The folder where my Lightroom catalog is located only shows the folder 0-9 and A-F

Forum|Forum|7 days ago
July 29, 2026
3 replies
39 views

As the title says the folder where my Lightroom catalog is stored only shows the folder 0 to 9 and A to F. In these folders there are seperate folders (like 0A2A). Is there a way I can rebuild/restore my catalog?

It is not showing any .lrcat / .lrdata files.

dj_paige

Legend

If you are talking about the Previews.Lrdata folder or the Smart Previews.Lrdata folder, that’s perfectly normal.

If you don’t have an .LRCAT file, then that’s a major problem. You somehow have moved it or deleted it. Use your operating system’s search feature to search all folders on all disks for files whose name ends with .LRCAT. If you find any, double-click on each one found to open it in LrC until you find the file you want. If that fails, you should restore a recent backup copy of the catalog file.

BlijemanAuthor

Participant

I have several Lightroom catalogs on a separate SSD, the RAW files are stored on another SSD. I’m working on a MacBook. Maybe that’s useful information.

I’m a wedding photographer and use a different catalog for each month. All catalogs run smoothly expect for the one I worked on last night. This is the catalog that I'm missing. The folder where the catalog + files used to be does not show the usual files anymore and is instead showing folders 0-9 and A-F.

When I search for the .lrcat file with the right name in front of it it cannot find the file on my pc/ssd.

So it seems like it vanished out of nowhere, since I was still working on the project yesterday. When I closed Lightroom no error occurred.

Also, the backup folder is completely gone. I only have the folder 0-9 and A-F left.

dj_paige

Legend

If you don’t have the .LRCAT file, then you basically have to start over with a new catalog.

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