My iMac is corrupting Lightroom Catalogs

[brianw42863487]

I have seen several threads about corrupted catalogs, but my question is can I find out if there is a reason why my iMac is doing it?  I have been using it for over a year with no issues before it happened the first time.  I opened a different catalog which I have had for most of that time, and it corrupted also.  I had them repaired by Adobe, loaded them on my Macbook and it was fine.  After I finished editing an entire shoot I plugged my SSD into my desktop again, and before I could export them it corrupted it for a second time.  Obviously my iMac is the issue, but how do I go about finding out how to fix it?

[dj_paige]

This is almost definitely caused by a hard disk malfunction, the drive where you store the catalog is the problem. It  could be a bad sector, or some other possible disk issue. You need to run a diagnostic program to determine the health of the disk.

One other possible cause is if you store the catalog file in a DropBox (or similar) folder.

[brianw42863487]

I keep my catalogs on a Samsung T5 Portable SSD.  Should I back it up and format it?  That would make sense.  I don't have any other issues with it otherwise but i'm willing to try anything.

[dj_paige]

As I said, you need to run utility programs on it to determine the health of the drive. Re-formatting it if it is malfunctioning is not a solution. And make sure you have a working backup copy of your catalog on a different drive.