Suddenly, I have over 900 'invalid DNG'

[Schattenjager27]

Not sure when it happened, but suddenly hundreds of DNGs are 'invalid'. I cannot edit nor export them and clicking on some normal thumbnails creates a permanent black border covering 1/2 the thumbnail, ruining even grid view.  

Some are years old, others just a few weeks old, and seems random to a degree.

I import to DNG but will stop that asap.  Very worried about recovering these since they have been on my work drive, backed up to two RAID's and also in the cloud, but since I update often, ALL the backups are 'invalid

WTH Adobe?  Losing faith fast here...

[F. McLion]

What do you mean with 'invalid'?

Do you get a messgae from LrC?

If the files did not change "by themselves" and you did not work on them, they can't be invalid all of a sudden - otherwise  you would have hardware issue.

Any change or update to your system lately?

What is your OS and the exact version of LrC ... please share more details.

[Joakim_R]

Myself, I just checked to validate my DNG files for the first time. Wasn't prompted, just did it because I found the command under the Library droplist.

And there are over 500 unvalited files. It doesn't say Invalid, it says Unvalidated. I too am wondering what this means.

[TheDigitalDog]

Do you still have the originals and can you convert them again?

Can you try re-converting one or two of those reported and check them again?

[Joakim_R]

Unfortunately, I set the app to delete the originals. I hadn't heard of any dangers that could befall this process, really.

[TheDigitalDog]

That's cool and expected, though if you had the originals, you could try.

I  still would try converting again. And you can open in Develop, apply edits, export to a rendered image? If so, you're probably just fine. If not, well that's a problem of course and hopefully you have a backup elsewhere prior to any 'corruption'.

[Rob_Cullen]

I agree with a Hardware problem- corrupted files.

Validation in LrC checks a DNGs file bit data/count, stores the result as a Checksum, and enables future validation to check that nothing has changed.

This is a brief explanation of 'DNG Validation' by Peter Krogh (Author of the 'The DAM Book')

 Basically, you run all the bits of the file through an equation, and it produces a unique result.  By recomputing the checksum periodically, you can see if any of the bits have changed.  Any unwanted change would indicate a problem in the storage or transfer of the file, and that should trigger a restoration of the file from backup, as well as a detective procedure to try and find out where the problem came from.

[Joakim_R]

Hmm... Could these be DNG files that were not converted by Lightroom, but downloaded into Lightroom from the cloud after having been imported into my iPad from a memory card, and then synced? Because one or two of the cameras I've owned have shot in DNG format.

[Rob_Cullen]

Hmmm... Could be.!  I see exactly the same with DNG files from my iPhone camera-

And even though I 'run' the [Validate] command, that should create the bit checksum, I always get the same "Not Validated" result when I run the [Validate] command a second or third or more times.

Maybe the command does not work with iPhone iPad DNG images.??