How do I restore a Lightroom backup?
As we said in the last post, Lightroom’s integral backup simply takes a copy of your catalog and places it in dated subfolder, so restoring is a simple matter of opening that backup file.
However let’s exercise a little more caution… you wouldn’t want to risk damaging your last backup, so first, you’ll want to duplicate it and put it back in the right place.
Let’s assume your main catalog is stored at My Documents\My Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat, and your existing catalog has somehow become corrupted, or you’ve deleted photos accidentally.
By default your backups would be stored at My Documents\My Pictures\Lightroom\Backups\dated folders\Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat.
First rename that main catalog, rather than deleting it, just in case you want to go back to it. We’ll call it ‘Old Catalog.lrcat’ for the moment.
Now go into your last dated backup folder and select the Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat file (or whatever your catalog is called). Copy it (Ctrl-C for Windows, Cmd-C for Mac) and go back to your main catalog folder where your catalog usually lives. Paste your copy of the backup catalog (Ctrl-V for Windows, Cmd-V for Mac) into that main catalog folder. Doing that copy/paste has left your backup catalog exactly where it was, but created a copy in the normal location.
Double click on that catalog to open in Lightroom. If it works correctly, you can now delete ‘Old Catalog.lrcat’, and carry on working.
I did all the above, and reopened the catalog in LR. The folders seem to be there, but the when I click on a photo, I get a reply that the photo is offline or missing. What am I doing wrong?
[That means that Lightroom doesn't know where to find the photo - someone's moved, renamed or deleted it using another program. You need to find that file (restoring from your own backups if necessary) and then click on the question mark in the corner of the thumbnail to point Lightroom back in the right direction. Don't forget that files are never 'in' Lightroom, and aren't included in the catalog backups. - VB]
Thanks!
Smart Bloggers are fantastic. Good Work.
Hello.
I have backed up my catalog which resides on an external hard drive. I have a brand new computer with no photos on it at all, all my photos are also backed up on the same external hard drive. I plan to hook up my external hard drive to the new computer which has LR already loaded. Could you please tell me the easiest way to move everything over (photos and catalog) so no links are broken? All my photos are in the folder “Photos”, do I simply copy this folder onto my new computer? Are any link going to be broken?
Thanks in advance for any help you can render!
[Perry, I can do better than that.... here's the whole thread on the subject of moving to a new computer: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/2009/02/28/how-do-i-move-lightroom-to-a-new-computer/. - VB]
Superb and thank you so much!!!
I have copies the catalog and all original location picture folders to my laptop. Everything works fine, except the star rating are missing. Not a major problem… just womdering why this could happen. Any advice? Thanks in advance.
[That shouldn't be technically possible, as star ratings are stored in the catalog. Is all of the rest of the data, i.e. Develop settings showing ok? Could it simply be that you haven't got the star ratings showing the grid view? Perhaps check the View menu > View Options? - VB]
i have accidentally delete a subfolder in my LR catalog which contains hundreds of developed. rated, color labeled files. How may i recover this processed files? without start all over again the developing process? i have tried my latest backup ircat, but it did not up to the status/progress of all my developed files. please help!! thank you
[If you've just done it, Ctrl-Z/Cmd-Z may do the trick - or repeat until you get back to that stage. That'll work if you've not closed LR since though. I'm sorry to say, if you've removed the images from the catalog, and they weren't in the last backup, then we can reimport the files, but there's no way of bringing back the settings. Other thing to check, before you start processing them again, is whether you have 'automatically write to xmp' turned on in Preferences, in which case selecting the files in Grid view and going to Metadata menu > Read Metadata from Files should bring many of the settings back. - VB]
i delete the folder by pointing the folder & pressing control + left click ( Mac ), which pop up a “Remove” command
Having just accidentally deleted my photos, I panicked and tried to stop it from completing the task by hitting control-alt-delete. Unfortunately, lightroom had already deleted nearly half of my photos. I went to the recycling bin, and restored the pics to their original folders, but the edits are all gone. So I followed the instructions for restoring the backup, but the edits still haven’t come back. SOMEBODY READ THIS!!!! LIGHTROOM SHOULD GIVE YOU A BIG FLASHING WARNING WHEN YOU ARE ABOUT TO DELETE ALL OF YOUR PICTURES WITH EDITS!!! In the library module, when all of the pictures are selected, the light grey “selected” color is not different enough from the darker grey “unselected” color, and it’s easy to think you are about to delete only one picture, when in fact you are about to delete all of them. So in case this happens, there should be a CLEARER warning that has to be acknowledged before the delete command is executed. Currently, the warning is the same whether it is one photo or all your photos, the only difference being the plural form “photos” is used instead of “photo’. When you are in a routine of working with lightroom, it is easy to miss this warning. Something is needed to catch your attention and alert you to the fact that you are about to delete the whole catalogue, or a significant portion of it, including edits.
