NOTE: Rather than replying with quote, I copy the full text of the post so that both the original and reply are intact as below...
Let's try this: Go to an album that has no cover art, that you are sure used to have cover art. Highlight the album. Now open the tagging window with Edit > Tag. Go find the [Image File] tag. You might have to do "show all tags" from the gear menu to find this tag.
Now, what's it say? It should show you the location of the image file.
A spot sampling shows that most are "Inside File" for the Image File tag. A few show "Varies" but these may be multiple artist compilations.
OK. There should be nothing to get "lost" in these cases, as the art is inside the music file. I would try doing "cover art > quick find" and see if it shows up. If it does, select many files at once and try that.
When I try COVER ART > QUICK FIND, MC finding the cover art is hit or miss, regardless of whether I do it in ALBUM view or RECENT ALBUM view.
In FILES mode, the vast majority of the files have cover art associated as evidenced by thumbnails to left of track name BUT 1 or 2 tracks in a given album may not show a thumbnail.
I store all of my cover art files *inside* the media files themselves. That way they can't get separated. There is an option to do so in MC.
I found the path to do this and the box for "Also store image in the file's tag".
AFTER we (hopefully) sort this out, I will set the default location for both Cover Art and Images to a folder in my music library. Not sure why but cannot seem to locate either of these on my C:drive using the paths indicated on the OPTIONS page?! Library backups are not where OPTIONS indicates either but rather in a folder in the music library so when the drives were changed, it looks like the OPTIONS were reset to some (arbitrary) default.
Thanks for your patience, Brian.
I'm not sure why you can't locate your original images directory. If you haven't altered anything on the C: drive, that implies that it was never in that location. It's hard to speculate since I don't know the entire sequence of events.
Sequence of events is simple, if not helpful...
1) Copied all folders and files from original 1TB HDD to new 2TB HDD; NOTE: NO CHANGES MADE TO C:DRIVE.
2) Switched 2TB for 1TB;
3) Added a few files using Library Import to new HDD; These files plus all pre-existing cover art showed on the Recent Albums screen;
Wait a second... If you replaced your D drive, and you didn't do a Rename, Move, and Copy files, you must have an entire library full of duplicates. You say in step 5 below you changed "audio option" from D to Z. Does that mean you use RM&C?
Now I'm more confused.
Did not mean to confuse... After I found that I had an issue with playback, to avoid confusion I deleted the library several albums that had been added after the drive switch so that the only albums under consideration were those from the original library. As you suggested, I then did a FIND AND REPLACE to change the files from C:drive to Z:drive.
4) Did not try to play music for several days;
5) When I tried to use MC on Sunday, system would not play; Realized that it did not know where to look for data files so changed AUDIO OPTION from D:\ to Z:\;
6) System played fine BUT cover art all messed up; NOTE: COVER ART IS NOT IN "STANDARD" FORMAT, E.G., [ARTIST-ALBUM], SINCE MOST OF IT IS FROM INTERNET SOURCES AND NAMED BY ME SO I KNOW WHAT IT IS.;
7) And so it began...