Change External Drive Letter to Get Lightroom to Recognize It
One of the common issues you can face while working with Lightroom Classic is that you may have imported your photos using an external hard drive at some point of time, only to find that Lightroom failed to sync with it when your operating system changed the letter for the drive at another point of time.
In this video, I will be showing you two solutions for this –
1. The first solution is a quick but temporary one, i.e, how to get Lightroom to quickly recognize the drive with the new letter, so it can sync instantly with the new location with a single click, and no longer displaying the “missing folder/photos” icon.
2. The second one is a more permanent one, i.e, how to change and assign a new letter to your external hard drive in such a way that you don’t face this issue again and again.
Here is the video:
Link to the full Lightroom Workflow and Organization course:
Lightroom Classic Workflow and Organization course Like a Pro
Video Summary
This video explains how to resolve the common issue where Adobe Lightroom loses the connection to images stored on an external hard drive because the operating system has assigned it a different drive letter [01:10].
Summary of Solutions
- The Problem: Operating systems assign drive letters sequentially to plugged-in devices. If you plug in a memory card before your hard drive, the drive might get a new letter (e.g., changing from F to H), causing Lightroom to show a “missing folder” question mark [00:45].
- Temporary Fix (Within Lightroom):
- Permanent Fix (Windows):
- Open Computer Management and navigate to Disk Management [03:20].
- Right-click your external drive to change its name or, more importantly, select “Change Drive Letter and Paths” [03:57].
- Assign a letter from the end of the alphabet (like ‘U’ or ‘W’) [04:29]. Since the computer assigns letters sequentially, it is unlikely to reach these late letters, ensuring your drive always retains the same letter [04:39].
- Once changed, perform the “Find Missing Folder” step in Lightroom one last time to sync with the new permanent letter [05:22].
