LR catalogue quits and cannot be fixed

[sanfairyanne]

To cut a long story short I fixed my problem, I just don't know what caused the problem.

Recently I tried to create an LR catalogue (latest CC), I built up several thousand images in 1:1 previews to a 4tb drive. I used an external drive, then suddenly the 4tb quit on me. I got messages saying LR would need to repair the catalogue which it tried to do, but later said it could not be fixed. I thought it might be an issue with the external drive, so I tried another drive, this again allowed me to build up a sizeable catalogue before it too quit.

At no point was I anywhere near filling the drives. I then tried to build the catalogue in the D drive of my PC and it worked fine. So today I pulled the 4tb drive out of it's external housing and put it into the PC. It's now working fine and has built up several thousand images into the LR catalogue. So there was some issue, LR didn't want to be creating a catalogue to an external drive, but it appears to work if the same drive is now an internal drive. I guess this is difficult to understand, I just wondered if anyone has had this before as it doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence.

Many thanks in advance

[MDL_SD]

When I travel I use a 2TB Samsung T5 portable SSD for my images (and the catalog) and have never had an issue like the one that you describe.  However, I have had external drives "get lost" temporarily which could cause the kind of issue that you describe.  If I log off or restart it has always fixed my issues.

[mcbroomf]

I use external drives all the time.  Given what you've said I'd think the drive housing is more likely the problem, or perhaps as the previous post an instability in the computer / drive connection.  I've had laptops especially that have temporarily lost USB connection.

[sanfairyanne]

I use external drives all the time.  Given what you've said I'd think the drive housing is more likely the problem, or perhaps as the previous post an instability in the computer / drive connection.  I've had laptops especially that have temporarily lost USB connection.

If this issue had only happened with one drive I would agree, it could well be the housing, but it happened with two external drives. As I say it's currently all working fine, so I'm not overly concerned. I would tend to agree that there has to be some instability in the computer / drive connection.

[sanfairyanne]

After assuming everything was working I have just spent the day working on LR only for the program to quit on me yet again. I may have an idea, my LR preferences state that my catalogue is set to backup once a week. This would imply that it's never actually backed up, though that doesn't make sense because I turned the computer off last night after importing images. I shall try to contact Adobe support.

[digitaldog]

After assuming everything was working I have just spent the day working on LR only for the program to quit on me yet again.  If anyone feels like suggesting "this has never happened before" please consider donating $1 to charity. I am so used to hearing "this has never happened before" If everyone who said this gave a dollar I could solve world poverty. I don't mean to make snarky comments, but I'm getting so hacked off with this I feel like quitting photography and selling my camera gear.

You want me to makeup something so I don't have to donate a $1? Or you want a solution?
Hopefully you at least have a robust backup of all your data and catalog(s). That will help until you fix whatever is happening specifically on your system causing the crash.
Does it happen to every user? No, it does not.
Got another system you can run LR, the catalog and images on for awhile to test? That might be useful.

[sanfairyanne]

You want me to makeup something so I don't have to donate a $1? Or you want a solution?
Hopefully you at least have a robust backup of all your data and catalog(s). That will help until you fix whatever is happening specifically on your system causing the crash.
Does it happen to every user? No, it does not.
Got another system you can run LR, the catalog and images on for awhile to test? That might be useful.

Hi DigitalDog, I thought I'd removed the snarky part of my comment, sorry about that. I do indeed want a solution. I think I may have an idea. It appears I made the fatal error of asking LR to backup once a week. So when I created a new catalogue it didn't ask me to back it up. I can only assume this is the issue, though to be honest I would assume that if you're making a new catalogue it would need to back up, at the very least the first time around. All my images are backed up on several drives, so I'm not too concerned and I don't care too much about my edits, this is why I had asked LR to backup the Cat' only once a week. I've just gone back to the preferences and chosen to Backup Every time. I'll try this over the next day or two. I could try it on a different computer, I have a Mac but I would have to remove what is now an internal D drive from the PC, reformat it as Ex-Fat and then put it in the external housing before I could test it on the Mac.

[digitaldog]

It appears I made the fatal error of asking LR to backup once a week. So when I created a new catalogue it didn't ask me to back it up.

The LR backup schema is weak and ONLY backs up the catalog. You've got far more data, even LR data you need to backup. Use a dedicated backup application to backup everything you can't afford to lose. This isn't a solution for the crashing, that's another issue and will take some testing. The catalog and of course images are cross platform so it might be a good idea to see how they run on Mac and optimizing the catalog can't hurt. But sometimes it's hardware (bad RAM) or software and not LR per se.

[sanfairyanne]

The LR backup schema is weak and ONLY backs up the catalog. You've got far more data, even LR data you need to backup. Use a dedicated backup application to backup everything you can't afford to lose. This isn't a solution for the crashing, that's another issue and will take some testing. The catalog and of course images are cross platform so it might be a good idea to see how they run on Mac and optimizing the catalog can't hurt. But sometimes it's hardware (bad RAM) or software and not LR per se.

Ok thanks I sat down and had a think about it and realised it had to be something besides just the catalogue backup. I'll work with it some more tomorrow as it's getting late here in my part of the world. Once again sorry if I appeared rude, I really appreciate everyone's help on this forum. I was just hacked off because this has been one in a long line of unrelated issues I have had lately.