Lightroom 11.2 fatal errors HELP!

[KE_DP]

I believe my LR auto updated and now everything is ruined.   2019 IMac 3.7GHz Catalina

I use multiple individual LR Catalogs - one for each client/shoot and none open so far and everything was fine yesterday.

Errors include -

The catalog could not be opened due to an unexpected error.

An Internal error has occurred

Lightroom_Fatal_SQLite_Corruption :: Database: /Volumes/Seagate 8TB/Kxxxxx/Kxxxxx Photo/CLIENTS:PROJECTS/Headshots Guys/Mark Brion/Mxxxxxx LR/Mxxxxx LR.lrcat :: Error: database disk image is malformed :: SQL: SELECT count( Adobe_libraryImageDevelopHistoryStep.id_local ) FROM Adobe_libraryImageDevelopHistoryStep WHERE ( Adobe_libraryImageDevelopHistoryStep.image == ? );

I've restarted but no help - now I will try to downgrade.

[KE_DP]

A downgrade didn't solve this.  My backup copy on another drive didn't solve this either.

Right now I just have to get out of LR trying to open an existing catalog and start with a new one - I have 4 clients in the next 4 days and have to get to work - it is locked in a loop of trying to start with an old catalog that won't open.

At one point I got a "repair" dialog and tried that but of course it didn't work either.  

[KE_DP]

Last update to this.  I work differently than most.  I create a new catalog each time I have a new shoot/new client.  This way nothing is ever intermingled - and there is theoretically no way to lose everything if LR randomly decides to trash my work (as it's doing currently).

It appears that every new catalog - or catalog I've opened since about December has been affected - and is no longer working.  When I go further back into the past things seem to open/update fine.

I've been keeping redundant Client Folder/LR Folder/LRCAT copies on externals - but the copies don't work either.

I live about 1 hour from Adobe HQ, but I doubt anyone there could even help figure out what happened.  Chances are good I won't need to revisit any of it anyway (paid and done work) - but it is disturbing such a large volume of recent work just got trashed all at once.  Completely independent unrelated LR CAT files - all gone at the same time.  They were not written/saved bad - because I have been recently opening, closing and reopening some of them.

My last ditch effort might be to use Time Machine and go back a week and see if things would open from there.  Long shot I know, (especially since all my data resides on externals, not the startup drive) - but things were working back then.

[Ian Lyons]

You should be able to stop the looping by launching LrC with the Option key held down. Doing so will open a dilaog from which you can choose an existing catalog or create new. Given that you have new business coming up, I would suggest focusing on creating and testing that new catalogs don't also corrupt.

I've attached screenshot of the diualog for reference.

[KE_DP]

Thanks I've been able to exit the loop!

[dj_paige]

These are all symptoms of a hardware malfunction on the disk drive where this catalog is located. Corrupted catalogs are not caused by LrC, they are cause by hard disk malfunctions. You need to run diagnostic tests on this disk.

[KE_DP]

Will check out the primary HDD - I guess redundant copies won't make a difference if the first one is corrupted!