Lost My Catalog after recent update

[misty66]

So Lightroom Classic updated yesterday now my catalogs are missing. I can load older ones but not the one I was working with. I didn't do a backup unfortunately of the last photo dump. LR wants to keep upgrading my verisions of catalogs and I think this is what messed it up. Is there some way to recover that old catalog? 

[benl52794612]

I back up every time Lightroom prompts me to but this didn't seem to save me from tragedy today. Disaster struck when I launched Lightroom today and it asked me if I wanted to update my catalogue to be compatible with the newest shiniest version that had been installed while I slept peacefully in my bed. I followed its lead and clicked the prompts in blue like it suggested I should and when it opened…poof, everything was gone. My stomach dropped but I knew I could access my older versions, since I went through all this two years ago when a similar phenomenon happened, so I navigated to Open Recent but there were no recents to be had. Stay calm. I decided to navigate to Pictures> Lightroom> Old Lightroom Catalogues>  BUT They were all missing but two. And those version weren’t very old. One was 1min older than the moment I was offered to update but it was only 1.7MB, just 600mb shy of what it normally should be. That’s when I knew I had been slapped.

I’m at a lost. I dusted off an old hard drive from 2022 and magically found a backup catalogue that’s 2+ years old. I lost the last 2+ years of work, roughly 4,000 to 5,000hrs of time in the chair. Moral of the story, if you’re not dragging your catalogue backups to another location outside of the one Lightroom has access to then you’re asking for it. I trusted technology and that was my shortfall. Thankfully I only lost 2+ years of edits, it could have been 10+.

[drtonyb]

@benl52794612 

You screenshot indicates that your Lightroom folder is a bit of a mess.

It appears that when the updated LrC launched, it needed to upgrade your catalog, which you did.

Are you certain that the catalog you opened and upgraded was your working catalog?

In your "Old Lightroom Catalogs" folder under "Lightroom" there is the saved old catalog "Lightroom Catalog_2025_2014.zip". It appears that you have unzipped this twice in the "Old Lightroom Catalogs" folder: once at 10:05 PM and again at 10:26 PM. It also appears that you had the unzipped backup catalog from 10:26 PM and opened that catalog in LrC before you took your screenshot; LrC would have upgraded again creating another zip file under another "Old Lightroom Catalogs" folder under "Lightroom Catalog_2025_2014" folder.

If your working catalog was under "Lightroom", your upgraded catalog should have been the one directly under the Lightroom folder with a timestamp 9:51 PM, which clearly isn't the 600MB catalog that you say was your actual catalog. So it seems to me that LrC didn't upgrade the 600MB catalog, otherwise it would be zipped in the file under the "Old Lightroom Catalogs" folder.

If you have been backing up every time you are prompted to by LrC, where are those backups?

It is puzzling as why your zip file doesn't contain the 600MB catalog.

LrC has two Preferences files: one is the main file; the other is a smaller Startup file. The Startup file is easier to read and may offer clues as to what you did since it keeps track of catalogs, backups and upgrades. The link below provides information on how to find the Preferences file, but you'll want to look in the Preferences folder to see the Startup file.

https://helpx.adobe.com/au/lightroom-classic/kb/preference-file-and-other-file-locations.html 

[benl52794612]

Your detective skills are sharp. Thats exactly what I did. Right when I noticed that my new Catalog was only 1.7megs I did a .lrcat search of my entire computer and only one catalogue came up. Gulp. I unzipped the Old Lightroom Catalog twice because I was in disbelief that the Old Catalogue was only 1.7megs as well. 

“If you have been backing up every time you are prompted to by LrC, where are those backups?”

That is the million dollar question. It seems like my backups were in the Lightroom folder and that entire Lightroom folder was overwritten. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me since:

• the catalogue is only 1.7mb
• the old catalogue is only 1.7mb
• all the backups are missing. 

How could this happened? Does this happened when a new version of Lightroom is installed?  I suspect not or else this phenomenon would have bit me in the past. 

I’m a longtime commercial editor and I know backups in Premiere are paramount so I blame my self for being ignorant and not adopting a similar protocol— having an external location hold my backups. I was ridding the lightning and got zapped.

[benl52794612]

Mystery Solved. A prompt notified me that the previous selected backup folder is missing: User/Downloads/Backups. At some point my Downloads folder had been targeted to store my backups, which makes me suspect that my original catalogue might have been saved there as well. I’m not sure how I accomplished this terrible location for keeping my files but nonetheless. I had recently emptied my download folder and sadly cleared it from my trash to free up space. 

When I launched LrC it must have not been able to to find my original catalogue. This coincidently coincided with an update to LrC but the update probably wasn’t the issue. I can’t confirm this be suspect it's the case. Moral of the story. Don’t assume anything. Lesson earned. Sorry for wasting your time. 

[drtonyb]

@benl52794612 

It's unfortunate that you have lost a considerable amount of work, although not everything.

The Startup Preferences file would likely give you the history of what you did and where your catalog was. It does seem that you have worked that out already.