My computer had stopped booting to Windows, as described in another post. After getting it back and reinstalling programs, I discovered a problem involving Nikon D4 camera images. I had gone on a trip last summer and shot a lot of pictures of Puffins, other birds, animals scenics etc. I had since edited everything, made tiffs of many and put up galleries.
Yesterday, I discovered that an image displayed in Photoshop Bridge CS6 was only and icon with no metadata. On further searching of different species folders, I discovered more and more such images, and all were from this trip. They were all .NEF raw files or .mov files, while tiffs were OK. A search of the whole external drive (6T Lacie) for NEFs and MOVs without metadata turned up 1029 such icons in the Bridge. Attempts to view in a Nikon program had the same result. then I noticed that all had a date of 8/3/2015, which couldn't be right because I knew they were taken on lots of different days.
On looking in a journal I had noted that this was the day I had returned from my extended trip and connect the drive to the PC. (On the trip I had taken the drive from the PC and rough edited and made deletions on my laptop. There was a note about the drives not appearing and seeming to backup. But I subsequently had no problems and edited and made galleries as I said.
I then found that a mirror backup had the Puffin folder and others with intact images with metadata, so I tried to replace those on the archive, but it said I didn't have permission. I thought I could delete one and then copy to replace instead, but it wouldn't delete. So then I went to permissions and changed several names that were not full permission, to full. (I am the only user, but there were names such as administrator, 1 user, and I wasn't sure which. On doing so, I could see the NEF icons in the open Bridge Window returnto thumbs, and metadata coming back, though MOV remained unchanged, but could now open in Windows Media. I did this with a number of species in subfolders of Birds, and then I tried some other major folders.
I went to Animals folder and opened one of fish, where I had taken a lot of shots. Almost all appeared OK. And then, before my eyes, they all changed to icons without metadata. I was able to restore by going to permissions and adding full back in.
But what is going on here? I am the sole user. I had the computer become unable to get to Windows and that problem was taken care of, but now images that were OK and were during a trip have or are reverting to dataless icons necessitating permission adjustment which I don't know much about and never applied.
Also if I attach the drive to my laptop, which didn't have the period of non-functionability, the same is true. Those NEFs I enabled permission on are restored, and if I enable full of another folder here, that becomes OK on the PC.
Edited by robirdman, 01 April 2016 - 09:16 AM.