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Jon25996052zk9q
Participant
September 7, 2022
Question

Catalog backup not pulling photos from external hard drive

  • September 7, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 93 views

I recently unplugged and plugged back in an external hard drive. It assigned it a new letter (G:) instead of (F:). Becuase of that it showed all my photos as missing, but that really isn't a big issue, I just have to reselect and match each folder. 

 

Tonight I had lightroom open and was using it just fine. I closed it and reopened it about 10 minutes later. When it reopened it opened completely empty, as if it were a fresh install. I checked the lightroom creative cloud updates and the most recent update was 13 days ago. I selected what I thought was the most recent catalog but it is only showing me my photos up to about 2020. I do weekly back ups, so either I don't know where those are being saved or the catalog isn't opening my more recent photos which are on the drive that was re- lettered to G:.

 

How can I make it show those photos in my catalog backup?

 

{Moved from Lightroom Cloud to Lightroom Classic Forum by Moderator} 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 7, 2022

A catalog doesn't open things. If the catalog you loaded does not show the latest images, then you loaded the wrong (an older) catalog. It is as simple as that. Like @dj_paige said, you will have to search your hard drive for .lrcat files if you want to find the most recent catalog. If you want to find the most recent backup, then be aware that Lightroom Classic changed something. Since the new AI masking, Lightroom Classic now backups two files, the catalog.lrcat file and a catalog.lrcat-data file that contains the masks. As a result, the catalog backup is no longer called 'catalog.lrcat.zip'. Lightroom will first create a folder called 'Catalogname' and because that folder is then zipped, the name of the backup is now simply 'Catalogname.zip'. That could explain why some people can't find their latest catalog backup. If they search for "lrcat' or 'lrcat.zip', they won't find these new backups.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
September 7, 2022

You should never be in a situation where you don't know where your backups are. I put my backups into the folder V:\Lightroom Backups, such an obvious name that even if you forget it, its easy to find. Don't bury backups in a folder several levels below the root folder. So go into Lightroom Classic, and then in Catalog Settings, select Backup Catalog: When Lightroom Next Exits, and then close LrC. The backup dialog box will appear, that will tell you where backups are being saved to. Perhaps then you can find a recent backup.

 

Also

Use your operating system's search feature to search all folders on all disks for files whose name ends with .LRCAT to find your most current catalog.

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