lightroom panic over.........but why did this happen?

[jerry12953]

Hi,

I opened up LR today and there were no images at all in the catalogue. It was just an empty catalogue.

I searched for .lrcat files but only found an empty catalogue, then started googling for the problem.

One result suggested opening up "preferences" in "edit" and looking for other catalogues. I remembered that the one I'd been using was called Lr 2 Cat-2 for some reason, when the one that came up this morning was LR3. So I clicked on LR2 Cat 2 and Bob's your uncle! Back to normal again.

So can anyone explain why this happened in the first place and what should I do to prevent it again? I could do without that sort of panic.....

jerry

 

[Chappers]

For some reason Lightroom has lost it's preferences as to where the default catalog is stored. It happened to me some time ago. I never found out why.

Can I suggest you make sure you make automatic back ups That way if your catalog disappears you always have a back up to fall back on. Has saved my bacon on one occasion.

I have mine set to backup on each shut down. This way I can decide if the catalog needs backing up. If not I just click "Not this time"

 

[jerry12953]

I always back-up on closing down (or once a day anyway) but all those back-ups had gone too! Now they're back again.

Bizarre.......

I'm planning to back-up my back-ups. Would you say this was a good idea, and if so where?

I've read that you can't put them in a network drive, and I now have a NAS for backing up. Is that the same thing?

 

[SimonC]

I've read that you can't put them in a network drive, and I now have a NAS for backing up. Is that the same thing?

Glad you sorted it, the 'oh s#%*!' moments aren't nice are they. :bang:

About the network drive/NAS, I just had a quick search. I think what's being said is you can't have the catalogue solely stored onto a network device and then use lightroom to open it, as lightroom can't open from a networked drive for what ever reason?

I don't see there being a problem if all you want to do is make a backup of a backup as you said, and then put the newly created backup on a NAS. Presumably if your catalogues fubared on your internal HDD, then you'd just restore from the NAS back onto your pc/laptop/mac.

 

[jerry12953]

Glad you sorted it, the 'oh s#%*!' moments aren't nice are they. :bang:.

..... keep calm......search will find them.......won't it.........er.........its not going to find them.......oh, *****........panic now.........

What I'd like to do is keep one recent back-up somewhere else in case of disaster, ideally each time I saved it it would replace the previous one, but perhaps that's too much to ask.....

But your thinking makes sense, I'll ask my mate to sort it for me.

Many thanks.

 

[SimonC]

..... keep calm......search will find them.......won't it.........er.........its not going to find them.......oh, *****........panic now.........

What I'd like to do is keep one recent back-up somewhere else in case of disaster, ideally each time I saved it it would replace the previous one, but perhaps that's too much to ask.....

But your thinking makes sense, I'll ask my mate to sort it for me.

Many thanks.

Line from Red Dwarf suits this 'engage panic circuits, panic circuits engaged - scream'

You probably wantt something like synctoy that's able to be scheduled, I've never tried it but would think you'd have to do very little once set up.

 

[boliston]

I always back-up on closing down (or once a day anyway) but all those back-ups had gone too! Now they're back again.

Bizarre.......

I'm planning to back-up my back-ups. Would you say this was a good idea, and if so where?

I've read that you can't put them in a network drive, and I now have a NAS for backing up. Is that the same thing?

I always keep my catalogue backups folder synced to an external HDD, and have LR set to back up calalogue on every shutdown as this reminds me to at least back up (and sync) daily.

 

[EOS_JD]

My Lightroom backup takes quite a while to do as I've over 90,000 images in it so I back it up once a week. No point doing it from Lightroom every day unless you are editing a lot of images. Easier to just copy the lrcat file to the right location.

I too had Lr lose the location of my catalogue just the other day! Had a mini panic but found my lrcat file easily and sorted it.

 

[EOS_JD]

I always back-up on closing down (or once a day anyway) but all those back-ups had gone too! Now they're back again.

Bizarre.......

I'm planning to back-up my back-ups. Would you say this was a good idea, and if so where?

I've read that you can't put them in a network drive, and I now have a NAS for backing up. Is that the same thing?

Yes a NAS is a network drive. I wasn't aware you couldn't use that but if you backup to a different drive you can copy that backup to the NAS so you are covered in case of failure.

 

[jerry12953]

Yes a NAS is a network drive. I wasn't aware you couldn't use that but if you backup to a different drive you can copy that backup to the NAS so you are covered in case of failure.

What I believe I can do is backup the catalogue to the NAS maybe once or twice a week. With my main catalogue on the C Drive LR will be able to find it, but I could copy the back-up back to the C Drive in an emergency. LR will not need to search for it on the NAS.

 

[EOS_JD]