Corrupted Catalog

[Jim Sweeney Images]

Hi – I am encountering recurring catalog corrupt messages.  I can restore from a backup but the problem keeps periodically reoccurring.  Sometimes a backup does not work or an integrity check fails, but other times it completes.  Sometimes a repair procedure works and sometimes it does not.

This started when I was working remote on a laptop and exported an image that was located on my home desktop. The catalog is on a shared network drive that was available.  Lightroom warned me about the unavailable image and said it would try anyway,.  That export succeeded but after that the catalog corruption issues started appearing.  The problem now also appears on the home desktop. 

I have tried resetting preferences and that did not help.  I also tried creating a new catalog ( the corrupted catalog has been upgraded numerous times over the years) and importing from the previous catalog.  That failed because of an unknown error.

Has anyone seen this behavior before?  I am running LR Classic V11.4.1  on Windows 10 and would welcome any suggestions.

Thanks,

Jim

[GoldingD]

The catalog is on a shared network drive that was available

So the catalog is in either a NAS, or a folder on a server?

That would be the reoccurring corruption cause.

LrC does not work well when the catalog is on a shared network resource. Be that a NAS, or an actual server folder/share. The catalog must be on a physical hard drive, internal or external, and not flash media.

P.S. LrC can take advantage of speedy hard drives like SSD, for catalog location, and Camera RAW CACHE location, Their is no such advantage for the location for your images (images can be anywhere, including NAS, but some run into problems with that)

some references:

per:  How Lightroom Classic catalogs work

"1.Decide in advance where you want to store your Lightroom Classic catalog. You can't store it on a network. You'll probably store it on your computer's hard drive or an external disk.  After you decide where you'll save the catalog, consider the specific folder or path where you'll put it."

per: Lightroom Classic catalog FAQ

Can I store or share a catalog on a network?
No, you can't store catalogs on a network but you can store or share your photos on a network. Smart Previews let you edit your photos in Lightroom Classic even when you are disconnected from the network or when your computer is disconnected from the drive that has your photos.

[Jim Sweeney Images]

I am not sure that the catalog location is the cause of the corruption.  It is on a local drive that gets backed up to Google Drive.  I have been operating this way for  a number of years without issue.  Even if I move the catalog away from that environment, the question remains:  how do I get past the corruption now that it is there?  

Any further advice would be welcome.

Thanks

[dj_paige]

I am not sure that the catalog location is the cause of the corruption. It is on a local drive that gets backed up to Google Drive.

Storing the catalog on a drive that is connected and backed up to the cloud is a known cause of catalog corruption. The other known cause is hard disk malfunction. From the information you have given us, it could be either.

[GoldingD]

Please clarify, note that I may be reading your original info wrong. or misunderstanding.

Where do you keep the working catalog?

[SeanMcCormack]

I suspect the backup may aleady have corrupted tables that still allow the backup to function normally, but this leads to the catalog corrupting completely. This is most likely the source of the unknown error. 

What I'd suggest as a workaround is based on use the working backup and to select all in All Photographs and then Control + S to save out metadata. At least this way if you need to create a new catalog and reimport, you retain edits and information. You'll lose flags and collections though. 

There used to be a way to use SQLite to do a catalog copy into a new file, which could fix it, but it hasn't worked for me recently. 

[Jim Sweeney Images]

Hi Sean,

What you recommend I do to determine if a backup is working without corruption?  Does an Integrity check insure that?  I do have a series of backups since before my original scenario occurred.

I did try creating a brand new catalog, since my regular catalog has been upgraded so many times over the years, and then importing from the corrupted  catalog into the newly created one, but that failed as well.

I am not quite clear on what you are suggesting to save metadata:  Am I saving all metadata from the corrupted catalog?  Using your procedure, would I have to reimport all images from scratch into a new catalog and then add the metadata back in after the import?

I am wondering if it might be worth a try to remove the image that I tried to export from the catalog and then try to test the integrity of everything else.

Thanks,

Jim