Getting Lightroom to work (or not!) after a hard drive meltdown.

Report · Sep 07, 2023

I have a 2015 iMac and ran Lightroon 6 or 7 on it for several years, but when the hard drive failed and I got a new one fitted the software refused to open. I tried all the online advice about changing permissions and all that but whatever I did I got the old error 16. So I took a deep breath and ordered Lightroom again signing up to pay every year which used to be the payment for the ownership of the app with no time limit. I launched the new app and soon found that it said the cloud storage was full and would I like to double the amount I'm paying to get more storage. The really stupid thing about the app ia that you can't store photos on the app alone, you have to have enough cloud storage too and as I'm already paying a hosting site to back up all my photos I don't want to have them stored a second time at far more cost. What I then found out was that I could download Lightroom classic which allows the same storage as the old lightroom apps and there's no cloud storage so that is what I am using now. All my old catalogs aren't recognised so I'm having to work out which photos I need to work on and load them up in batches. This is taking a matter of days! Very frustrating. I wonder how many other people are feeling a bit cheated in not being able to use their bought Lightroom app when they change their computer or the hard drive on their machine as in my case? Am I just really unlucky or is Adobe hooking masses of people into paying monthly?

Report · Sep 07, 2023

All my old catalogs aren't recognised

Can you expand upon that? Do you get an error message? What does it say? How are you attempting to open the old catalog?

Report · Sep 07, 2023

So I took a deep breath and ordered Lightroom again signing up to pay every year which used to be the payment for the ownership of the app with no time limit

What plan? The Photography Plan (20 GB or 1 TB

Now that you have apparently gotten past the Adobe marketing Lr vs LrC issue, perhaps it will be prudent to verify your LrC install info as follows

Please post your System Information as Lightroom Classic (LrC) reports it. In LrC click on Help, then System Info, then Copy. Paste that information into a reply. Please present all information from first line down to and including Plug-in Info. Info after Plug-in info can be cut as that is just so much dead space to us non-Techs.

Report · Sep 08, 2023

I found that I could open Lightroom Classic so I've been uploading all my photos that still need adjustments there as there is no limit and I am a busy photographer. When I'd bulk uploaded a couple of years work I saw that some filed had become corrupted. I thought I could fix this by deleting them from Lightroom and then re-installing them separately but when I try to put the good images where the corrupted ones were the app refuses to let them in because it thinks the original photo with the same name is still there. I can't find a way to fix this and need to get the pics in their proper dates so I know what they all are and where they were taken etc...have you any idea what I can do to remedy this?