Corrupt Catalog, no way to fix, no support from Adobe

[rubberry]

I recently have started to get the message my catalog is corrupt, so it will not backup, it can not be repaired. I would have thought this would be easily repairable, or even fixed by resorting to a backup, but apparently not. I have gone back to several backups dating back to as far as 3 months ago and I get the same results. I would almost guess that my catalog is not actually corrupt, or it is due to a link to mobile which I recently started to use while travelling.

Having searched high and low for an answer I have only seen a reference from Adobe support in forums to "Check you Private Message" when others have referred to the same issue. Seems to be a pretty common issue, there should be a better solution, especially if backups going back for months are also "no good".

[dj_paige]

This is most likely a corrupted or malfunctioning hard disk. Run diagnostics on your hard disks. It is unlikely, in my opinion, that corrupted catalogs can be repaired.

[rubberry]

I have checked all drives and even moved it to 3 different drives and still no resolve, I don't believe it is a failing drive issue.

[dj_paige]

If it failed on one drive, then it will still fail no matter where you move it.

[rubberry]

Agreed, I have seen many more customers having the same issue now and from what I can gather, previous versions were detecting integrity issues, but backing up and closing with no notification to the user.

[cmgap]

You could try this as a test. Create a new catalog. Import a few images, quit Lightroom and make a backup. Open the test catalog and let us know if that works as expected. If yes, depending on the size of your catalog and other variables you may want to continue with the new catalog.

[rubberry]

I created a new catalog and there was no issues with that, the problem is that I have years of work tied into one that now can not be repaired. If I have confirmed there are no hard drive issues and I have attempted to restore backups going back months that previously passed integrity checks, I feel that Adobe needs to come up with better hope for its clients. Open to other suggestions.

[cmgap]

Probably no harm in trying another test with the Export as a Catalog and then importing from another catalog into the new catalog...

You won't lose your work although it may be tedious.

[rubberry]

Managed to find one backup from December 31/2017 that seemed to work. Seems like a good time to step off and do just that. I can handle doing less than half a year of export. Seems like the issue after all said and done is that too many errors in checking integrity it just fails.

I stopped checking the integrity of the current file, I can certainly do exports and then re-import them to the restored catalog. Will report how that goes.

[richardplondon]

Did you try directly importing all contents from the current non-working catalog, into a new, empty one?

That may work even if the current one cannot be itself made usable. Those would be latest edits, collections etc brought properly into a known-good context.

For importing FROM, AFAICT a catalog just has to contain the required "library" information within the usual database tables. The fact that you can't open and use it for editing, may be due to something other than its "library" contents.

A problem to do with Publish, or Sync, a configuration issue, something structural... if your truck's nose is mashed into a ditch, this does not mean you HAVE to be able to get it out of the ditch, and get its engine running again: if you can retrieve all your goods from the back of it, and transfer them into another truck, then that one can carry them on to the destination.

[rubberry]

Should I ever have that issue again, I think that is a great plan of action. Probably would have been a long process, but certainly less tedious if it worked. Do you know if you can accomplish this without having to moved the masters?

[cmgap]

Okay - thanks for the update and good that you found a backup from Dec... it seems like a reasonable step to move forward with the export/import as catalog method. Let us know how you make out.

[rubberry]

Seems like my catalog is back to normal after I did the work. I think that idea above to just directly import the contents from the corrupt file may have worked well too. Would be good to have all these methods documented for others facing the same issue. Thanks for all your input.

[cmgap]

It would have worked (most likely)... however if you do it in small amounts - a few folders at a time you might encounter the folder or image that may have caused the problem - if there was a corrupt file. The fact that you were able to do the work though is valuable as a learning exercise.

[Ian Lyons]

When all else failed, I've used the method in this video a few times How To Fix A Corrupted Lightroom catalog file using SQLite - YouTube

[bethaneym22501389]

You can't export as a catalog if the catalog won't open right?

[Rob_Cullen]

No.

But you can start a 'New' ( empty) catalog and try to "Import from another Catalog" by selecting the corrupt catalog.

With luck you may be able to merge the corrupt catalog contents into the 'new' catalog.

[rubberry]

Open another catalog, it somehow resets the flag that it is corrupt. Create one if you have to. After that it should open and you can export the catalog. My strategy that fixed mine, I went back to a backup that worked. I used Ctrl+click on Lightroom to open and select the catalog and selected test integrity. I had to go back to the last backup of last year although I could have gone sooner I’m sure, it was an easy cut off and I exported everything from this year, then re-imported. I was a reasonably long process, but switching catalogs to go back and be able to open the one coming up as corrupt was a work around. If you know the previous catalog is corrupt, don’t both to backup and test integrity. Hope this helps.