[digiKam-users] Removable drive photos not available

[Steve Franks]

I downloaded the 7.3.0 appimage for Linux to my old PC and added a folder on a removable drive to my collection. I am a newbie with Linux, but have experimented with it a few times over the years.
After executing the appimage a few times I discovered how to integrate it into Lubuntu, which is much more convenient. The program is now available directly from the menu, but it no longer finds my photos.
How can I fix this? The photos are still on the same disk. Digikam is configured to use that disk. Refreshing the disk doesn’t generate any errors, neither does saving keywords to files, but when I try to view the files Digikam says that they are not available.
In the Configuration I tried to amend the directory that holds the photos, but that wanted to create a new collection.
How can I force Digikam to use my existing collection and avoid losing all the changes I have made?
Thanks in advance,
Steve