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Question

Accidentally deleted .lrcat files. Still have Previews.lrdata files.

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
March 13, 2019
5 replies
2016 views

Can I use the previews.lrdata files / folders to somehow recreate my lost LR catalog? I accidentally deleted all the .lrcat files from my Backup folder.

recover lrcat

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Geoff the kiwi

Community Expert

jessica9photographer wrote
Can I use the previews.lrdata files / folders to somehow recreate my lost LR catalog? I accidentally deleted all the .lrcat files from my Backup folder.

Hello Jessica,

My take on this:

As mentioned the Back Up Folder is not where your working catalog usually resides. Were you using a Back Up catalog as your working catalog?
The catalog doesn't contain the image files so they should still be on disk where they were before so using the Previews should not be needed.
What do you see on the list when you go to Open Recent.

kentdesign

Community Expert

It may be possible to recover the .lrcat file using specific recover software. I have used Stellar Data recovery several times for friends and clients and managed to salvage their photos and several other files that they had deleted from their computers (and emptied the trash). I have not yet tried to recover a data file such as the .lrcat file, however it is a file.

I just sent an inquiry to the Stellar team to see if that might work. As soon as I hear back I will write an update to this forum.

It would require that you purchase and install the software however it can be very useful particularly in such a situation.

AxelMatt

Community Expert

Do you can find the deleted files in the trash bin?

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI

J

jessica9photographerAuthor

Participant

I emptied the recycle bin.

kentdesign

Community Expert

This software can actually recover files after they were emptied. Usually (and the ACPs who are tech gurus should correct me if I am incorrect) emptying the trash or the recycle bin, simply removes the header of the file so you cannot see it anymore. Until the file is overwritten by newer data on the same sector on a hard drive, special software can recover it. I am still waiting an answer from the company. However, they do have a free 7 day trial, so if you were to download the software, install it, and try it, you might find out whether the .lrcat file can be retrieved or not. Like I said I do not know if it would work but it is worth a try especially if the software is free for 7 days. Online Data Recovery Software Store to Purchase Stellar's Software

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

I need to ask-

Did you have your "Working Catalog" also in the Backup Folder? This is not the usual place for a current working catalog!

Have you searched your entire hard-drive for xxxxCatalog.LRCAT files?

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

No unfortunately not. The lrcat files are the ones that have all the important data in it. the previews.lrdata is just a whole bunch of different sized jpeg previews of your images.

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