Catalogue backup fails - so trying to import into a new catalogue

[Penihau]

Hi,

My backups have been failing for the last few weeks so the most recent backup is a month out of date.

Backup fails with 
Please check your folder permissions, and make sure you have available space on your backup drive and main catalogue's drive.

Optimise works but the integrity check may be failing but I don't get any error messages. And the backup fails even with optimise and/or integrity check ticks on or off.

I have permission, I have plenty of local drive space. The catalogue updated from v12 to v13 but it worked for a few weeks before failing.

I have tried running as administrator. I have tried various internal drives. I have between 1Tb and 500Gb on the original and alternate drives. My catalogue is 2.6Gb with approx 250k images and the odd video. Caches have been cleared.

I have found a few similar posts but they are at least 1 year ago and didn't provide a working solution.

So I have started to create a new catalogue and then importing my old catalogue into the new one. I have copied the failing catalogue and have it safe on a drive.

The new catalogue was created but it has 0 images inside but shows the correct number in the  catalogue.. Is this normal?? Most but not all of the keywords are showing but each with 0 files.

It seems that most of my Collections are there but I have no images. So it seems that I need to synch the new catalogue to my file locations so as to import the images into the new catalogue? The files are all in the original location.  I started the import process and it gradually ticked up to include all images. But I haven't hit the final IMPORT button. Will I lose my edits ? and my images be synch'd into the correct file structure locations or all into one massive file? The retain original was selected - but all other options were grayed out. 

Is this normal? When I imported I had expected the old folders and images to be present. And will my edits, ratings and colour tabs be there?

This whole process seems to be quite vague as to details.

Help and guidance would be appreciated.

[GoldingD]

I probably have a bit of this wrong, or part of this may have changed over the years. But

Their can be (actually should be) two hard drives, two places, that could be lacking enough space to accomplish the backup.

1. The hard drive your catalog is on. And consider one file and one folder in the backup:

Both the catalog, and the lrcat-data folder will be included in the backup. How much space does your catalog need? How big is it?

And as for the lrcat-data

 How much space does your eat up?

Add those together.

The other drive is the one you are attempting to backup to

And that backup (compressed) is one I just crated for this discussion, (that uis to say, do not wonder about the strange hard drive description, not my normal process)  so you can see that it eats quite a bit of space. If I was to double click on that, I would see both the catalog and the lrcat_data folder.

Moving on,

1. One would assume your and LrC rights (more of a MACOS issue, LrC rights) to the hard drive your catalog is on are just fine, but what about the hard drive you are importing to?

2. How much space on that hard drive you are backing up to?

3. Now this is a bit I may have wrong. While that backup file is compressed and as such takes up less space than the original, At some point does LrC copy the file to the backup drive and then compress? Or does it compress during the copy to the backup drive? Could the backup process require at least at first the full drive space as the original? When checking for free space, keep that in mind. Could be wrong.

[JohanElzenga]

I am sorry to say, but it sounds like your catalog corruption was already too severe to make this work, or you made a mistake with the import dialog (let's hope it's just that). I don't know if this is just a coincidence, but I advised somebody with the same problem just a few days ago that importing the old catalog into a brand new one might solve his problem. In his case, it did indeed. Here's the link. Read what I write about the import setting for new images. https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/can-t-save-my-lightroom-catalog/m-p/143...

[Penihau]

Hi,

Thank you for the replies.

re GoldingD

Hi,

Thank you for the reply.

The catalogue xxxxlrcat is 2.694Gb.

The LRcat-data is 82Mb

The sync.lrdata is 67Mb

Smartpreviews.lrdata is 7.7Gb

previews.lrdata is 267Gb

helper.lrdata is 362Mb

I have 396Gb free on cache and high speed internal SSD where I usually perform my backups to

I have 579Gb free on C: drive where app and catalogue are installed. I tried backing up to here also

I have also tried

D: drive with 4.83 TB free

E: drive 2.62Tb free

1.24Tb free on another internal SSD

As I mentioned I have cleared cache's.

Thank you for your suggestion 

The catalogue xxxxlrcat is 2.694Gb.

The LRcat-data is 82Mb

The sync.lrdata is 67Mb

Smartpreviews.lrdata is 7.7Gb

previews.lrdata is 267Gb

helper.lrdata is 362Mb

I have 396Gb free on cache and high speed internal SSD where I usually perform my backups to

I have 579Gb free on C: drive where app and catalogue are installed. I tried backing up to here also

I have also tried

D: drive with 4.83 TB free

E: drive 2.62Tb free

1.24Tb free on another internal SSD

As I mentioned I have cleared cache's.

Thank you for your suggestion 

re Johan,

Thank you for the suggestion, I am going through this carefully and will advise back.

cheers and Happy New Year

[Penihau]

Hi Johan,

I have tried again the create new catalogue and then Import catalogue. I selected 'in place'. This seems to be the same as last time, mentioned above so I assume I have the same settings.

It takes a very long time to Import photo's and video's but once complete, as before, I have the correct number of 'all photographs' but 0 Synch'd photographs. So as before I seem to have the only option of Synch-ing the file directory. I have most of the keywords already -  tiered ones are missing and I have most of my collections.

If I synch will I lose my image edits?

Will they show just as imported?

Will keywording, rating and colour tab be retained for images ?

And will the images synch into their original folders?

I am terrified of losing the above.

thanks

[JohanElzenga]

You created a new catalog, so this catalog is not synced (yet). That is indeed the only drawback of this method. You will have to enable sync for this catalog when you decide that everything is working again as it should, and so you will use this catalog from now on. There is no way around that. Doing that won't make you lose everything. The best (and likely) outcome will be that Lightroom recognizes that this is essentially still the same catalog, and so it restores the sync without a problem. The worse outcome is that Lightroom does not recognize it, and thinks this is a totally different catalog with totally different images. In that case it will download everything that is in the cloud as a new image. So even in this worst case scenario you will not lose anything.

[Penihau]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I seem to have most of my library recovered.

I have many images that now have a double that cannot be found if I select it. Many show ' ! ' in top corner. It is livable but a major pain to sort out each time. Any way of pruning these?

I do not have the People View data - People View is completely unpopulated and I am being asked to start from scratch. Is there any way of recovering and importing the People View data? The old catalogue was fully completed for all images. Does anyone have any way of recovering or importing. ?

Thank you in advance

[JohanElzenga]

If you have a double image and Lightroom shows the exclamation mark, then Lightroom does not even know where the original image is located. I would simply remove such an image from the catalog. As you created a new catalog, people view may not be activated yet for this catalog. The data should have been imported however, so activating it might be enough to repopulate it. Otherwise you could try the import again with another new catalog, and this time activate people view for the new catalog before you start the import.