Loss of Catalogue Data for Individual Images/folders - Edits and Keywords

[ABurfield]

I was recently looking through some older images in my Lightroom Classic Catalogue and I came across a surprising and perplexing error - in several folders some of the images appear to have lost catalogue data. The most widespread impact appears to be images without keywords. The second most widespread impact (and most concerning) is it appears that HDR merged images in these folders have lost their edits.

Some of the HDR merged images missing catalogue data display a metadata conflict error "The metadata for this photo has been changed by both Lightroom and another application". I am given the option of importing settings from the disk or overwriting from the catalogue. I've tried both options and neither makes any change or difference to the metadata for the file nor restores the missing edits or keywords. I've never edited or accessed any of these files using anything other than Lightroom Classic or my Windows File Explorer.

The non-HDR images do not display any error message.

The bug appears to have impacted about 10 consecutive folders (folder organisation is chronological). Near as I can tell on cursory inspection the remainder of the catalogue of some 1000 folders appears to be unaffected. In some folders all keywords are missing, in others all but a couple are missing and in others only one or two are missing.

Raw files are stored on an external drive and catalogue is on an internal drive.

Does anyone have the faintest idea what has happened here?

[dj_paige]

I was recently looking through some older images in my Lightroom Classic Catalogue and I came across a surprising and perplexing error - in several folders some of the images appear to have lost catalogue data. The most widespread impact appears to be images without keywords. The second most widespread impact (and most concerning) is it appears that HDR merged images in these folders have lost their edits.

One possible cause for this is that you accidentally imported the photos using COPY rather than ADD, did you edits and adding of metadata; and then at a later time imported the photos again using ADD. Now you can have one edited copy with keywords and other metadata, and another copy without.

Please perform the following seach in LrC according to the four-step instructions and see if you find duplicates of your photos in LrC.

1. In the Lightroom Classic Library Module, on the left, under Catalog, click on All Photographs
2. Turn off all filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
3. Turn off all stacking (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4. Search for at least one of these photos by file name using the Lightroom Classic Filter Bar

[ABurfield]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion, I appreciate you taking the time to help. I don't believe this to be the cause of the issue, however I followed the suggested steps anyway just in case. No duplicates or anomolies were located, so I'm confident saying this is not the cause.