Severe Lightroom problems, images lost

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1,468
Name
Jamie
Edit My Images
No
My Lightroom has just gone belly up. It was complaining that the catalogue was corrupt. I finally managed to get it to open but about 10 sessions from this year have disappeared, including some from customers who have placed orders or who haven't seen their images yet.

Is there anything I can do?
 
Assuming you haven't had a major disk corruption then the original images should still be somewhere. Just going to have to do a bit of searching. Try the file finder.

I only use it from a hobbyist point of view but keep three backups of all images and catalogs. As a professional user, it is probably something you should look at for the future.
 
I have the images but I'm concerned about the edits. The catalogue is what's corrupted and that contains the edit info.
 
I have the images but I'm concerned about the edits. The catalogue is what's corrupted and that contains the edit info.
It doesn't sound liek you have lost anything much too important. If you have the images then at least you can start again.
 
You have paying customers and you don't back up your images and your Lightroom catalog! If that's true, it's unforgivable, but I do hope you are able to recover your catalog.

When and if you do, make it a priority, to install a robust backup system.
 
Ok, crisis averted.

I spoke to Google and managed to retrieve an earlier version of the catalogue from backup. It didn't come back perfectly so I am currently going through, re-importing collections which have their xmp data alongside them.

It just goes to show how easy it is for Lightroom to die.
 
Which is why you should copy your catalogue file to at least one other drive after each job.

If you knew the backup feature (whatever that is) hadn't been working, why didn't you just do it manually? (Also why I don't bother with any of these automated back up things, just another thing to go wrong. Shoot job, manually copy files to backup locations. Process job, manually copy files to backup locations. Takes about three seconds and you always know exactly what is backed up and in what state).
 
Ok, there's one remaining problem, my LR mobile collections aren't all showing. I can still see them online but just not in the collections view. Is there a way to force a download?
 
Another tip - if you CTRL+A and CTRL+S this will save your edits & keyword data into the xmp file alongside the photo (or header data for dngs). You'll then have your edits safe if you lose the catalogue. You'll still lose star ratings, colour labels and collections - but at least your edits will be safe. It has the added benefit of you being able to take the photos to LR or ACR on another computer and being able to see the edits there too.

I store my catalogue under MyPictures, then backup MyPictures with backup software - this backs up the catalogue as well as my images in one job. I then turn off LRs automated backup thing. It's misleading in letting you think you're backing up your pictures as well as the cat.
 
(Also why I don't bother with any of these automated back up things, just another thing to go wrong. Shoot job, manually copy files to backup locations. Process job, manually copy files to backup locations. Takes about three seconds and you always know exactly what is backed up and in what state).

I'm glad I'm not the only one that does it this way. I always thought I was being a bit of a Luddite. :)
 
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