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Malthouse Photography
Malthouse Photography
Known Participant
July 8, 2023
Answered

Catalog backup thoughts

  • July 8, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 680 views

Hello, I'm a Win 11, PC user.

 

As I type this my Lightroom is "in recovery".

 

Yesterday Microsoft Defender installed on my PC. I did work on my most recent wedding from last weekend. I closed my machine for the night.

(Yes I'm deeply suspicious of the MS Defender but that's another story.)

This morning I came in and went to open Lightroom.

 

The first message I got wasn't that it was corrupt but that it didn't have permission to open the catalog. Researching forums said "read only" may be applied to the file or folder or sub-folders.

 

It was. (Oddly.)

 

I took "read only" off and then it told me the catalog was corrupt.

 

I cleared out the folder of old files, restored from backup. Same thing.

 

At this point I decided to re-boot (power off/on is always a good trick). That's when the catalog opened nicely... but empty.

 

I found a comment about merging from a corrupt catalog into a new one. That's what I'm doing at this moment - currently imported 133,000 images and counting.

Now that was one backup that was corrupt. There is another backup that I have - that's last weekend after I had imported the wedding and done some basic editing. The rest of the work on it was all done yesterday so, at worst, (assuming the other backup is OK) then I'll have lost a day's work. Hopefully I've only lost some time this morning waiting for the catalogs to merge.

All of which brings me to a question about backup.

I have a very comprehensive backup system for all of my files.

The images get backed up all over the place and indeed to the cloud, as do my Lightroom files.

 

And yet the backup from last night was corrupt.

Any tips on ensuring that backups are not corrupt, or tips on backing up the catalog?

If I'm working on LR I hit the button to backup on exit. I only skip backup on exit if I'm browsing rather than editing.

I therefore have a backup from last night. One that is copied all over the place. And is useless as it is corrupt.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer dj_paige

Sometimes a hardware malfunction on the hard disk causes this. Restoring the backup to the same folder results in a corrupted backup catalog. Restoring a backup to a different folder, or if that doesn't work, restoring a backup to a different disk, does work. (To be 100% clear, you unzip a recent backup and place the unzipped backup in a different folder and see if it will open. If that doesn't work, you unzip AGAIN and place the unzipped backup on a different disk and see if it will open).

1 reply

dj_paige
dj_paigeCorrect answer
Legend
July 8, 2023

Sometimes a hardware malfunction on the hard disk causes this. Restoring the backup to the same folder results in a corrupted backup catalog. Restoring a backup to a different folder, or if that doesn't work, restoring a backup to a different disk, does work. (To be 100% clear, you unzip a recent backup and place the unzipped backup in a different folder and see if it will open. If that doesn't work, you unzip AGAIN and place the unzipped backup on a different disk and see if it will open).

Malthouse Photography
Malthouse PhotographyAuthor
Known Participant
July 8, 2023

That's something I hadn't thought to try. I shall do so in a second.

I resorted to going to my backup from a week ago and then synchronising the folder of the wedding with it. It lost me some edits but it allowed my cull to be preserved as I move files into different folders for my culling.

Malthouse Photography
Malthouse PhotographyAuthor
Known Participant
July 8, 2023

@dj_paige it says your userid is a status "legend". Well I'll give that a thumbs up too.
I've just unzipped the backup into the folder it is in already and then opened it without moving it to the "usual" location and... well there's all my work from yesterday intact. I shall now re-name it and put it back where I really want it to be. That was a hugely helpful answer. Thank you.

I'm still wondering about how to protect myself from catalog corruption more - but you've just got me out of the mire so thank you very much indeed.

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