Your catalog is beyond repair!

[j013]

Help I have just received this email from Adobe care, chat support......

'Thank you for your patience. We have tried multiple attempts and different ways to recover the catalog but unfortunately they are beyond repair even from our end. Please try to make a new catalog or use any backed up version of the same catalog that you were using'.....

Having not used LR for quite a while and after having initial problems importing images from my SD card straight into LR, a problem I have never had before, I saw that an update was due and thought that might solve the problem. I attempted to install the latest version of LRC, 10.3, I'm not sure what version I was on before possibly 9.4? I did a roll back to 9.4 thinking it might help?

After attempting to update to the latest version of LRC I got the following on screen messages saying 'LR needs to upgrade your catalog, will create new catalog file in destination indicated below'. I then tried to upgrade and got 'LR encountered problems when trying to update the format of this catalog file and couldn't use Master catalog in this version. I also got 'LR catalog was not found. The LR catalog named 'Master LR Catalog Ddrive 2018' cannot be opened because it is not valid.'

At this point I reached out to Adobe chat and three different remote support guys, who didn't really seem to know what they were doing, tried opening all copies of my master catalog including all the backups on 3 external hard drives whilst attempting to upgrade and getting the same messages. An old, small catalog was found but all the images have the dreaded !

I am so distressed to think that 7 years of work may have been lost. Is there anything anyone can do to help me or does my stupidity mean it is gone forever?

I use Windows 10 

currently on version 9.4

[JP Hess]

This is a user supported forum. We are, for the most part, just other users like yourself with no formal connection with Adobe. However, there is another forum where the developers monitor more closely. You might ask if they would consider trying to repair your catalog. Heere is a link to that other forum.

https://feedback.photoshop.com/topics/lightroom-classic/5f5f2093785c1f1e6cc40872 

If the Catalog truly is not recoverable, at least the images are still on your computer. I know it isn't something to look forward to having to start over on all of that editing. But at least all is not completely lost.

[j013]

Thank you for your response and the link. Yes at least I have the images so that's something to be grateful for.

[Todd Shaner]

Sorry, didn't see Jim's post and can't delete this duplicate. Anyhow, I agree with Jim. Also if you had the Catalog Setting for 'Automatically write changes into XMP' checked most of your edits will be recovered when you import your image files into a new catalog.

Post this at the Photoshop Family forum, which is monitored by Adobe Staff who are in contact with the Adobe Engineering team. They may be able to recover your catalog(s). Specifically ask for help from Adobe. Good luck!

https://feedback.photoshop.com/

[j013]

Not sure if I had that setting checked, will look into it, thank you

[JP Hess]

One indicator would be to open one of the folders containing raw images and see us there are XMP files accoompanying the raw files. If there are then that would indicate that you had that option checked.

[Todd Shaner]

If the images are non-raw files (JPEG, TIFF) the XMP data is written inside the file (i.e. no sidecar XMP file). You will need to import non-raw files to see if settings were saved. Just an FYI.

[TheDigitalDog]

Thankfully, the catalog and everything else is backed up to mutiple drives (and maybe the cloud).