Lightroom Classic Image Rebuild

Hi,

   I have no idea if this is the correct place for this, but I didn’t see anything else that was close.

   I don’t know if you can help me with this or maybe point me in the right direction. I checked a few U-Tube videos, but they almost seemed to be in complete opposite directions from each other.

   Anyway, I was not paying close enough attention and formatted the external hard drive #1 that I have used for several years to store my digital files. I also have other external hard drives #2 and #3 and a cloud account that also had (almost) all of the files on it. So, I have all of the digital images with the exception of several days that I still had on two memory cards. One of the things that I tried was clicking on an image in Lightroom Classic and when it asks where the file is located I clicked on the external drive, year, month, and day and they ‘find’ the file. The problem is that with hundreds of dates in seven years to locate that day it will take forever. Also, there were several days of images that would not link. Finally, there are the image previews that show in Lightroom Classic that were NOT saved to the second external hard drive that are not anywhere (except on the memory cards) and can’t be found by clicking a link to ‘nowhere’. I thought of at least importing the files from the memory card, but since Lightroom Classic already thinks they have been uploaded, that doesn’t work.

So:

Is there a way to bring the images back to the original Lightroom Classic catalog that I use about daily without clicking hundreds of days ? And should I remove the images that I have on the memory card and then import them again?

Thanks,

Jerry