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How do I restore a Lightroom catalog backup

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
November 22, 2017
5 replies
30422 views

My hard drive crashed. I had a new hard drive installed. I have LR Classic installed. I need to find out how to restore a LR Catalog Backup. I would appreciate any assistance.

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scott5F90

Participating Frequently

Sorry, this is not a solution but I can find no other way to enter this content. Maybe it will help someone else with this problem. I had rated 108,000 images individually. It took me months. When I was 98% done, LR CC spontaneously changed all ratings to 3 stars. I wasn't overly concerned as I assumed I could juust use a backup and only lose one day of work. I have a multitude of backups on many different drives. I started with the most recent one from the day before. LR tried to open using it but said it was hopelessly corrupted. LR went through a nhumber of steps to try to rebuild it but never could. I then went to the bacckup before that and got the same nonsense. I have backups going back for months. NONE worked. This means I have not only lost the star ratings on nearly 108,000 images (realistically probably 104,000), I have lost all the editing on about 60,000 of those images. I think I am done with this insanity. Most of us gave up on Premiere, as well, years and years ago due to lost work. It looks like it's time to give up on Lightroom as well. I'm sorry Adobe can't or won't make their products work. I will no longer be a victim of it. Done.

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sama3033

New Participant

Same here. I have a similar problem - weeks of work down the drain and no way - apparently - to recover it. LR should back up whenever we exit or optimize. I'm done. It's a disaster. Going to Capture One.

AxelMatt

Community Expert

Please describe your problem more detailed and give us informations about your environment like

version of your operating system
version of installed Adobe software
error messages
and so on.

@sama3033 schrieb:

Same here. I have a similar problem - weeks of work down the drain and no way - apparently - to recover it.

"I have a similar problem" isn't very helpful to try to indicate your issue and for trying to help.

@sama3033 schrieb:

... LR should back up whenever we exit or optimize. ...

With the appropriate settings LR create a backup every time on LR was quit.

BTW: Please don't reactivate such old posts.

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 5 - Topaz Photo

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Mark_vlk

New Participant

Okay, I found a copy of my catalog in my time machine. i copied the .lrcat and paste onto my current HDD. And LR says that it is not a valid catalog! Note: i do not have a backup copy (aka zip) coz i thought i got time machine and it dont need another copy of it? Can i just copy and paste the catalog from my time machine?

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Mark_vlk

New Participant

I have accidently deleted my Catalog and emptied the trash. I have then recovered the .lrcat file using Disk Drill Pro. But LR cannot open the catalog. HELP!!! how!!!

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dj_paige

Brainiac

mark_vlk wrote
I have accidently deleted my Catalog and emptied the trash. I have then recovered the .lrcat file using Disk Drill Pro. But LR cannot open the catalog. HELP!!! how!!!

Do you have a backup (not one recovered from a recovery program)?

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Mark_vlk

New Participant

the back up folder are right beside the lightroom catalog folder... i believe i may have deleted it as well. Light room cannot recover from recovered catalog?

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

Read this link-

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/disaster-strikes-corrupted-catalog/#restore

Update this article by adding that recent versions of Lr place backups in ZIP folders. So you will first have to Unzip (Extract) the 'zip' folder to make the Catalog file (.LRCAT) available to restore.

You will also need all your original photo files, in the exact same folder structure, restored to the new hard-drive.

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .

cobyv2216126

New Participant

If my computer completely crashed but all my Lightroom catalog backups were backup to a Box is there any way for me to restore the photos? I have a whole new computer.