,[Sorry to hear you've had such a nightmare Shutterbug! I've just been back to double check exactly what the dialog says, and it reads "Delete the 200 selected master photos from disk, or just remove them from Lightroom? Delete moves the files to Finder’s Trash, removes them from Lightroom, and cannot be undone." and then it gives you a choice of Remove or Delete from Disk. I think flashing lights would be a bit distracting....
That said, do you have any catalog backups? Perhaps I can help you retrieve your settings for your other images? - VB]
i did import files to hope that the develop settings was back to normal & LR accidentally quit by it self after the deletion, i also did not have ‘automatically write to xmp’ turned on in Preferences..and read Metadata from Files did not bring many of the settings back. is there still any chances getting the developed settings back? thank you
Last night I thought I would check off another task from my to-do list, by emailing a couple of images to a new client. Opened Lightroom and saw that I hadn’t connected my external drive with the images. Plugged in the USB cable and Lightroom crashed. Tried restarting Lightroom, including a system reboot, and all I could get was error messages that the catalog was bad. The default repair didn’t work. Stupid me, that will teach me, but not all is lost – all I have to do is a restore of my backup catalog.
Well, the backup gave the same error messages. Now i’m in panic mode. Read all I could find online – seems I’m doing the restore correctly. Could there be another problem? Tried reinstalling Lightroom but that didn’t help. I’m not real sure I did a completely clean reinstall, since it didn’t ask for a serial number.
Worst case, I can erase anything to do with Lightroom, reinstall it, then re-import all the images from the last three years. I hope I don’t have to do that.
What are the best logical steps I should take to get back to a working Lightroom? Will Time Machine help any? What’s the best way to do a clean install? Can anyone repair a damaged catalog? Are there other files affected besides the .lrcat file?
[Jim, for a start, don't panic, I'm sure it's probably fixable. Drop by http://www.lightroomforums.net and post it there - it's far easier to chat by forum post, and we can run through the different options and what exactly the error messages say, and we should have you back up and running in no time. - VB]
Helloc
I would like to know if it would do any harm to store back ups on both the external hard drive and an exact copy in ‘my documents’ folder?
[No harm I can think of - more backups the better! - VB]
[...] the catalog was a case of shutting down Lightroom, and then copying the Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat file from the most recent backup on my NAS to [...]
HELP!
I am a very new user of LR but think it’s fantastic! Unfortunately though, I have spent a week importing, keywording and filing into Collections, a whole heap of images from a number of photographers setting up our image library in LR. Our designer then handed on an external harddrive which included additional and duplicate images from the same designers bar one. I imported these from the hard drive to LR on my laptop (wrong thing to do?) and all my previous Folders and Collections have disappeared.(AGH!)
I tried going through the steps above but can’t find Lightroom backups in My Documents. Have I set it up wrong? Is there any hope of retrieving the 700-odd images which have gone?
