Lightroom wont use backups of catalog. Lost ALL info.

[danrichard]

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?! 

[JohanElzenga]

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?

[danrichard]

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

[.Michael. · Accepted solution]

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.

[danrichard]

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

[JohanElzenga]

Reading your original message again: You say you get a 'need to repair/upgrade' dialog, but what is it? Repair or upgrade? Your Lightroom 12 catalog backups are obviously not yet upgraded for use in Lightroom 13, so an upgrade dialog would be completely as expected. A 'repair' message would not be.

[danrichard]

First upgrade, then when I try to open that catalog, it either needs repair (which closes lightroom after a while without any notification) then a repair next time I open. After that repair, it opens but is completely empty, except for saved tags and presets, but no images. 

[.Michael.]

Your catalog data is with a very high probability not gone, i.e. the previously used V12.x catalog is still there:

Lightroom Catalog-v12.lrcat

the V13.0.1 is named:

Lightroom Catalog-v13.lrcat

No panic 🙂

[danrichard]

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!

[.Michael.]

You are welcome.

I'm using the two provided backup options all the time and had never a catalog issue. I.e. I recommend this to all users.

General catalog backup strategy help.