Lightroom catalog suddenly disappeared

[calumlewis]

So the other night before bed I went to shut down my computer, closed Lightroom and it prompted me to backup, so I did (I always backup when prompted weekly). Next day I fire up the PC, open Lightroom and it's completely empty and starts the tutorial (where the arrows point important sections) as if I had first opened it. The library was completely empty and the catalogue disappeared. I looked in my Lightroom folder (Pictures>Lightroom) opened the catalogue inside and it's empty. I contacted support, they took remote control of my PC and tried to open a backup catalogue, but the most recent backup is from January, and after searching my whole system for a .lrcat file the support advisor just told me that it has gone for good and they couldn't help any further. All the collections photos are still synced to lightroom mobile and web, so I can access them on there, but the desktop catalogue is gone and when opening my old one it will resync with mobile and ill loose all the edits.

I have tried everything I can think of, but how can a catalogue just disappear with 8 months worth of backups?

I'm currently running a disk recovery programme to see if I can recover anything that's been deleted (not by me)

Has anyone else had this issue, and know of anything I can do to recover my catalogue?

I'm using the latest version of Windows 10 and my Lightroom CC is updated to the most current 2015 version.

Thanks

[Just Shoot Me]

As above. There is NO system, feature, option, in LR to delete catalogs. LR does not do any cleaning up of old or new catalogs except to Optimize them when either backing up or the User can run that from the File menu item Optimize Catalog.

Your corruption and deletions are cause by something else.

[thelauramarie]

I updated Lightroom and ALL of my backups and catalog files were GONE. I was able to recover them in Backblaze (I think I'm missing some edits, but the majority are still there).  I'm not going to say it's the update but my experience is like everyone else who has posted - always backed up upon exiting Lightroom, Lightroom opened up as if it was brand new after an update and NO lrcat files were there, NO backups were found, and thank goodness for an automated backup system. I'm using a Windows PC and have Lightroom CC.

[Just Shoot Me]

thelauramarie  wrote

I'm using a Windows PC and have Lightroom CC.

This is the LR Classic CC, LR Version 7, forum and not LR CC, the Cloud centric version, forum.

As stated before there is NO System, Feature, Option in LR or in any update for LR that deletes catalogs or catalog backup files. All of that must be done manually. If you want to Delete a catalog file, or a catalog backup file, you have to do that yourself through the File Manager for the OS you are running.

[Susan_from_Newark]

Not only my catalogue, but also all my purchased presets! 

[lydiakuramoto]

Me, too!! Did you find a solution?

[samueln61009385]

Mine also did the same today. My computer rebooted from an update and when. I opened Lightroom classic all my photos were gone. Luckily I didn't delete anything off my SD cards but this is ridiculous. Now I have to reimport everything which will probably take half a day.

[ptknight_S4S]

I finally found a slightly older catalogue that I had backed up on a

separate external HD. I now keep complete backups of my photos and

Lightroom Classic CC catalogs in two additional external HDs and a cloud

backup service (Backblaze). You can never be too safe with your precious

photos.

Peter

Edited by Moderator.

[Larry_C]

+1 more "totally gone" experience. I searched my drives with a third party tool that works (instead of Windows) and yep, lost data.

So, maybe it was a Windows update, maybe it was an Adobe update. Good luck, all.

[raymanningphotography]

Add me to the list.  Lightroom updated, asked to upgrade the catalog and after saying yes, I ended up with an empty catalog rather than the 60k+ photos I had originally. 

[Just Shoot Me]

raymanningphotography  wrote

Add me to the list.  Lightroom updated, asked to upgrade the catalog and after saying yes, I ended up with an empty catalog rather than the 60k+ photos I had originally. 

That is not the same as the others in this thread.

Your photos are still on your drive, someplace. The catalog you used with the older, previous version, of LR is still on your drive, someplace.

Please start a New Discussion and give all the details of the problem you are having.

[raymanningphotography]

How is this not the same?  An upgrade caused my catalog to become empty.

[Just Shoot Me]

Supposedly the other replies state the catalog, ALL catalogs, are completely missing from the users computers.

Catalog Disappeared. Your catalogs have not disappeared.

Search your hard drives for .lrcat.

[raymanningphotography]

Well, the title of the post is that the catalog disappeared, which mine did.  The title is not about backups.  The problem exists with or without backups.

[Bob32014]

I use Carbonite to backup the backup catalog.

Just a suggestion.

Bob

On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 3:51 AM davidw6661850 <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[raymanningphotography]

To add injury to insult, opening a backup and synchronizing shows many missing pictures.  When I display the missing pictures, I can click on them and it tells me "Original + preview".  Well, if the original is there, it's not missing!  Right clicking and selecting "show in explorer" displays the "missing" file which is obviously not missing.

[raymanningphotography]

I guess technically, neither of our catalogs disappeared but have been reset somehow to having zero photos.  That is the first issue.  The second issue would be related to backups.

[dj_paige]

Please start a new discussion instead of adding it to this thread. Please be sure to state all of the relevant details in the new discussion.

[Just Shoot Me]

And as has been pointed out there is nothing in any LR upgrade install that removes catalogs. There is a system to Copy and Upgrade a catalog when a new version of LR is installed that needs to use a new catalog, Database, format. But the original catalog that was used by the older version of LR is not removed.

