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I had a hard drive that contained my lrcat and it was failing. I purchased a new western digital drive and had all of the files, including backups, transferred to the new drive. My catalog is there, but it doesn't always load right away or backup properly. I fear that it might be corrupted. I need to know what steps to take to save my catalog and my original photo files. I work with a Mac operating system.
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Lightroom has its own backup procedure for the catalog. But that backup should be directed to a different hard drive just in case there is a problem with the drive on which the working catalog exists. The backing up of your images is your responsibility. Again, that backup should be on a different hard drive as well. When you Indicate that it doesn't always load right away or back up properly, what do you mean? Please explain more fully.
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I do have two separate back ups for my LRCAT and the original photos. One is on a second external hard drive and the other is on a backup cloud service--so I think I'm all set there.
When I brought my new hard drive with the transferred files home with me I plugged in my computer and started LR everything loaded fine. When I turned LR off and it went to back up the files, it did an integrity check and told me that the LRCAT did not pass the test and asked if I wanted to try another LRCAT. I quit out of the program and waited several hours. When I opened LR everything appeared to be working, again. When I shut the program down I seem to be having the same problem. That's why I think the LRCAT might be corrupted.
Does that detail help?
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Something to try would be to go to the Library module and choose all photographs and export them to a new catalog. Maybe the new catalog won't have the problems the old catalog does.
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Jim,
Thank you. I will try that.
I have photos set up for my dropbox uploads and my photography website. Do you know if creating a new LRCAT affect them?
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No, it will not affect photos you have previously exported.
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Thanks, so much. I'll try all of your recommendations!
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Let us know how it turns out. I typed the same reply as Jim above about exporting to the new catalog, but he beat me to it so I deleted mine 🙂
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Jim,
This morning I was going to try your suggestions from yesterday. When I opened LR my computer recognized the hard drive that has my LR files, but nothing shows up when I try to open the drive. It appears to be empty. The program tries to open a LR catalog on my internal hard drive and asks if I want to change to another LRCAT. When I change to the external drive it does not recognize any files on my drive.
When I opened disk utility all of my drives appear, including the external one that seems to be giving me difficulty.
Any thoughts on why this might be or what my next steps should be?
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I'm afraid I'm not at all familiar with the Mac. If you use Finder and browse to that external hard drive, are you able to see your catalog file?
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Actually, that seems to be the problem. I don't see any files at all. It should show my LRCAT file, my backup files and my actual pictures and they don't show.
It would be the same in a windows environment. You would see the drive but no folders or files when you click on the drive icon.
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So my question to you would be, is the drive connected, or is it functioning properly or what? What has happened that all of a sudden you aren't seeing anything on that external drive? This doesn't really have anything to do with Lightroom. Something is wrong because that drive doesn't seem to be functioning.
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You may be correct in that is might be an issue with the drive. However, it is brand new and it did work once before. Also, the drive does appear in the disk utility program.
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I don't know what to tell you until you can get the files to display in Finder. Something is wrong, but I don't know what it might be. I'm not at all familiar with the Mac. I have never used one. Someone else is going to have to advise you on this one.
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Jim, thanks for all of your help. You have been tremendous. I'll speak with the company that I bought the drive from.