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CATurner_OV
CATurner_OV
Participant
May 28, 2026
Question

Application crashes when optimizing catalog

  • May 28, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 44 views

I am running LrC on a MacBook Pro working on a 870 Gb catalog on a SSD. My laptop hybrid drive has limited space right now and I just came back from a trip with 12,000+ photos and am trying to culling them down while still running off the SSD. The photos are from 3 separate Nikon bodies, two Z8s and a Z7II.

When I try to close the application I have preferences set to backup, optimize and check integrity. The first time I had LrC application backup my working catalog to a Thunderbolt 5 SSD (laptop is running Thunderbolt 4) separate from the Thunderbolt 5 SSD where my catalog is stored it took 19 hours at which point the application crashed. So as a work around I don’t have the application backup the catalog. At the end of each working day I copy the now entire 870-ish Gb catalog folder from one Thunderbolt drive to that separate Thunderbolt drive which takes 6 minutes. Then I open and check the integrity of the .lrcat file on each drive, never any problems. After I delete a significant number of images (roughly 1000) I figure it’s a good idea to optimize the catalog which I try to accomplish after the I complete the work around backup. The application crashes in the middle of the optimization each time I try to run it. First I get the macOS spinning wheel of WAIT after about 1-3 minutes into the optimization, then LrC crashes and macOS pops up the “Problem Report for Lightroom Classic” box with a bunch of information and a comment section for me. Over time I’ve tried optimizing the catalog off each of the SSDs with the same result, the application crashes. 

I’m running macOS 26.5 on a 2023 14” MacBook Pro M2 Max with 64 Gb of RAM and a 2 Tb Hybrid Drive.

I intentionally shut down all other applications other than Loupedeck while working on this catalog since I have been having these problems, but it has had no effect.

I’m running LrC version 15.3 which installed 19 days ago along with Camera Raw version 18.3.1. I have 56 Gb of my 64 Gb of physical laptop RAM setup in LrC for the Camera Raw Cache Setting which is also why I shut all other software down. The cache file is stored on my laptop’s hybrid drive.

I’ve attached a screen shot of the contents of the 2 SSDs, Drive 1 is the working drive (you can see the .rcat.lock file still there from the latest crash). Drive 2 is the backup SSD.

I’ve also attached a screenshot of the basic information from the macOS Problem Report.

 

    2 replies

    KR Seals
    Community Expert
    KR SealsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 27, 2026

    Is your actual .lrcat file 400+ GB? Or, Is that the size of the total number of your image files? I’m not clear from your post if you are trying to keep the LrC .lrcat file on the same drive as the image files.

    Given the time you mentioned for the backup to run and write to the external drive, I am concerned you have hardware issues. Have you tried different ports, cables and external drives?

    Pedantic, I know, but your computer has a true SSD drive, not a hybrid drive. 

     

    Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.
    CATurner_OV
    CATurner_OVAuthor
    Participant
    June 27, 2026

    Sorry for not being clearer… .lrcat and image files combined started on an external SSD because it was +1Tb (17,000+ image files ultimately because forgot to load 2 CFexpress cards after I wrote the port so the total rose). I didn’t have room for that on my Macbook’s internal hybrid drive. I have always used a different external SDD than the one I had the working .lrcat on just for backing up catalogs. The external SSDs were both plugged directly into my MacBook via cables. As part of troubleshooting I swapped SSDs functionality, swapped ports and swapped the Thunderbolt cables between the SSDs and then swapped the cables out for newer Apple Thunderbolt cables. That had no effect on the crashes and freezes, but the file transfers were slightly faster on the newer cables.
    I’ve been continuing to cull images down in my working .lrcat on the external SSD between crashes and freeze ups since I wrote the original post 29 days ago. The image files are now 6100-ish images combines with the .lrcat file the space used is down to 400Gb. I transferred everything to the MacBook internal hybrid drive 2 days ago after retrograding everything back to LRD 15.3 and have continued to cull.

    Anshul_Saini
    Community Manager
    Anshul_SainiCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    June 26, 2026

    Hi ​@CATurner_OV,

     

    We’re sorry for the delayed response, and thank you for the detailed report.

    Could you first update to the latest version of Lightroom Classic (15.4.1) and check whether the crash still occurs during catalog optimization?

    If it does, I’d also recommend submitting the Lightroom Classic crash report using the same Adobe email address associated with your Community account. That helps the engineering team correlate the crash report with this thread.

    You can find instructions here:
    https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/submit-crash-reports.html

    Additionally, please review the troubleshooting steps in this article to see if any apply to your setup:
    https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/troubleshoot-crash-or-freeze.html

    A couple of additional questions:

    • Does the crash occur every time you optimize the catalog, or only with this specific 870 GB catalog?
    • Have you tried optimizing a much smaller test catalog to see if it completes successfully?

    If the issue persists on 15.4.1 after submitting the crash report, please let us know. We’ll use the crash report along with the information you’ve already provided to investigate further.

    Best,
    Anshul Saini

    CATurner_OV
    CATurner_OVAuthor
    Participant
    June 26, 2026

    Hi Anshul,

    That for replying. I’ve had a bit of time. I went through the process to roll back to LRC 15.3. Then rebuilding the catalog to purge the 15.4 settings and bring everything back to 15.3. I also moved my working catalog onto my Macbook’s internal drive back culling photos got the size down to 450 Gb. It’s been running for a couple of days without any crashes and being able to complete the catalog backups with optimization during closing the application!

    This morning, I had the Thunderbolt SSD that I have been using for catalog backups mounted. I usually only mount the SSD before I quit LRC just for the catalog backup, but I forgot to unplug last night after shutting the laptop down. The SSD was sitting idle while I worked on my photos in LRC the morning. I got a message from macOS 26.5.1 about the SSD unexpectedly being unavailable. Then the MacBook froze and rebooted. I didn’t get any messages from LRC during that episode and LRC relaunched automatically without any messages after I logged back into the MacBook.
    Now I’m thinking that the issue is with the thunderbolt drive management between the SSD and the MacBook and/or macOS 26.5.1.

    I will continue to monitor and reply with further details as they come up. Can you think of a better approach than this?
    Thanks, CATurner_OV

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