Monumental Lightroom cockup!

AJQS

AJQS

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Alan
Edit My Images
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I made the mistake of unplugging my external disks and putting them back in in a different order, which stopped lightroom from accessing them. So I deleted the folders from the catalog and reimported them - but its' deleted all the development settings! :'( Can I undo this somehow?
 
Please tell me you kept backups. If you did then yes you should be able to get everything back nice and easy.

If not? I have no idea, but I doubt it.
 
Did you empty your recycle bin or do you have backups of your catalogue elsewhere? If you can retrieve or use back up you might be able to save yourself a lot of work

Just in case you do this in future in Windows 7 (I assume others as well) you can rename the external disks (Computer - right click and select Manage - Storage, Disk Management, then right click on the blue bar above the relevant disk and Change Drive Letter & Paths) - I accept no responsibility for anyone mucking this up though !
 
No there's no backup catalog, I (wrongly) assumed LR behaved like CS6 and saved the development settings separately. Now of course I know better :(

I haven't emptied the recycle bin or done anything further with the drives, but I couldn't see any files in there that looked relevant.

Fortunately it's only a handful of images affected as I've only had Lightroom a week, but still annoying as hell!

Kerioak - will that keep the drive permanently on an allocated letter? Otherwise I'm going to have the same issue every time I unplug stuff!
 
At least you didn't lose too much work Richard.

As you now know, Lightroom does not make any changes to your master files, but instead saves all your changes to it's internal database which you can backup. In Edit, go to Catalog Settings, at the bottom of that window will be a box to tell Lightroom when you want it to do backups. Mine is set to every time I close it. When it does a backup, it writes a new file rather than overwriting an old one.

Also I believe (and please test this before embarking on your full library) that when a folder is "lost" to Lightroom, you can right click on it and tell it to go find it. Once you locate the folder it will once again recognise everything.
 
DBT85 said:
At least you didn't lose too much work Richard.

As you now know, Lightroom does not make any changes to your master files, but instead saves all your changes to it's internal database which you can backup. In Edit, go to Catalog Settings, at the bottom of that window will be a box to tell Lightroom when you want it to do backups. Mine is set to every time I close it. When it does a backup, it writes a new file rather than overwriting an old one.

Also I believe (and please test this before embarking on your full library) that when a folder is "lost" to Lightroom, you can right click on it and tell it to go find it. Once you locate the folder it will once again recognise everything.
Click to expand...

This happened seconds after it prompted to do my weekly backup, which I cancelled because there wasn't a lot of point backing up a catalog of files it couldn't find!

Just found the Update folder location option now too! :bang:

Oh well, I think I'm back up to speed again now with the editing I lost!
 
Had you turned off Lightroom's own backup of its catalog? That saves all your edits separately from the RAW files.

Mine does it automatically once a week. I was under the impression it did it by default, though I have been using it since v1.0 so that may be a false memory from the mists if time.
 
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Musicman said:
Had you turned off Lightroom's own backup of its catalog? That saves all your edits separately from the RAW files.

Mine does it automatically once a week. I was under the impression it did it by default, though I have been using it since v1.0 so that may be a false memory from the mists if time.
Click to expand...

Yes it does...on windows it would be in the picture library folder in sub-folders Lightroom/backups, unless you changed it
 
Hi Alan
I have mine set to save every time it shuts down, this is from the time I was doing lots of photos every day, now I let it save when I have done any major edits or imports as it takes about 20 minutes (lots of files in there).

As you are just starting out it is worth getting into some good habits - always keyword your images as you import them - when I am shooting dogs for instance I would do breed, colour, size and age (adult, pup) so that in the future I can pick out all black puppies for instance or the same with flowers - colour, plant or stem, name etc.

Also it is worth saving a copy of your catalogue (LR that is as well as all your photos) on a separate drive somewhere

I don't know if it will keep the same letter - I normally have one main external and then back up to others that are only logged in temporarily
 
I don't think I've changed anything regarding backups, but as I said I've only had it a week and been concentrating more on the editing rather than the inner working of the software.

Can I make it save each image's settings alongside it?
 
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