HELP
[Sounds very odd. Probably easier to chat on the forum than by blog comment. It may be something really simple and easy to fix. Drop by http://www.lightroomforums.net and we'll see if we can get you back on track. - VB]
I have followed your blog, and must say i love it and enjoy reading it. I never thought that i would be needing to post a plea for help, but here i am. I had the incredible bad luck of having two hard drives crashing — first my computer, and then apparently the new external drive i had been using for LR backups. Luckily, i had an old catalog back up drive (the last was from last August, but it’s better than nothing). I have restored the catalog. The proper # of photos show up, names, dates, keywords — everything is there except the thumbnail preview (and the picture itself). It says the file is missing. So i assume i will have to somehow re-build my catalog? How do i do that? Also, I had the (and i swear — this really has happened to me — you should see my back up system now) bad luck of losing another external drive back in December and that data was salvaged by a professional. but it’s not on the same drive and nor is it sorted by dates (it was the only way he could pull the data off the damaged drive). So without preview thumbnails, it’s very hard if not impossible to rebuild the catalog. Any insight/words of wisdom would be very appreciated!
[Ouch, you have been in the wars Laurie! When LR says the file is missing, it means that it's not in the location or with the name its expecting. To solve that, you either put the photos back where they were, or you point LR to the new location. So, do you have recent backups of the photos, or as the salvaged drive as good as it gets? And if the salvaged drive is as good as it gets, do the photos at least have the same filenames as they did before? What kind of folder structure did you have?- VB]
lol. i was such a bad person prior to this, and my folder structure was horrible. really the only stuff i had done was import by date, so i do have that. very few were actually named.
i know, i know. live and learn the hard way. and my collections and star system still seems to be in place, but it’s impossible to see what the picture is.
and oddly, i just tried to find the files to rebuild the catalog, nothing seems to be matching up. I think what i may have to do is just reimport all i have and start fresh — overwhelming when you are talking 25,000 shots.
How can i point LR to a new location? for each folder?
[Import by date's pretty good going! So, are the photos themselves still in those dated folders or not? Or did the file salvaging change everything? What kind of filenames DID you have in LR? And what filenames do the files have now?
I do have a few ideas, depending on where you're up to so far, and what filenames are like, so I wouldn't panic about 25k quite yet. There are still solutions... it just depends... - VB]
sorry — forgot to say THANKS!
[You are very welcome Laurie! - VB]
thanks for not saying “you silly girl”! The file salvaging changed everything — they are not by dates anymore (and i can’t even sort on my hard drive by date — the computer is reading them as the date the salvage took place).
the filenames were ones generated by the camera.
[Hmmmmm, ok, you do have a job on your hands! I do have one idea, that would, in theory, be quicker than re-editing 25k pictures. It involves 2 basic ideas.... and of course, before attempting it, you make sure you've got backups of absolutely everything.
1. You import the photos into a new temporary catalog, which, in the process, would allow you to rename the photos to a YYYYMMDD-HHSS filename (taking the capture date and time of the metadata of the file, obviously) and put them into the same kind of folder structure that you had before. You'd then delete that catalog, because it would have served its purpose, to get all of the photos into the right folder structure with reproducible names. And you'd back that up somewhere safe!!!!
2. You'd have to take a chunk of files - 9999 I guess, or less if you were doing it in smaller chunks - and duplicate them and use them as 'dummy files'. You'd rename them to the camera filenames - IMG_0001 to IMG_9999 - and drop them into the same kind of folder structure that LR's expecting. That would allow LR to see 'dummy' files, so it would stop thinking that files are offline, although it would actually be looking at the wrong files. Once LR thinks there are files back, it will allow you to rename them to the YYYYMMDD-HHSS names using its existing capture times from the metadata. Having done all of that, you can delete the dummy files, and replace them with the ones you created in step 1.
Confused now? I didn't say it was going to be easy, but depending on how much editing you've done to those 25k, it might be quicker. - VB]
luckily, i only really had edited about 200 or so, so it may be easier to just import again and start over. At least i know it will be clean.
