My NAS has corrupted my photos. Can I restore Lightroom and edits from backups? MacOS

Question

My QNAP NAS has an option to store files in a "cloud" (like Dropbox or OneDrive) on the NAS to free up Laptop-disk space. I selected that option and it corrupted all of the photos (some DNG, Some Sony .arw, some .jpg, some .mp4). I'm guessing (possibly wrongly, but let's assume not) that the Lightroom Catalogues are still OK.

I am going to have to rebuild ~5 years of photo libraries from backups made at the time I took the photos off the camera. If possible, I'd like to use the Lightroom Catalogues:

To extract just the photos I kept, rather than all the photos I took.
To apply the edits to the photos.

Does anyone know if either of these is possible?

(I can probably write code to do the work if it is possible, but would need a bit of guidance on things like how the database is structured.)

dj_paige · Accepted Answer

1. LrC catalogs cannot help you restore backups of your photos. This is an action that has to be done in your operating system.

2. If you restore backups to the original locations, or if you connect the LrC catalog to the new location of the backups, then LrC recognizes that the photo is there and all edits and user-provided metadata is applied.

Having these files in a folder which is a cloud backup (such as OneDrive or DropBox), you make the likelihood of corrupted files much higher, and so you should not use cloud backups like OneDrive or DropBox with your Lightroom Classic photos or Lightroom Classic catalog.

Peter23243469lu1b · Answer

Thanks so much for your reply.  This is fabulously helpful.  Does Lightroom use the filename as the means to identify the photo? (I'm guessing yes).

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