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Hoping I'm posting this to the right place so it will be seen!
Yikes, reading all this has me sweating! I have a similar problem to Mariachio, and a host of others. Here's the sequence of what happened.
I have been using Lightroom with an array. Yesterday, on import of a few pics, the previews all went psychdelic colors and lines - corrupted previews. I was in the same folder they were being imported to, (accidentally importing them in there) and tried to hit the space bar to look at one larger before import or previews were finished. I waited until it was all done with import and preview building, then selected them all and deleted the images from the disk, and tried again to import from the card - same problem. I quit LR - and chose 'backup' - and was told that LR was unable to backup and suggested checking permissions or that I should make sure I had space on my backup drive (which is also the array and I did have plenty of space). LR then quit. I tried opening LR again and got a msg that it was corrupt and needed repair. I clicked Repair and got a SUCCESS msg; but I then I decided to quit LR, to get the option to do a backup while I knew it was a successfully repaired catalog; but I got a msg that said I couldn't backup catalog, because I "failed the integrity check...but it would attempt repair when I reopened LR again", and LR quit. I believe I opened LR again, and got the 'need to repair' msg, and clicked repair again, and got the failure to repair msg again. After that, all of a sudden I get a MAC msg "OS X can't repair the disk "Master Digital Library" (my array). You can still open and copy files...but you can't save. backup the files and reformat the disk (my whole array) asap." It appears that this is related to the corrupt catalog. Maybe I caused it with that mucking around in the same folder as the import at time of import? But the problem is NOW that I can't write to the array according to the OS message.
Can you guys (Geoff or Paul) take a look at my corrupt catalog? I know you've done this ad nauseum by the posts here, but I would truly appreciate it.
Meanwhile, I have spent the last 15-22 hours copying the last half of my entire library off the array to other drives, so I have the most up-to-date XMP files and image files. I made an entire array backup on 6/17/15. I have a catalog backup from 6/30/15.
In doing that copying, I found two folders that were not copy-able, (error msg when I tried), and so I took everything around those. So it's not a complete disaster - yet! But before I do all the work to recover by reformatting my entire array and restoring from backup library and then using my backup catalog, I wanted to see if you guys had a workaround solution?
I now have the following folders on my array in the Lightroom Catalog folder: temporary previews and temporary smart previews. And since I can't write to the drive, I can't move anything to the trash. I tried copying those files to my external just now but I get error -43 - one or more required items can't be found. What's next?!
Desperate for help - I have 3 keynotes talks I was in process of building when this happened and have deadline of July 9th for them all!
Here's what disk utility tells me in this screenshot:
Thank you Paul - I too am worried. Before I give you the zipped catalog here's what else I can share with you:
When Lightroom failed to repair the catalog, it created four temporary files
Temporary Import Data.db
Temporary Import Data.db-journal
temporaryRepairCatalog Previews.lrdata
temporaryRepairCatalog Smart Previews.lrdata
The 'new catalog' it was in process of creating never finished, before I got the error again, so the new catalog shows less GB than my original file (that LR threw into a folder labeled corrupt catalog). And the 'new' previews folder it was creating is essentially empty.
Based on all the previous info and the above, I agree it doesn't sound likely that the catalog will be recoverable. Here's what I've done since writing this post, and what I am proposing to do next, but would love your feedback before I proceed. But time is essential for me now so I don't want to do more work than I have to to recover, if you get my drift.
1. When I first got the catalog errors, and then the OS X error last Thursday, July 2nd, and was told to back up files right away, I copied my entire RAW library off onto 2 external drives (except the two folders that had issues and wouldn't copy), so that I would have them with the most up to date XMP files. (I had done extensive work on files since my last array backup of June 17th.) So now, I have those RAW files with their XMPs and since they were copiable, and I have looked at a few, those backups seem fine and should be, right?
2. Then, I ran Disk Warrior (screenshot of first part attached). While it repaired various things, it states right in the first paragraph that it can't replace the directory because of a disk malfunction. And, it says a disk malfunction will likely worsen? I have no idea what the malfunction is, my Drobo doesn't show anything's wrong at all, but Disk Warrior says something's wrong. Based on DW's comments, I AGAIN copied off my RAW files - with the repaired folders included now - but only got half of them by last evening. It's taking forever, and I have another 90,000 images to go if I want to complete the process, amounting to about another 24-30 hours. And then I'd have to put them all back on an array to access them as I have bare drives that I back up to and only one cradle.
3. I have a catalog backup from June 30th. So here's my thoughts:
OPTION A.
1. Format my array and Run Disk Warrior on it again just to see if it's all read-write-able, etc., i.e. let it perform checks before I put things back on it.
2. Copy back all my RAW files to the array, but from the hard drives that I created on July 2nd, as I have the entire set of RAW folders (minus the two bad folders) on those external drives. These are pre-Disk Warrior repair, but they seemed fine and were readable when I copied them.
3. Take the two folders that DW repaired on July 4th, that had been bad, and copy those back to the array, too.
4. Run LR by clicking on my Backup Catalog of June 30th.
This puts me back to having all my RAW files on the array, and the XMPs that are most current sitting beside them. However, the June 30 catalog will have XMPs that are older for some files; will LR know what to do with that? Will I get the msg "Metadata has been changed by two apps, do you want LR to overwrite with settings or from the disk?", and if so, would I overwrite from disk then?
And, what happens to the Previews? Now that I'm on Creative Cloud Lightroom, I get a zipped catalog backup file. When I unzipped it, I saw only the lrcat file, no preview files as I used to see before C Cloud. Are they built into the lrcat somehow now? Confused about that point.
OPTION B.
1. Format my array and Run Disk Warrior on it again just to see if it's all read-write-able, etc., i.e. let it perform checks before I put things back on it.
2. Copy back from my full array backup of June 17th and 19th (I did the copying in two parts because it took that long to get them copied from the array to external drives).
3. Run LR by clicking on my backup catalog of June 30th.
With OPTION B, when I run LR, would I then be able to use the XMP data that is within the catalog (and not those from the June 17th backup of raw + xmp files?
What do you think? I'm leaning towards Option A, because those files that I was told to copy off SHOULD be fine.
With all my thanks for your prompt help,
For me running Lightroom CC after a spontaneous reboot (and I clicked "skip backup)I had the dreaded "cannot open" message. It took me a while because I could not remember where my catalog was saved. I did a drive search and found the locked file. I deleted it and still no luck. I still had the folder open and when I went back there was a new locked file. I deleted the second locked file to the recycle bin and tried to open Lightroom CC... a little slow and jumpy but it is open now. The date on the first locked file was from yesterday and the second locked file was dated today, strange I know. So FYI I am running Windows 7 and I never had this happen before, also I never hit "skip backup" and I did this time and somehow feel that may have been the problem??? Maybe. 
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