not a valid catalogue

[peter_g]

Hi there,

A disaster happened today when I tried to open Lightroom: "can't open the catalogue because it is not valid'

There are no lock files or something like that in the Lightroom folder (only when I try to start it appears). I tried restart the computer and import from an older catalogue but I still get the same message. When I startup Lightroom holding the option key the catalogue doesn't even appear as an option. (yes it is not valid )

Is there someone who can help to repair this?

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Peter

[dj_paige]

Sometimes this happens when the catalog is actually a zero byte file (or very small file). I don't know how this actually occurs, but you need to check the size of your catalog file that you are trying to open.

Also, you can restore a recent backup of this file.

[peter_g]

I'm afraid it is almost 3 Gb in size. Of course I can go back to an older catalog but it's from 3 months ago, with a lot of editing done in the meantime

Any other suggestions?

Thx!

[Just Shoot Me]

LR is set by default to Auto Back Up the catalog once a week. So how can your most recent catalog backup be 3 months old?

With LR 6/2015 and newer the catalog backups are compressed into ZIP files and to use one of them you first have to Expand the ZIP file.

Could be for whatever reason you are trying to open a cat backup that has a ZIP extension and that is why LR is saying it is not a valid catalog.

[peter_g]

- Mine is not backing up because I backup my complete HD to a Drobo (prefs set to 'no backup'), but the Drobo is exchanged with a Synology recently and I'm now backing up to the Synology. The bad thing is that there has been a 'vacuum' since then.

And no, I'm trying to open the one and only catalog I used to work with. Now I succeeded in opening an older one but as I said before, I loose three months work then.

[Just Shoot Me]

Is the catalog on the NAS box? LR can't use a catalog that is not on the physical computer LR is running on.

Are you using a Mac? If you are make sure the network protocol is set to SMB and not the Apple AFP.

In my opinion turning off the LR cat backup system is a very bad idea. For just this reason. If you hadn't done that you would have a backed up catalog that was made no more than one week ago.

[peter_g]

No the catalog is on my work and system HD on a MacPro. I just use the NAS to backup/clone the complete HD's of my computer (that is also the Lightroom catalog of course) . And okay, from now on I'll switch the Lightroom backup back on (promise ) but that having said I still have the problem with the invalid catalog.

Is it true that there is no way to repair an invalid catalog?

[dj_paige]

peter_g  wrote

Is it true that there is no way to repair an invalid catalog?

I guess it depends on what happened, and how serious the damage has been. If I were you, I would run diagnostics on your hard disk to make sure there isn't some hard disk malfunction somewhere.

One thing I have seen suggested, and I don't know if it will work, is to create a new empty catalog; then try to import your catalog (File->Import from Another Catalog) into this new catalog.

[peter_g]

Hi DJ,

Thanks for your reply! But as I already mentioned in my initial question in this thread: I already tried to import from a working catalog and then I get the same window with the ‘invalid’ remark. I also checked the disk using ‘disktool’.

Hope there is a repair wizard in the house (Adobe?)

Otherwise almost three months of work will disappear in the great big void

[ChrisRakoczy]

I'm having a similar issue - unfortunately on a colleagues computer, so I don't know exactly what he (or the IT department) did since it was working last week. He has a ~650MB catalog that was last backed up apparently a couple YEARS ago 😞 so that's not useful. The catalog won't open in LR5.7 or LR CC, and I cannot import from it into either LR 5.7 or LR CC. I get the same "not recognized as a valid catalog" error in all cases.

Does anyone have any insight into how to recover / repair the catalog file??

[forsthof]

I am having the exact same issue....file is not zero bytes...it just says its invalid - its the first time trying to open it after the latest update.  I have succesfully opened an older catalog but I would lose work that I prefer not to lose...