Lightroom catalog suddenly disappeared

Report · Aug 03, 2017

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

Report · Aug 12, 2023

This happened to me today. I keep my .lrcat file in a directory called "Lightroom" at the root of my external SSD drive. Yesterday I quit Lightroom Classic (which I had earlier in the day confirmed was up-to-date via Creative Cloud) and selected "Not this time" when prompted to make a backup because I hadn't made any changes to anything - I had simply been reviewing/browsing for images.

Today I launched LrC and was presented with the dialogue box to choose which catalog to open, but the catalog I keep at that location was not listed. I went to Finder and checked on that Lightroom directory, and it was completely empty. No items whatsoever in that directory. I also checked with Terminal - no contents in that directory. I checked the Trash - only a few random files I had deleted, but nothing Lightroom related.

If all you want to do is reply with "that can't happen" or "you must be looking in the wrong place"- please don't. It has clearly happened. There is no confusion regarding where I keep my primary catalog. I have a few other minor catalogs on other drives, and they still show up in the Open Catalog dialogue box, but I have not touched any of them in weeks. I keep (kept) my primary catalog in that very easy to find location.

Adobe - if anyone is listening and cares - even if there is no bug in YOUR software, something is deleting files related to your app for some unknown reason. Maybe look into it.

Report · May 22, 2025

I Just had the same problem. I realised for some reason that One drive was syncing and had moved my catalogue into the onedrive folder. look in: Local discc;/Users/*name/OneDrive/Pictures/Lightroom

thats were my catalogue ended up

Report · Jul 01, 2025

This just happened to me as well, my catalog is just gone in my folder. I always keep them on a external harddrive in a very easy place to find but it's just gone. No one has a sollution? How can Adobe nog come and help or take responsibility for this?

Report · Jul 01, 2025

Unfortunately, files don't disappear by themselves. Lightroom Classic doesn't move or delete files unless you the user specifically tell it to do so, and there is no function in LrC to delete or move a catalog. Similarly, your operating system does not move or delete files on its own, without specific instructions from you to do so.

So I doubt Adobe will take responsibility for this.

One thing that does happen is people put their catalog file into a folder synced to the cloud, and some cloud sync software has a feature that keeps a copy only in the cloud only and it removes the file from your hard disk. Perhaps this is what happened to you?

Report · Jul 01, 2025

Thanks for this...files.only get moved if your a Microsoft user and one
cloud desides to move your files from your PC to the cloud screwing
everything up. If you have one cloud doable it.