P: Unable to backup catalog in Lightroom 4

I had the same problem. Could not make a backup to S:\users\cfw\Pictures\ .
I tried another drive and then it went fine.
I tried S:\ disk again it failed.
Then I changed drive letter S to X: and it's working since .
I have a catalog with 38.000 photos.

Frans

Richard,
I got the Lightroom 4.0 catalog backup to work during Exit by NOT selecting the boxes for "Test integrity" and "optimize catalog after backup". I waited 10 minutes for "backing up" the 3 gb catalog, and the backup finally worked! I could see the backup nicely in the folder after Lightroom exited. Next test:

When I restarted Lightroom 4.0 (and registered the product so I could get support Monday-Friday: Adobe Support 800-833-6687), and this time re-selected the boxes for "Test integrity" and "optimize catalog after backup" during Exit, I reproduced the earlier error message after patiently waiting 25 minutes for my large 3 gigabyte catalog to say "Testing integrity," and "backing up catalog" -- which actually created the backup file as shown in Windows -- but it was deleted after the "optimizing catalog" process, which ends with this error:

"Lightroom was unable to back up the catalog named "[my named catalog]"
Please check your folder permissions, and make sure that you have available space on your backup drive and main catalog's drive."

- Pressing "Try Again" just creates the same error message.
- "Exit" will exit okay but without backing up.
- "Choose different Backup Folder" hangs for a long minute before sometimes responding with a black window labeled "&Choose Folder (Not Responding)" or no window at all, with the mouse cursor in forever "waiting" mode. After minutes of waiting, I'm forced to make Windows close the window and abort the hung Lightroom process. Not pretty.

Current workarounds:
A. Backup by copying the lrcat file manually, not automatically during exit,
B. or if choosing Backup during exit, DON'T select the boxes for "Test integrity" and "optimize catalog after backup".
Use File>Optimize Catalog command maybe once every few weeks within Lightroom 4.0, but NOT during Exit.

Tom

Tom, your description of the problem is the same as mine, except that I'm using Windows 7 rather than Vista and my catalog is a bit smaller.

Even after splitting the catalog, the backup still fails. For now, I am simply copying the catalog to back it up, but hopefully Adobe will address this.

I'm a devoted Lightroom fan with the same backup error in Lightroom 4. I reproduced this error message 4 times (every time I try to exit):

"Lightroom was unable to back up the catalog named "[my specified name]"
Please check your folder permissions, and make sure that you have available space on your backup drive and main catalog's drive.
Try Again / Choose different Backup Folder... / Exit"

The catalog optimization seems to work without an error message (done both within Lightroom without exiting and also during the exit), but no backup is created after the error message during exit. Pressing "Try again" doesn't help.

I suppose a workaround is to simply manually copy the lrcat file to a backup location, or rely on my normal daily Windows Backup program take care of copying the lrcat file to my external USB backup hard drive. The problem makes me uneasy about the stability of Lightroom 4 and I hope Adobe can solve the problem.

The catalog is 3 gigabytes in size with 70,000 images. I have plenty of hard drive space (481 gb free on a 1.8 tb drive) and folder permissions are not a problem. No problem in previous Lightroom version 3.6 or earlier. I have Windows Vista Home Premium.

I tried moving the catalog.lrcat, Previews.lrdata, and Lightroom Settings files from where they started by default: USERS/myname/APDATA/ROAMING/ADOBE/LIGHTROOM/DEVELOP PRESETS/USER PRESETS/
to a folder in my PICTURES directory, but that didn't help the problem.

I sure don't want to split the catalog. That makes photo portfolio management a pain. Important image collections cross all directories. Adobe support, please advise.

Tom Dempsey
tom@photoseek.com
206-372-7673 mobile

I seem to have found a work-around by splitting the catalog into two new ones using the Export as Catalog feature. Exporting to a single catalog creates a new catalog, which also fails to back up.

Is there a limit to the number of photos you can have in a catalog? I had well under 200,000. Could something in the original catalog cause the backup to fail?

I hate cryptic messages that don't identify what caused the error.