Restoring Catalog?

[dawnnas53522051]

Hi there! My original catalog was stored on an external hard drive that just crashed. My backups were stored on my computer's internal hard drive. Seems a bit backwards, I know.

LR is still showing all my images, but of course they can't be used as the original file can't be found. How do I (oh, please tell me there is a way) restore my catalog using my backup? I cannot transfer the backup to the original catalog location - as the external hard drive is not accessible.

Any help is appreciated. TIA!

[JP Hess]

What drive contains all of your images? Are they on the internal hard drive, or are they on the external hard drive that crashed?

[dawnnas53522051]

The external that crashed.

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

Then all Lightroom is showing is the previews that were generated. There isn't much you can do with those. Apparently you didn't create a backup of the images separate from Lightroom?

[dawnnas53522051]

I was under the impression that LR was backing up the files as well as the edits. I'm guessing not. Live & learn. 😕

[JP Hess]

The only file that Lightroom creates and backs up is the catalog. Your images are displayed within that catalog which is a database. Lightroom has provision for backing up the catalog. However, you must devise your own system for backing up the images. There are software programs available for handling backups.  But you need to make sure you have a plan for backing up your images.