Author Topic: Lightroom disaster - everything gone! (Read 10124 times)

lisafx · « **on:** January 07, 2013, 16:57 »

My computer's been pretty buggy for a week or two. It just froze up when I was doing some lightroom work, and the only way I could get it to come back was to do a hard reboot. I recognized I might lose the most recent changes I did in lightroom, but I have lost the entire catalogue! This represents about 3 years of work in lightroom.

Fortunately, all the files are actually stored elsewhere, so they are fine, but any sorting and editing I have done to them in lightroom over the past several years is GONE.

I have lightroom set to backup every time I open it, but I can't for the life of me find where these backups are stored. The only library lrcat library I can find dates back to about 3 years ago.

Anyone know where lightroom stores these backups by default?

Sadstock · « **Reply #1 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:09 »

Sorry to hear it.

Scott Kelby's books are the best for navigating your situation if you have a copy or you can run out to a bookstore.

Try this link. http://digital-photography-school.com/where-are-my-lightroom-files which will hopefully answer your question.

Did not watch this, but expect it would cover it.


Lightroom 3.x and 4.x - backing up and managing catalogs & presets

Or


Lightroom 3: Backup Import Catalog

lisafx · « **Reply #2 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:11 »

Thanks very much Sadstock. I will give them a look, and also check out that book.

Poncke · « **Reply #3 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:20 »

Ok, giving someone a book to read to retreive a LR folder is a bit overdone

Lisa, no worries, if you have your back up set as soon as you close LR you didnt lose any editing. Mind you tho, every back up will contain all your work, and every back up is probably about 1-2 GB large. So you can probably retreive a lot of memory as well by deleting all back ups prior to yesterday. Since you only need the last back up. But I'll leave it up to you if you want to do that, I dont take responsibillity for deleting any work that shouldnt have been deleted

But now you at least know you can free up memory as you dont need all back ups from the beginning of time.

Ok, you can find your folder here most likely [Drive letter]:\My Documents\My Pictures\Lightroom\Backups in this folder you will find a folder named with a date, and in THAT folder is another folder called backups. In that folder you will find all your backups. In your case probably a lot, all these are named with a date. In the dated folder you fill find the lrcat files. Lightroom 2 Catalog-2-2.lrcat

In LR you now need to load that back up into LR. Here is a description of how to do that.

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/2009/01/23/how-do-i-restore-a-lightroom-backup/

lisafx · « **Reply #4 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:38 »

Weird, I found the Lightroom folder, but I don't have a folder in it called "backups". The only folder in there says "Lightroom 2 Catalog Previews.lrdata".

I think I may be in big trouble here....

ETA: Oh thank God. My hubby suggested to look on one of my other drives. It has been backing up to an internal slave drive to keep my C drive freed up. It's exactly like you said it was. I only lost the work I did today.

Thank you so much Poncke! You just saved me losing my mind (not a great loss, at this point, but still...

).

Thanks also Sadstock. I should probably still check out the tutorials so I am better prepared if I have another Lightroom crisis

Poncke · « **Reply #5 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:42 »

When you open LR and go to edit>preferences>general what does it say under default catalog > When starting up use this catalog:

It should show a folder location where you backups are stored.

Poncke · « **Reply #6 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:46 »

Are you sure you are in the correct folder. It seems like you are here C:\Users\username\My Pictures\Lightroom which only has one file for me Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat

There is another LR folder in My Documents/My Pictures.

Poncke · « **Reply #7 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:47 »

Quote from: lisafx on January 07, 2013, 17:38

Thank you so much Poncke! You just saved me losing my mind (not a great loss, at this point, but still... ).

Ok, I was still looking for you when you edited that comment

glad it all worked out for you.

lisafx · « **Reply #8 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:49 »

Quote from: Poncke on January 07, 2013, 17:42

When you open LR and go to edit>preferences>general what does it say under default catalog > When starting up use this catalog:

It should show a folder location where you backups are stored.

There was only a three year old lrcat file saved on the C drive, so every time I would open lightroom, that's what would open. That's why I couldn't see where the recent backups were going. Now that I have found them on my internal slave drive all is well.

I have almost daily backups for over a year there. I can delete all but the newer ones without any problems?

lisafx · « **Reply #9 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:51 »

Thanks again very much to both of you who replied. I have added to your heart collections

Poncke · « **Reply #10 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:52 »

Quote from: lisafx on January 07, 2013, 17:49

Quote from: Poncke on January 07, 2013, 17:42
When you open LR and go to edit>preferences>general what does it say under default catalog > When starting up use this catalog:

It should show a folder location where you backups are stored.

There was only a three year old lrcat file saved on the C drive, so every time I would open lightroom, that's what would open. That's why I couldn't see where the recent backups were going. Now that I have found them on my internal slave drive all is well.

I have almost daily backups for over a year there. I can delete all but the newer ones without any problems?

Thats what I do, I only keep the last 3 back ups anything older gets deleted as every back up has the entire LR library backed up. It could be (Not necessarily) that when you delete a backup LR will give you a warning that no catalogue was found upon starting LR. All you need to do then is locate the last backup and all your editing will be loaded. But it will take a moment for all editing to show. Sometime when you go to a folder in LR and it looks like all your editing is gone, but as soon as you select the image the editing will pop in place. LR just needs to reload it.

I really love LR, its my entire work flow in combination with PS.

lisafx · « **Reply #11 on:** January 07, 2013, 17:57 »

Quote from: Poncke on January 07, 2013, 17:52

Thats what I do, I only keep the last 3 back ups anything older gets deleted as every back up has the entire LR library backed up. It could be (Not necessarily) that when you delete a backup LR will give you a warning that no catalogue was found upon starting LR. All you need to do then is locate the last backup and all your editing will be loaded. But it will take a moment for all editing to show. Sometime when you go to a folder in LR and it looks like all your editing is gone, but as soon as you select the image the editing will pop in place. LR just needs to reload it.

I really love LR, its my entire work flow in combination with PS.

Wow, turned out I had backups dating back to January 2010!

I deleted up to the last several months. Still working fine.

Thank you again for the info. Funny, I work on photos all the time, but rarely stray out of my comfort zone so there are all kinds of things I don't know about the programs I use every day, turns out. Duh!

Sadstock · « **Reply #12 on:** January 07, 2013, 18:03 »

Glad it worked out! Hopefully your catalogue and backup files are being written to two different drives, just in case one drive dies, you won't lose everything.

Kelby's book is fantastic and well worth reading even when not in a crisis.

Poncke · « **Reply #13 on:** January 07, 2013, 18:05 »

Quote from: lisafx on January 07, 2013, 17:57

Quote from: Poncke on January 07, 2013, 17:52
Thats what I do, I only keep the last 3 back ups anything older gets deleted as every back up has the entire LR library backed up. It could be (Not necessarily) that when you delete a backup LR will give you a warning that no catalogue was found upon starting LR. All you need to do then is locate the last backup and all your editing will be loaded. But it will take a moment for all editing to show. Sometime when you go to a folder in LR and it looks like all your editing is gone, but as soon as you select the image the editing will pop in place. LR just needs to reload it.

I really love LR, its my entire work flow in combination with PS.

Wow, turned out I had backups dating back to January 2010!

I deleted up to the last several months. Still working fine.

Thank you again for the info. Funny, I work on photos all the time, but rarely stray out of my comfort zone so there are all kinds of things I don't know about the programs I use every day, turns out. Duh!

You are welcome Lisa, and thanks for the hearts. Although I am a newbie in photography, I am glad I could contribute.

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Author Topic: Lightroom disaster - everything gone! (Read 10124 times)

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