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danrichard
Participating Frequently
October 20, 2023
Answered

Lightroom wont use backups of catalog. Lost ALL info.

  • October 20, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1127 views

After the upgrade to 13.0 I tried opening lightroom, and it seems to have corrupted all the backups during catalog upgrade, not just the current one. I am trying to open the backups, and all of them just got the "need to repair/upgrade" notification, and as I did that, lightroom started as if I have no pictures imported. Have I lost everything?! 

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer .Michael.

    LrC makes backups in *.zip files but if you copy your *.lrcat catalog file per hand as backup to some location then of course no unzip is required. The regular LrC backups are here (Windows):
    "...\Lightroom\Backups\2023-10-20 1607\Lightroom Catalog-v12.zip"

    This is an example of my last backup file from today, before I installed LrC V13.0.1.

    1 reply

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 20, 2023

    Lightroom Classic doesn't do anything with its catalog backups during the upgrade of the main catalog. Catalog backups are zipped. Did you unzip the backup before you tried to use it?

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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      danrichardAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      October 20, 2023

      They were not zip files. They were  .lcat files. Does a .lcat file need unsipping? 

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      danrichardAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      October 21, 2023

      If I have missed that detail you just made my life a whole lot easier. I will have to check that when I get home after work. However, in my backup folder there were mostly .lcat files with different numerations/dates. Fingers crossed


      I had only seen the stacks of .lcat files that were dated backwards and completely ignored that there were another backup folder. I did actually have to go back a couple of backups before I could find one that worked, but months of work reassembling everything, just became a couple of hours work. Thank you!

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