Query about catalogue location

[Pommyboi]

Hi,

I'm looking for a bit of clarity on catalogue locations.

I have one catalogue which I believed was on a main internal drive I use for photography (my D drive). I back those photos up to other drives and the same with the catalogue (so I believed).

When I look at Catalogue Settings > General the location of the catalogue is shown as D:\Lightroom CC 2017. Looking in that folder my catalogue is not there (currently called Lightroom Catalogue-2) yet I see the LR Catalogue-2 folders for Smart Previews, Previews and and the LR-Helper folder.

My current catalogue is actually on my C drive under C:\users\me\pictures\lightroom\Lightroom Catalogue-2 yet I don't remember picking that as a location and this does not match the location in the Catalogue Settings.  Why is that?

Are the preview files in the same drive as the photos because that's where they need to be and the catalogue can be held elsewhere?

Thanks in advance

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

My current catalogue is actually on my C drive under C:\users\me\pictures\lightroom\Lightroom Catalogue-2 yet I don't remember picking that as a location and this does not match the location in the Catalogue Settings.  Why is that?

This is the default location for Lightroom catalogs.

Are the preview files in the same drive as the photos because that's where they need to be and the catalogue can be held elsewhere?

Previews are almost always in the same folder as the catalog they belong to. (It is possible to put previews elsewhere, but that takes some relatively advanced knowledge, specficially knowledge of symbolic links). Previews are not generally stored with the photos.

[Pommyboi]

Thank you.

So the previews etc should be in the same location yet for some reason are not - there is a Preview folder on the C drive next to the catalogue but it's empty.

I'm not sure I have the advance knowledge to move the preview files separately from the catalogue.

[dj_paige]

Something is wrong here, either in your explanation of where the catalogs are located, or something else.

Can you show us a screen capture of both of the folders mentioned above.

[Pommyboi]

Ok, here are the files

Preview files for LR Cat-2 - https://www.flickr.com/gp/pommyboi/E0F1Y6  (ignore the catalogue dated today in this folder, it is only up to 2017 and the date is only because I've been moving files around)

Catalogue files - https://www.flickr.com/gp/pommyboi/tP5p99​

Catalogue settings in LR https://www.flickr.com/gp/pommyboi/6gLQ55

[dj_paige]

Can you show us the modified dates on the files in the C: drive folder (like you did for the files on the D: drive folder)?

[Pommyboi]

Here it is with the dates:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/pommyboi/8v7U0s

Thinking about it more, it would make sense to move the previews over to the SSD the catalogue is on however I will have to manage them as the files can get very big.

I'd still like to understand how they were separated.

[dj_paige]

You have not mentioned SSD previously, so I don't really know what you mean.

I'm sorry, but I can't explain the location of photos and previews you have shown. If I were you, i would open Lightroom again, make a trivial change to some photo, and then close Lightroom and see which catalog and which previews get updated.

[Pommyboi]

Thanks.  I know which catalogue is the right one as there is only one with the photos and changes from 2018 - the LR Catalogue-2

I'll leave it as it is at the moment even if I don't know why it happened!

Thanks for your help

[bhousto90]

You may be opening two different versions of Lightroom?

The catalog named Lightroom Catalog would be Lightroom CC 2015.12 or less and the -2 catalog would a converted copy of that catalog using Lightroom Classic CC 7.x.

Desktop shortcuts for each version would open a default catalog specific to that version of Lightroom.

Look for more than one LR shortcut on your desktop or Start menu and open each one in turn.

Click on Help -> system info and check the version, then right click the title bar above menu bar: File | Edit | Library etc. and choose "Show Catalog location"

From there decide if you need the older catalog or not. You may need to import files or import from catalog to get everything up to date in the new LR 7.x catalog before deleting the other catalog if you have been switching back/forth without realizing it.

[Pommyboi]

Thanks for the suggestion but I only have one version of Lightroom.

I'm not worried about the 2nd catalogue (I mentioned to ignore it as it related to 2017 only) only why the previews are on the D drive and the catalogue is on the C drive (my SSD).

[kentdesign]

I agree with bhousto90. The -2 catalog would be the one with the new Lightroom Classic CC.

Please look in your applications to see how many versions of Lightroom you have.

The default location for the catalog is always your pictures folder. and it should be inside a Lightroom folder

and should look something like this:

name of lightroom catalog-2.lrcat

In addition you might see these files:

name of lightroom catalog-2 Helper.lrdata

name of lightroom catalog-2 Previews.lrdata

name of lightroom catalog-2 Smart Previews.lrdata

You can easily make a duplicate on your other D drive by setting the Lightroom preferences to back up to the D drive when you shut down. This backup will ONLY be for the catalog and not your photos! and that is an important distinction.

You should make a duplicate copy of your photos on another drive.

I generally recommend that people have their catalog and associated files in the pictures folder on the main boot drive,.

Keep your photos on that drive or a drive that you can access easily.

Make a back up (duplicate) all the photos to second drive.

Ask Lightroom to Backup the catalog each time you quit to that same second drive.

Lightroom places the catalog back up in a folder called:

And the back ups are each in folders labeled like this:

2018-05-06-1617, meaning that I closed LR and backed up the catalog on May 6, 2018 at 4:17 pm!

The back ups will start adding up and you can simply delete the oldest backups - leaving about 3 or 4. That way if there is ever corruption you have a back up of your work and if your main drive ever goes down, you have 3 or 4 back ups of your latest work.

Again, you must remember to always make a physical duplicate of all your photos someone on another drive.

The back up in LR only backs up your catalog!

[gero22184506]

My catalogue backup seems to have ended up in a "temp" file on my "C" drive . Each time I now open LR I have to unzip my catalogue file from the temp location

Is there any way to restore this to it's proper  LR-2 place.

[dj_paige]

You should not have to UNZIP your backups on a regular basis. You only have to unzip the backups when you need to use a backup because the working catalog is no longer available for some reason. Furthermore, your backups MUST go (this is not optional) on a different disk, you can change the location each time the backup dialog box appears.

So, each time you open Lightroom, it should open the working catalog file (the same one that you opened the previous time). Is this what is happening, or not?

[gero22184506]

I have since discivered that my backup location hab been somehow changed on the backup screen to a "temp" location and I just kept backing up without reading this location. I have now corrected it on the drop down and now all OK.

Thank you for your reply.