I also just realized that you have been kind enough to be helping me over at the Adobe forum for LR3. I have been dying to delve into 3, but had been concerned about stability issues.
Once I get LR2 fixed, and a good backup on the clean catalog, I think i will switch over to LR3 beta.
Are you fairly confident in LR’s catalog process and that in cases unlike mine, it does work using the backup? i’m running scared right now. I’ve also been a little nervous about using a beta before it’s released. But i figure it should be released soon.
thanks again for your help!
[Yeah, LR's catalogs and backups are fine as long as you have sensible backups. If you want a belt-and-braces approach, check the XMP section in the book. - VB]
i actually made headway! And i have most of the files back in the chaos I had them. Now i just need to organize them!
What are your thoughts about moving the catalog into LR3 and organizing from there (after doing a backup in 2 of coarse!)
i bought your book today (LR3 version) and it looks great!
[Well done! LR3 is a beta so it comes with risks, although it's pretty stable. You won't be able to transfer your existing catalog at the moment, so it'll only work out if you're starting from scratch. Or import into LR2 for now, organize them there, and then upgrade your catalog when LR3 comes out. - VB]
I have a related weirdness which I can’t find any solutions for. I just recently started using LR2. And so I upgraded my catalog from LR1, and at first my keywords did not appear at all. I did this again, and now they do appear, but are not linked to all the photos. In other words, the list of keywords is present but no longer is ‘connected’ to the vast majority of images that I keyworded, in LR 1. Its strange that it did retain some of the keyword connections…. In any case, with about 40K images, which have been carefully keyworded over the last 3 years, I am super frustrated to have to go about keywording everything again! (nauseating idea really…) ….. So, is there any way to get LR 2 to restore the connections between the keywords (in the list) and the photos that were keyworded before, but somehow have lost their keywording in the upgrade process? Perplexed… AFS
[That's a really weird one Andrew. Did you skip straight to 2.7? There were some keyword bugs in 2.0. Drop by http://www.lightroomforums.net and we can chat there more easily and figure out how to solve it for you. - VB]
I have just read this entire thread and it’s great so thanks for that. Without sounding completely clueless I am confused about backing up my files to the very basic part. When I backup my catalogue I am assuming that has any edit that I have done to my photos included, not just ratings and keywords. Then what will saving and XMP to the photo do? And how can I save all of the XMPs to my older files (do I even need to if my catalogue is saved?) … Thanks as I am genuinely confused.
[Yes, everything is stored in the catalog. XMP is only a secondary backup that's only used if you import photos into a new catalog or choose Metadata menu > Read Metadata from Files. As long as your catalog is safely backed up, you have everything you need. - VB]
Dear Lightroom Queen,
I am in need of your expertise. I accidentally removed finished images from LR library before I had a chance to export them as jpgs. For some reason I thought if I import the RAW files to LR again all of the changes I have done in post-processing will be present. But, I learned that’s not the case; I lost everything I have worked on. I hope I can somehow recover this information; I followed your advice with LRCAT file, but this file contains information pertaining to the most recent LR import. After I removed my finished images I imported the raw set again but the LRCAT file contains all of the information attached to this set not the older edited one that I need. I am hoping for another trick in the hat where I will be able to recover the previous import; otherwise I will have to go through all of these images again. I wish I found your blog before I imported the new set; next time I will know. I just hope you may a miracle trick that I will be able to use and save myself some time. Thanks in advance for all of your help.
[Hi Vassyl, it depends on whether you have a backup copy that includes the edits for those photos. If you do, it's possible to merge those settings back into your working catalog. If you don't have a recent backup with those settings, I'm afraid you're going to have to put it down to experience, sorry. For a future safety net, you might want to go to Catalog Settings and turn on 'automatically write to xmp' which will store the most important edits with the files as well as in the catalog. If you'd written to xmp, then reimporting the files would have brought most of the edits back too. - VB]