My Lightroom Catalog is gone!

[annalenafreese]

I am very stressed out right now. I was not backing up my catalog, I don't think, and just lost my one used catalog. HOW can I retrieve it on my Mac?? 

[nikunj.m]

Hi there, 

We are sorry about the experience due to the missing Lightroom Classic catalog.

Would you mind telling us if your catalog was saved on the computers local storage or an external drive? You can go to the File menu in Lightroom Classic, then open recent and check if it shows the other catalog. You can also go to the Pictures folder of your computer to check if you see a folder for Lightroom.

Regards,

Nikunj

[annalenafreese]

Okay, I got it figured out yesterday, after a good panic! But I am also
curious about backup. I have been putting photos, original files, onto a
hard drive because my disk space is always full. That is how I have them
backed up. Do recommend I back up the catalog or back up in the cloud? What
do you recommend I do?

--
Anna-Lena Freese
(406)-927-7223

[dj_paige]

Catalog backups MUST go on a different disk than the original, such as an external hard disk. Backing up your catalog to the cloud is also a good idea, doing both is even better. Lightroom will only back up catalogs to a hard disk, it will not back up to "the cloud", and you have to specifically configure Lightroom to back up your catalog to the external HD.

[dj_paige]

Time Machine should have a copy.

Or you can do a search using Mac Finder for all files whose name ends with .LRCAT

But really, you absolutely MUST make regular and automated backups of your catalog file to a different disk than the original. No excuses are acceptable here.