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Archive 2013 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem

  
 
dmacmillan
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


The other night I went to shut down Lightroom and got an error message. When I started it back up, I presented another message (can't remember the exact wording), followed by "Attempting to repair".

When it finished loading, I noticed that the images I had imported from my CF card weren't there. I checked the folders and they were still there. I tried to import them using Add instead of copy and they imported fine and I could see them. I finished work and closed Lightroom. When I went back the next day, those folders were missing from the LR catalog.

I keep adding them and they keep disappearing. I was able to close LR and open it up with them there, but next time I went into the catalog, they were missing again.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Doug



Aug 24, 2013 at 09:48 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


See if you can locate one of the individual images by searching for its name. If you can then you'll know there's a problem showing the folders rather than importing the images.

Otherwise, you might have to go back to a past backup of the catalog and re-import the recent images.

-Alan



Aug 24, 2013 at 10:13 AM
dmacmillan
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


Thanks Alan. I've done some more research. I'll look for a prior catalog. The other fix is to rename and move the current catalog, choose file -->new catalog, then import the settings from the old to the new. It will skip the corrupted parts of the old catalog. I may have to do some cleanup, but it won't be the same as starting from scratch.


Aug 24, 2013 at 11:49 AM
John Caldwell
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


I'd be concerned about catalog corruption that may surface elsewhere, so I'd be shy about trying to repair the current catalog through repeated import attempts. To that end, consider creating a new blank catalog and Import From Catalog, pointing to the now-suspect catalog. When doing this, I have the practice of noting the total number of images in the "donor" catalog, a reconciling that number with the number that Imports into the new blank catalog.

My experience is that corrupt raw files, of which I've seen some number especially from tethered shooting, don't make the trip between catalogs and can also be the cause of the original catalog behavior problems.

There are other ways of accomplishing the same New Catalog creation; this just happens to be the method I most use.

You don't mention the number of images in your original catalog. That plays a role in how much time this will require.

John Caldwell



Edited on Aug 24, 2013 at 04:14 PM · View previous versions



Aug 24, 2013 at 02:45 PM
dmacmillan
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


Thanks John. Your method is the one to which I referred. I'll think I'll go straight to that method. Compared to some, I have a modest number of images, ~30k.


Aug 24, 2013 at 03:27 PM
John Caldwell
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


Shouldn't be bad with 30,000 files. Good luck.


Aug 24, 2013 at 04:15 PM
Sunny Sra
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


Also going forward, make backup of your catalog. You can do this by:

Open LR
Click on EDIT --> Catalog Settings
On the General Tab--> towards the bottom of the page, "Backup"

I have set mine to back-up every time i exit LR and the backup goes to Network attached storage (in case HD fails on the computer)




Aug 24, 2013 at 05:45 PM
dmacmillan
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


Sunny Sra wrote:
Also going forward, make backup of your catalog. You can do this by:

Open LR
Click on EDIT --> Catalog Settings
On the General Tab--> towards the bottom of the page, "Backup"

I have set mine to back-up every time i exit LR and the backup goes to Network attached storage (in case HD fails on the computer)


Good idea! I backup to a different HD. I need to do a scheduled task to launch a Robocopy to write it to a disk on another computer.



Aug 24, 2013 at 06:07 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Lightroom 4 Catalog Problem


Scheduling the backup to a third drive is good but not essential. When you set Lr to do an integrity check and backup at every shutdown, it creates a backup that is unique to that time and date. Thus you can quickly build up a collection of backups on your destination drive. Then at any convenient time you can manually copy that collection to a third drive before or after trimming it down a bit.

I tend to keep the last backup of each month as well as all of the backups for the past month.

I have a multitude of backups on a multitude of drives but that is largely because I've had far more than my fair share of computer component and drive failures. I'm not sure that I've ever had a catalog corrupted by Lr but I've certainly had it (and a bunch of other stuff) corrupted or trashed by hardware failures.

Make sure that at least some backups are kept off-line so that they won't all get zapped at the same time by the same voltage spike.

- Alan



Aug 25, 2013 at 12:39 AM





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