LR CC losing folders???

[OnyimBob]

Does anyone else have this problem - from time to time LR CC loses whole folders and I have to synchronize the mother folder to get them back. I might understand this happening once, but this has now happened three times in the last week!
Does anyone have any ideas about whats happening?
Bob

[Simon Garrett]

Does anyone else have this problem - from time to time LR CC loses whole folders and I have to synchronize the mother folder to get them back. I might understand this happening once, but this has now happened three times in the last week!
Does anyone have any ideas about whats happening?
Bob

I've not had that problem.  

Just to clarify, by "mother folder", do you mean the parent folder of one that's gone missing?  

And when the folder goes missing, does it disappear totally from Lightroom's folder list, or it appears with a "?" to indicate LR doesn't know where it is?

[OnyimBob]

That's a mother file yes, and yes they disappear completely - but not all of them.

[Simon Garrett]

That's a mother file yes...

If you mean that a mother file (folder?) is the parent folder, then I've not come across that term, which is why I asked.

...they disappear completely - but not all of them.

So some folders disappear from the folder list on the LH side of Library module.  You can see the parent folder and some of the folders in that parent folder, but some disappear.  All trace of the files in those folders is also lost from the catalogue, so you can't even select the top level folder and search for the file name?

I'm struggling to think of causes of that, such as:

• Lightroom is opening the wrong catalogue, or an older version of the catalogue.
• The catalogue file has become corrupted.  This seems unlikely as LR generally detects corruption.

I've never experienced that, nor heard it mentioned in any of the forums I've looked in. 

It doesn't sound like an operating system issue or a disk fault.  I mean: if anything outside LR had moved, deleted or renamed the folders, then the folder would still be in LR's list, but with a "?" by the name. 

You can check the catalogue for corruption (in Windows) when you start LR by double-clicking the LR icon, and immediately pressing and holding CTRL, ALT and Shift together.  It gives you the option to check catalogue integrity.  Or you can go to Edit -> Catalog settings -> General tab -> Backup and select "When LR next exits" and check the "test integrity" box.  I don't know if it's the same on a Mac. 

[Jim MSP]

Does anyone else have this problem - from time to time LR CC loses whole folders and I have to synchronize the mother folder to get them back. I might understand this happening once, but this has now happened three times in the last week!
Does anyone have any ideas about whats happening?
Bob

This is a new one for me as well.
What is your OS?
Is your "mother" (parent) folder always the same one, eg "My Photos"? or "2015 photos"?
Are these disappearing folders always the same ones? or always the same parent level?
Do you lose more than one folder at a time?
Do you lose them after you close Lightroom, or only after you shut down the pc and restart?
Have you ever lost a folder while LR was open and running?

[OnyimBob]

What is your OS?  OSX 10.10.2
Is your "mother" (parent) folder always the same one, eg "My Photos"? or "2015 photos"?  Yes
Are these disappearing folders always the same ones? or always the same parent level?  My parent folder is "All Pics" under that are Year folders eg "2015" which contain every shoot of that year in their own folder -eg "20150420_Waterholes"
Do you lose more than one folder at a time?  Yes
Do you lose them after you close Lightroom, or only after you shut down the pc and restart?  Can't honestly say, but I don't shut down very often usually just put to sleep.
Have you ever lost a folder while LR was open and running?  Don't think so - usually find them missing when I launch LR

Bob

[Jim MSP]

So, this is very strange.
If you lose different folders which are subsets of a main folder like "2015" each time, it seems to me to rule out a HD problem.
If it was always the same folder or two, you might point a finger at the HD.

Assuming that you have previously worked on a lost folder of photos, when it is synced again and reappears, do all of the edits come back? metadata like keywords?
 

Jim

[rob211]

I'll bet it's sleep disorder.

It can be especially problematic if the folder is on an external, and if on a spinner, not an SSD.

Drives these days wanna spin down to save power. If Lr's catalog is accessed, there's a lag between it checking for the folder and the drive responding, and so it can do a "huh??" I dunno whether this could occur with an internal boot drive that's part of a Fusion core storage pair, but you might fiddle with your energy savings settings to see if it helps. OS X has been giving me problems with drives for years, so I just always run Caffeine, and with an SSD I now shut down instead of sleeping the computer.

[OnyimBob]

Yes Jim, all the edits etc reappear.
Rob, I think you've got it - I'll try shutting down each time.
Thanks for the help guys - appreciated.
Bob. Keep you posted how it goes.

[Jim MSP]

If Bob has the right answer, all you may have to do is close Lightroom before you put the pc to sleep.
I tend to do that anyway, as I am finding LR CC starts to bog down after a lot of edits, and this just gives it a fresh start.

[rdonson]

Are the missing parent folders on an external drive?  If yes, how many external drives do you have?  If yes, are they drives like an old Drobo that will go to sleep when the OS does?  If yes, have you unmounted then mounted the drive to see if that clears up the issue?

Do you regularly optimize and backup your catalog?

[OnyimBob]

Are the missing parent folders on an external drive?  If yes, how many external drives do you have?  If yes, are they drives like an old Drobo that will go to sleep when the OS does?  If yes, have you unmounted then mounted the drive to see if that clears up the issue?

Do you regularly optimize and backup your catalog?

Yes - Seagate 2TB drive.
Yes.
Pretty sure now that it's a "sleeping" problem as Jim suggested.

[Jim MSP]

Actually, the more I think about this there is a bug in LR. The folder shouldn't simply disappear - it should be replaced by the "?" that says LR can't find the folder.
A disappearing folder should also change the total photo count and any collection that contains the photos.

[rdonson]

I've seen similar issues with Lr reporting images are not found or corrupted after returning from a sleep.  Closing Lr then unmounting and remounting the drive resolved the issue for me.  It seemed to be some issue with the OS dropping handles with the file system and the drive but I don't know the guts of Mac OS and HPFS+ well enough to offer more than a guess.