The disappearing of catalogs, of any file, from a hard drive is more than likely a hardware fault or some type of virus or malware.

For whatever reason LR created a NEW Empty catalog and did not copy and upgrade the catalog you were using with the previous version of LR.

Also unless you have been away from your computer or not used LR in months and you have a Photographers subscription plan there is no Upgrade that you need or can use.

I suspect you have a perpetual license version of LR 6/CC 2015 and you have fallen to the bug that allows that version to be upgraded to LR Classic CC Version 7.x. Which is only available with the Subscription plan.

[raymanningphotography]

I have been on LR Classic CC via subscription since around the time it came out.  So I suspect it's a different bug.

[aamuktar]

If you go to C;\users\username\LightroomCatalogueData you should find a folder called backups which is full of dated folders which contain zip files of you catalogs. If that makes sense and you find what you are looking for then hooray. Unzip the one you want, and then open it in Lightroom. That will then become your current catalog.

[blakerandall81]

Same sad story as everyone one else.  My new catalog disappeared with the update.  Searched my hard drive for lrcat files and it's gone.  Hours of organizing my photos wasted and an hour calling adobe tech wasted.  Frustrating.

[lima444]

Similar thing happened to me. I opened Lightroom and there were only a few folders showing with blank photos in them. Hadn't edited anything in them for over a year. Recent folders were not shown. Only blank files were in the folders. I had not reset any preferences. The only change I did from my normal routine was to synchronise some folders, the night before after learning how to do it on YouTube. Don't know if this caused the problem. I'd also downloaded the latest update for my Macrium Reflect Backup software and installed it, just before opening Lightroom.

I tried searching for the files but mistakenly read lrcat as ircat so obviously it didn't find any files.

Fixed the problem by doing a search for 'lightroom backup' and got results - chose the most recent catalogue and lightroom opened with them all there.

Hope this helps someone.

[Bella Carolina]

I just did an OS search for "lightroom backup". Unfortunately I got nothing.

But, I'm glad it worked for you. Thanks for suggesting it. I've been struggling all day to find somekind of troubleshooting.

[seachange91362]

I lost my Lightroom catalog too, a week ago. 111,000 photos. The big Thunderbolt hard drive failed but I wasn’t worried because I have a backup copy of the masters and back up the catalog file every time I close Lightroom to a separate Thunderbolt Drive. Shockingly, the most recent backup has retained none of the work I’ve done at all. It refuses to recognize the masters in a different location, and I tried reconnecting them almost day by day (since 2002). Adobe support couldn’t help, just told me to “show parent folder, reconnect masters”. After several hours of this I thought I was getting somewhere, and hoping that my keywords and ratings and collections would be there at the end, but then somewhere around 2010 all the more recent folders just vaporized from the left column and there remains nothing left to reconnect past 2010. Mid 2010 thru 2018 are no longer even folders with question marks. I’ve started over repeatedly from the backup (which Lightroom always has to upgrade since it’s from an earlier version).  I came to the conclusion that the backups are worthless or that the most recent backup must be years old (like mid 2016) and Lightroom had started storing more recent backups to the main drive (maybe after an update). I’ve searched all the drives and the only “backups” are on the backup drive, so I have to assume it had been storing all the recent ones to the failed drive.  Why Lightroom would default to the same location as the main catalog is a mystery to me, because who stores their backup on the same drive as the original? There should at least be a warning if it’s going to do that. I looked into data recovery just for that one catalog backup file, if it’s even there, but that costs a fortune on a 6 Tb drive, and everything else important had been backed up. It has taken me since mid 2015 to recover from the debacle of migrating from Aperture (using the prescribed migration instructions at the time) which ended up entailing completely reorganizing, re-rating, and re-keywording about 60,000 photos that had ballooned to about 111,000 photos because Lightroom made 2 - 6 duplicates of any photo I had ever adjusted, keyworded or altered in any way in Aperture. All my synced collections are gone from the library, all keywording, rating, color coding, adjustments, organization and synced collections are just gone. If I sync a new library all mobile collections will be deleted, and it took me years to build them. A vast amount of work on over 100,000 photos evaporated. I’m now trying to figure out how to start over.  It’s heartbreaking and massively disappointing. I feel like I did everything right, backing up every time I closed. Just be forewarned if you haven’t tried to recover from a backup. You have no idea what Lightroom’s doing. Better make a copy of the catalog yourself every so often to be sure, because the backup might be useless. I sure wish there were a simpler, better photo management solution. Aperture was vastly better. I have too many photos to store in the cloud, or I would just put the whole collection on Apple Photos. Lightroom CC is also not an option.

[dj_paige]

Hi, it is possible you are looking at the WRONG location for your backup files. If you backup every time you close LR, you should find some backup files with a recent date, and you ought to use your operating system's search feature to search ALL of your disks (internal and external and network) for files whose name contains LRCAT.

Other than that, my I recommend that in the future, you write in paragraphs? That would make everyone much happier, and the content of your message would be much more easily understood. I admit that I didn't even try to read everything you wrote, and I won't even try to read one huge paragraph like that, because I know won't be able to grasp most of your points.