Lightroom Classic Catalog issues

[noaha15127557]

I recently updated to the Lightroom Classic. I am on the Adobe Photography plan, so I always have the latest updates from CC versions. The Lightroom Classic has properly converted my 2015, 2016 and 2017 photos into the new catalogs. However, my 2013 and 2014 catalogs are not so easy. Both my 2013 and 2014 Catalogs are stored on my Seagate 3TB device. Through some luck, I was able to get the 2013 catalog to be converted. The 2014 Catalog is not yet converted. With following the steps from Lightroom Classic, the catalog seems not to convert as needed. Below are the screen shots that is repetitive in trying to convert.

Keep in mind as I followed the same process for converting the 2013 catalog and had success. So I am confused.

Below is my computer info if this helps in understanding my operating system.

Any help and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated so that I can finish the conversion process.

[Geoff the kiwi]

Have you tried copying the catalog to your internal drive and upgrading from there??

[noaha15127557]

Yes sir...I have copied to the hard drive and get the following messages.

Then I created a new catalog for 2014 and then opened the  import from another catalog feature and got the following message.

What is weird is that the catalog had worked with the last version of Lightroom CC.

[Geoff the kiwi]

The previous CC app was removed during installation??

If so download Lightroom 6 from here

then see if you can open the catalog.

[noaha15127557]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for the quick responses....I did perform the instructions you have given and the Lightroom installed alerted me of the same message (previously sent screen shots) of trying to open the Catalog 2014

[noaha15127557]

Yes the previous CC app was removed during installation as it was defaulted to being checked off....in hind site....I should have unchecked that box....but as they say...it is what it is...I learn a lesson here for sure...

[Geoff the kiwi]

Let me see if I can get some help wit this.....

[AviMathur]

noaha15127557​, please make sure the following things.

1. Copy your Lr6 catalog to an internal drive, where available space is more than twice the size of your catalog. if(your catalog is 10 GB, I recommend you to have available disk space upto 25 GB) .

2. Clear any temp files in the directory where the lrcat file is present.

3. Check if your catalog opens in previous version of Lightroom (6.12)

4. If it does then try optimizing it , File -> Optimize catalog.

5. After optimizing. close all applications. Clear any temp files further created in the directory.

6. Try upgrading the catalog with Lr Classic

If that does not help, please share your catalog with us. (Zip it and share it over dropbox)

Thanks,

Akshay

[noaha15127557]

Thanks for providing the next steps....have a quick question before I get started. I am making the assumption that I will copy the catalog over to the internal drive and NOT the photos for this exercise. If this is not the correct assumption, please advise.

thanks

[AviMathur]

Yes only the catalog.

[AviMathur]

Also please make sure  that there are no external USB drives/card readers connected.

[noaha15127557]

OMGosh....I started the process of looking at my finder of the file size and notice that all the previous 2014 catalogs which includes the backups are all Zero bytes.  There is only one 2014 catalog that was put in a separate folder by LR Classic and that catalog is only 1.5MB...yikes...this is not looking so well

[AviMathur]

Every time you run a catalog upgrade, LR Classic just copies your original catalog to a new copy and then upgrades that copy.

So that the original catalog is left untouched.

[noaha15127557]

I fully understand your response.....just need to figure out why only the 2014 catalog has not been converted....all others have been converted...2013, 2015, 2016, 2017...

Here are a couple of screen shots for your reference..

This is the LR version that was on the link from Geoff.  I noticed it is not the release that you mentioned in your initial response.

[AviMathur]

Yes, this is Lr6.0,

you can update this to 6.13 now & test whether you 2014 catalog opens.

but by the looks of it, It does not seem to be an LR Classic Issue, the catalog was already corrupt since it cannot be opened in LR 6.x

Try on a decent catalog (from any of the backups) and recall when last did you use that 2014 catalog and was working fine.

Thanks,

Akshay

[noaha15127557]

First of all thanks to you and Geoff the kiwi for providing support on my issues with this one catalog.

I followed and updated the previous version of LR as you mentioned in your last response. The 2014 catalog and its backups do not get recognized by either version of Lightroom. Like you mentioned, I believe some how this catalog got corrupted at some point. With that being said, I really would like to understand (as a daily user of LR) how did this catalog get corrupted. Even thou I am frustrated with the fact that I lost my work on the thousands of photos, I am even more worried as to what/how did I corrupt my catalog. For me, I need to make sure this does not happen again as every year I create a new catalog and each year the total amount of pictures increase. So I have more at risk as each year develops in my photography business.

[joachims25232702]

Are you sure that you did actually work with that catalog ever? May be you created it but never loaded any photos into it but rather worked with another catalog by accident. You may want search all discs and folder for a lrcat file.

[noaha15127557]

Hi Joachims25232702,

I only create one catalog per year not any more than that.  All the catalogs that are on my computer are a direct result of the different LR updates. The other catalogs are also a result of Seagate backing up my computer. So I can surely without any doubt confirm that I never created a catalog without ever loading any photos.

I have searched an found finally a backup file of 2014 that I was able to recover most of my work. For that I am glad. However, since it was not the latest the catalog shows 11 missing photos that it cannot reconnect with...so I will work on finding out where they are.

There are still some unanswered issues as to how the 2014 file became zero in size. However, not a priority at this time as I am in the verification process of the items of my 2014 catalog.

Here is another question...while searching so many places to open existing Ircat files, my recent list, when starting up Lightroom, is very cluttered with unwanted catalogs, how do I clear the list of these unwanted catalogs?

Thanks