Lightroom Help please...

[jerry12953]

I think this justifies pressing the panic button.

I've lost all my Lightroom catalogues.

It had frozen ( not for the first time recently) so I closed the computer down, and when I re-opened it, everything had disappeared.....

It's as if I'm opening the program for the first time.

It's v2.6. Anyone else have any problems with 2.6?

 

[JohnD76]

Try searching for the the Catalogue, it may be that it has lost its registry settings and can't find your catalogue.

It may be sotred in the same folder as your images, so look there first.

Search in Windows Explorer to "*.lrcat" or even better do this from a command prompt:

CD \ (RETURN)
Dir *.lrcat /s (RETURN)



Good luck!

John.

PS, Make sure you back up your catalogue if/once you have found it, ideally to another drive with your photos too!

 

[jerry12953]

Try searching for the the Catalogue, it may be that it has lost its registry settings and can't find your catalogue.

It may be sotred in the same folder as your images, so look there first.

Search in Windows Explorer to "*.lrcat" or even better do this from a command prompt:

CD \ (RETURN)
Dir *.lrcat /s (RETURN)



Good luck!

John.

PS, Make sure you back up your catalogue if/once you have found it, ideally to another drive with your photos too!

Panic over, I think....

I did as you suggested - searched for *.lrcat, and found a whole series of back-up catalogues...clicked on the most recent one (dated yesterday fortunately) and, fingers crossed, bob's my uncle!

I'll have to make sure I have the back-up files backed up.....though i suspect this will be stored off-site in Carbonite.

Thanks, John!

One further thought - a good idea would be to set the Lightroom back-up routine to every day, or even every time it is opened up.

 

[JohnD76]

Hi Jerry,

Glad you found it.

Make sure you also backup your images since this is not included in the catalogue.

Carbonite will not be ideal for backing up at the catalogue since the name stays the same and it changes everytime you use LR.

I have mine set to automatically back up once a week to a NAS device and my images are robocopied to the NAS daily on a scheduled task.

John.

 

[Chappers]

I set my backup option to "every time Lightroom starts" OK I don't back up each time, but only when I import new files or do a serious amount of work.

The good news is that it looks like LR3 will back up on close down this means that any work you have recently done is backed up after , rather than before your next session.

 

[Tobers]

Good to hear that you got it all back.

A word of warning on backing up the catalogue with the Lightroom option. I dont bother anymore. Instead I just backup the catalogue plus all the original photos to two separate external disks (one on a NAS, the other USB).

That way I know I've got everything. No point just having the catalogue backed up if you lose all the pics.

 

[MisterE]

Or you could convert all your RAWs to DNGs and never worry about losing a catalogue again.

 

[jerry12953]

The good news is that it looks like LR3 will back up on close down this means that any work you have recently done is backed up after , rather than before your next session.

That IS a good idea.......

I've had to restore my catalogue again; don't think I lost very much, fortunately, but it looks like there's a problem somewhere......lightroom is also running slowly and freezing.

It seems to have started when I started processing the 25 MB files from my new 5d mk2. The poor old laptop just can't cope. Fortuntely the new one arrives next week.....