to select them all to redirect them to the correct source.. if the folder where on E drive, now Lightroom show you a G drive all the E drive data is grayed out. as you can see really not something you want to append.</p>

[William Kahn]

<p>Arjen, due to severe caffein deficiency earlier, I left out a step in the sequence. It's:</p>

<p>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management</p>

<p>Hope I didn't confuse you too much!</p>

<p>@Patrick, I hope you're getting paid a lot for that job...</p>

[arjen van de merwe]

<p>Thank you, that should be a solution. I now name my drives from Z bakcwards. Patrick, thank you for the complex and interesting story.</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>William, yes ; )</p>

<p>fortunatly i didtn have to type all the keyword.. the girl that work there is a human type machine.. she can talk, while she type, faster than i can see her finger moving!</p>

<p>complex story is part of my day to day life... i should write a book! LOL</p>

<p> </p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>Assuming it's a PC</p>

</blockquote>

<p>what else?<br /> I am sincerely [i.e., not trolling] curious what operating systems take it on themselves to rename a drive?</p>

<p>As Patrick says, even with multiple drives on the same network all entitled "Macintosh HD", OS X seems to keep everything straight, as my recent experience in transferring files illustrated.</p>

[danny_wong2]

<p>I force name all my external drive. I also label the drive with a large letter and a quick description</p>