Participant

Question

Lightroom catalog suddenly disappeared

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
August 3, 2017
34 replies
43810 views

So the other night before bed I went to shut down my computer, closed Lightroom and it prompted me to backup, so I did (I always backup when prompted weekly). Next day I fire up the PC, open Lightroom and it's completely empty and starts the tutorial (where the arrows point important sections) as if I had first opened it. The library was completely empty and the catalogue disappeared. I looked in my Lightroom folder (Pictures>Lightroom) opened the catalogue inside and it's empty. I contacted support, they took remote control of my PC and tried to open a backup catalogue, but the most recent backup is from January, and after searching my whole system for a .lrcat file the support advisor just told me that it has gone for good and they couldn't help any further. All the collections photos are still synced to lightroom mobile and web, so I can access them on there, but the desktop catalogue is gone and when opening my old one it will resync with mobile and ill loose all the edits.

I have tried everything I can think of, but how can a catalogue just disappear with 8 months worth of backups?

I'm currently running a disk recovery programme to see if I can recover anything that's been deleted (not by me)

Has anyone else had this issue, and know of anything I can do to recover my catalogue?

I'm using the latest version of Windows 10 and my Lightroom CC is updated to the most current 2015 version.

Thanks

L

Lars33396257itlu

Participant

This just happened to me as well, my catalog is just gone in my folder. I always keep them on a external harddrive in a very easy place to find but it's just gone. No one has a sollution? How can Adobe nog come and help or take responsibility for this?

dj_paige

Legend

Unfortunately, files don't disappear by themselves. Lightroom Classic doesn't move or delete files unless you the user specifically tell it to do so, and there is no function in LrC to delete or move a catalog. Similarly, your operating system does not move or delete files on its own, without specific instructions from you to do so.

So I doubt Adobe will take responsibility for this.

One thing that does happen is people put their catalog file into a folder synced to the cloud, and some cloud sync software has a feature that keeps a copy only in the cloud only and it removes the file from your hard disk. Perhaps this is what happened to you?

D

defaulthvxskj4pl7qh

Participant

Thanks for this...files.only get moved if your a Microsoft user and one
cloud desides to move your files from your PC to the cloud screwing
everything up. If you have one cloud doable it.

D

defaulthvxskj4pl7qh

Participant

I Just had the same problem. I realised for some reason that One drive was syncing and had moved my catalogue into the onedrive folder. look in: Local discc;/Users/*name/OneDrive/Pictures/Lightroom

thats were my catalogue ended up

J

jamesr78070053

Participating Frequently

This happened to me today. I keep my .lrcat file in a directory called "Lightroom" at the root of my external SSD drive. Yesterday I quit Lightroom Classic (which I had earlier in the day confirmed was up-to-date via Creative Cloud) and selected "Not this time" when prompted to make a backup because I hadn't made any changes to anything - I had simply been reviewing/browsing for images.

Today I launched LrC and was presented with the dialogue box to choose which catalog to open, but the catalog I keep at that location was not listed. I went to Finder and checked on that Lightroom directory, and it was completely empty. No items whatsoever in that directory. I also checked with Terminal - no contents in that directory. I checked the Trash - only a few random files I had deleted, but nothing Lightroom related.

If all you want to do is reply with "that can't happen" or "you must be looking in the wrong place"- please don't. It has clearly happened. There is no confusion regarding where I keep my primary catalog. I have a few other minor catalogs on other drives, and they still show up in the Open Catalog dialogue box, but I have not touched any of them in weeks. I keep (kept) my primary catalog in that very easy to find location.

Adobe - if anyone is listening and cares - even if there is no bug in YOUR software, something is deleting files related to your app for some unknown reason. Maybe look into it.

R

Ricardo DM

Participating Frequently

I will avoid details. I would just like to share my experience of a problem that happened today. Perhaps this can help someone who is panicking in a similar situation.

My Lightroom (Very old version. Not LRC yet) started working very slowly. I thought it was some memory problem on my Windows 7. So I turned off Lightroom and then turned off the computer as well.

When I turned the computer and Lightroom back on, my catalog was gone.

But I remembered that it was exactly the same thing that happened a few years ago, when my catalog also disappeared: Lightroom running too slow, me turning off Lightroom, then the PC, etc.

So here's what I think happened: Sometimes we close Lightroom, but if we click crtl + Alt + Delete to open the Task Manager, we can see in Processes that it's still running. In fact, it's usually pretty much stuck. And then we have to end the process manually.

But I didn't do that on that first occasion, just as I didn't do that on this second occasion either. Instead, I quickly turned off the computer. And I believe my specific problem had this cause. It was like unplugging the computer with a problematic Lightroom open. Something I can't explain happened. In my case, this was almost certainly the cause. Something was wrong with Lightroom, which ran very slowly, and I turned off the PC before Lightroom was properly closed. And then something got corrupted.

So just be careful about that. Although I don't know if such a thing would happen in new versions of Lightroom.

(By the way, I found my backups were where they were supposed to be)

E

eldentrilee

Participant

This just happened to me and I think I know why. My computer was running low on memory and I noticed LR would be slow to load the next picture when browsing...the new picture would be selected but the old picture would display on the screen, or it would be a blank picture. I force quit all of my browsers to free up memory but it didn't help, so I closed Lightroom and restarted my computer, opened LR and found that it had reverted to my most recent backup which was 6 months ago. So I think LR detected an error/corrupt catalog due to low memory and immediately replaced the "bad" catalog with the most recent good backup, then deleted the current catalog and every backup of that catalog that it wasn't sure was good or not. From now on what you need to do is manually back up your catalog by copying the .LRCAT to an external HD or flash drive.

L

linnea12

Participant

I had this problem, thought everything was lost as I couldn't get all my files to show up: then realized I had closed the sidebars. Everything was still there, I just couldn't see it. Figured this out after spending a long time opening catalogs and searching.

D

defaultof4sra5igsp8

Participant

Two days ago, this file disappearance mystery happened to me. I could not find my cataloue anywhere and my presets are gone too. I guess I will just have to create a new catalogue.

D

defaultof4sra5igsp8

Participant

I got a hint from one of the posts which said that her Lightroom file being full was the cause for its disappearance and Adobe Support did some restorations. Well, I searched for my catalogue, using File Explorer. I wrote the catalogue name on the search line and indicated PC as the place to search from. File Explorer found the catalogue. I clicked on it and Voila, I got my lightroom back.

nattetteh

Participant

I have encountered the same problem after the new update

HMcLaren

Participant

SOLVED!!

I'm trying to reply to this thread in general but it's only letting me reply to specific messages which is really irritating.

I had the exact same problem but it's been solved! I lost heart after reading this thread because a lot of people had turned to Adobe support to no avail. I contacted them in the end and the issue was fixed.

I initially thought I'd lost 3 months worth of edits, deletions and previews on over 2,000 photos (all the raws were still safe where I'd left them) after an update. All of my work and backups had just vanished as if they'd never existed. I had 2 remaining catalogs left on my PC; one with old pictures from last year and one with miscellaneous photos from even longer ago. Adobe support took control of my computer and copied the misc catalog to my desktop, relaunched Lightroom and all of my 2,000 pictures were there with their edits! Turns out that the previews file was full. Simple as that.

I hope this helps someone.