Catalog Backup Stuck then Corrupts When Opened

Question

Hi All,

Hoping you can help me out. I recently tried to backup my LRC catalog on my Mac and it got stuck about halfway and stopped backing up. The blue progress bar just stopped moving to the right. When I force quit LRC, and tried to reopen it, it says the catalog is corrupt and cannot be repaired. So, I switched to a backup catalog from a backup from 2 weeks ago and it opened just fine. But when I backed it up immediately to test the backup, the blue bar got stuck again in the same spot and the process repeats. I've done this twice now with my last 2 backups. I have several more backups from farther back in time, but I'm afraid they will get corrupted as well if I use them. Any ideas?

Thanks

JohanElzenga · Answer

Make a copy of such a backup before you use it. That means you can use the same backup time after time and do not have the risk that you corrupt your backups. To solve the issue you might try this:

Unzip a catalog backup, but do not open it in Lightroom. Start Lightroom, create a brand new catalog and choose 'File - Import from Another Catalog'. Select your unzipped backup catalog to import. In the import dialog choose to import all photos, but do not move them. This will create an exact copy of your old catalog, but usually without the corruption. The only thing that won't come across is any publishing services you may have. You will have to recreate those. If you synced your catalog then you will have to enable sync for the new catalog. There are some reports that this could cause a problem. Here’s how to solve that: https://www.danhartfordphoto.com/blog/2025/1/lr026-fixing-sync-problems-caused-by-switching-the-sync-catalog

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