Lightroom mutilating my pictures

[gak]

I have used lightroom on my old computers, but only for postprocessing, not for cataloging yet, as I did not have enough space/memory/processing power to really use it. I ended therefore up with several libraries around.
I recently bought a new computer, installed Lightroom 1.0, and imported all the pictures from the different places to this computer. Showing some to my wife, she asks why I have decapitated her, and sure enough: the top part of the picture is moved horisontally, so that her head is not sitting securely on her shoulders. Looking more closely, I find that several pictures suffer from the same (horisontal displacement of part of the picture). Other pictures have other problems, like the top part looks OK, but the bottom part is brighter, or there are coloured blotches in places on the pictures.
It seems to me that the problem has occured in the moving of the files (I have before experienced corrupted pictures while moving them over a faulty USB connection). And I do not know exactly what to blame, since I have a new computer, with new technology (AMD double core processors), and new OS (Windows Vista). Also, the pictures where copied from USB-drives to a built in harddrive. But wherever the error is, I would have hoped that lightroom would ensure the integrity of the pictures it is copying?
I was hoping that it was only the preview that was wrong, but inspectin the files with Windows Explorer shows the same problem. And it was not on the originals, as I have checked some of those.
Has anyone had similar problems? There has been some hitches running Lightroom under Vista; Storing the imported pictures in folders named by date, I could not use the hierarchical version. But is this so unstable that one better not try running Lightroom 1.0 under Vista yet? I am not looking forward to the job of trying to fix this.....

[Schewe]

If Explorer is showing you bad images, then it ain't Lightroom...you better figure out what's causing the corruption and resolve that before going any further...

[X-Re]

Are the files still OK on the USB drives? What happens if you copy them to the local machine via Explorer? Are they still OK? And then if you import them into Lightroom from the local drive (after making sure they are OK)??

I can't imagine Lightroom is doing anything all that much different than Explorer, in terms of getting the files from one place to another - its possible, but ....

[gak]

If Explorer is showing you bad images, then it ain't Lightroom...you better figure out what's causing the corruption and resolve that before going any further...
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Thank you for your comment.
Explorer is showing bad images, but that is after they have been copied to the new location. And it is Lightroom that copied them....

[gak]

Are the files still OK on the USB drives? What happens if you copy them to the local machine via Explorer? Are they still OK? And then if you import them into Lightroom from the local drive (after making sure they are OK)??

I can't imagine Lightroom is doing anything all that much different than Explorer, in terms of getting the files from one place to another - its possible, but ....
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You might be right. I was thinking that maybe Lightroom would perform som sort of integrity-checking when copying the files.
This happens to just a few files. I do not cherish the thought of having to go through everything anew. I might have to copy, and then use some sort of check-for-differences program to see if everything is OK.

The files are basically OK in their original storages. But in some cases I have converted my RAW-files to dng, and the dng-files are corrupted. And I am not sure I have all originals there.

Thank you for your input.

[seanmcfoto]

You might be right. I was thinking that maybe Lightroom would perform som sort of integrity-checking when copying the files.
This happens to just a few files. I do not cherish the thought of having to go through everything anew. I might have to copy, and then use some sort of check-for-differences program to see if everything is OK.

The files are basically OK in their original storages. But in some cases I have converted my RAW-files to dng, and the dng-files are corrupted. And I am not sure I have all originals there.

Thank you for your input.
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The DNG convertor will stop on errors normally.

[DavidW]

It sounds like the problem is lower level than Lightroom. I suspect Lightroom is doing nothing more than asking the Operating System to copy the files.

File corruption on copying is a pain to sort out; if I had to guess, I'd guess at the USB drive(s) being in some way to blame, but that's not necessarily the case.


I use the excellent Beyond Compare for synchronising, mirroring and copying data around. Version 3 is in development; there's a list of the relatively minor Vista compatibility issues with version 2 here. You can have a 30 day free trial anyway before having to pay the modest registration fee. For the avoidance of doubt, I have no connection with Scooter Software other than as a satisfied customer.

The ability to binary compare files and get line by line differences on screen is useful for many tasks. I'm a former professional software engineer and still do some software work, so I regard a tool like this as essential, but it has many uses for a photographer. There's the ability to get a visual comparison of two JPEGs if you install the relevant plug-in - and I use Beyond Compare to keep Creative Suite 3 and Lightroom settings in sync between my workstation and laptop.


If you do download Beyond Compare, I strongly suggest you install the full plug-in pack.



David

[theophilus]

A bad USB cable could also be to blame, or a bad port on your motherboard.  Try copying with a different cable or plugging into a different USB port to narrow down the issue.

[gak]

It sounds like the problem is lower level than Lightroom. I suspect Lightroom is doing nothing more than asking the Operating System to copy the files.

File corruption on copying is a pain to sort out; if I had to guess, I'd guess at the USB drive(s) being in some way to blame, but that's not necessarily the case.
I use the excellent Beyond Compare for synchronising, mirroring and copying data around. Version 3 is in development; there's a list of the relatively minor Vista compatibility issues with version 2 here. You can have a 30 day free trial anyway before having to pay the modest registration fee. For the avoidance of doubt, I have no connection with Scooter Software other than as a satisfied customer.
...[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=123911\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thank you, I might try that. One problem here, is that I had Lightroom on import sort the images into folders based on date. Which means that the folderstructure is different from where the originals are. Do you know if this program also can handle that (that is, if it can be given a root folder, find the file based on name,  and then compare it based on content?). Thank you much for your help!

[gak]

A bad USB cable could also be to blame, or a bad port on your motherboard.  Try copying with a different cable or plugging into a different USB port to narrow down the issue.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=123936\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thank you. Will try.