Lightroom Catalogue crashed with a drive / trying to restore it.

[John_Londono]

Hello !

A drive of mine crashed.

I had everything backed up except the catalogue... 😕

I am trying to restore it.

Is there a support service that can help on this?

Thank you!

[dj_paige]

You are saying that you don't have a recent backup of your catalog file?

You might want to go to some professional service that can extract data from crashed drives.

In the future, you need to make regular and automated backups of your catalog file and your photos, and store these backups on a different physical disk.

[John_Londono]

Exactly, my only catalogue was on the drive that had the files.

My backup was on a server, but only the files, not the catalogue.

I am making frequent back up of the catalogue elsewhere now, of course.

We extracted the catalogue from the crashed drive. I am now trying to repair it... restore it.

Any hints on who at Adobe could help?

[dj_paige]

Define what you mean by

I am now trying to repair it... restore it.

[John_Londono]

It's damaged, corrupted... not working.

[dj_paige]

My guess is that if it was damaged from a hard disk crash, then no one can help. Nevertheless, sometimes one of the moderators here in this forum will offer to take a look at it (or have some technical expert at Adobe take a look at it) to try to repair it.

I point out that there are several kinds of corruption: one where all the data is present but somehow the internal organization/layout of the file isn't quite what it should be, and this can be repaired if you are fortunate. If the data itself is corrupted (as would happen from a hard disk crash) then I don't think repair is possible, the data is gone.

[John_Londono]

Exactly. I've had a catalogue crash once (just the catalogue, not the drive) and someone at Adobe restored it to a 85% version (pretty good)... but I can't have a direct chat with Adobe anymore through this site concerning LR catalogue problems... how do I get in touch with experts to send my catalogue to for examination?