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Catalogs Cannot Open Catalog - Preview Cache Path Too Long

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Andrewjmarino

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Nov 26, 2014
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Intermediate
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Operating System: Windows 10
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): Lightroom Classic CC 7.0

I just backed up my laptop to 2 external drives and was randomly checking some files/folders to make sure everything copied over to the external drives. I came across this problem on both drives:

Lightroom cannot create or open a catalog named "Andrew Lightroom Catalog-2 on volume "Seagate Backup Plus Drive Red" because the preview cache paths would exceed the maximum path length for your platform.
The full catalog path including catalog names and separators cannot exceed 170 characters in length. The path provided is 178 characters.

See attachment. I suspect it is because of the super long name that Seagate names the backup, but I am not entirely sure. The catalog opens ok from my laptop.

How do I safely correct this without losing my catalog, catalog backups and having no problems in the future with backups to external drives or downloading the catalog to new laptop?

Thank you and Happy Holidays to anyone who is reading this.

Andrew
 

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I don't think that's an actual problem - if you needed to restore your catalog from the backup, you'd copy it to the original location rather than trying to open it from the backup drive. That path name would upset a lot of things if you tried to work from it.

If in doubt, do a test - create a temporary folder on your C: drive (or wherever you have your live catalog, and copy the files from your backup. Then open the restored backup in LR.
 
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Perhaps you could rename the external hard drive to a shorter name, and perhaps your LR catalog as well.
 
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Long path names are indeed a problem in Windows environments/ However that value IIRC is closer to 255 chars and not 171. I suggest that you do as others have suggested and copy the restores catalog file and any previews folder to a location closer to "C:\" And in the future stick with short folder and file names. One more reason why organizing by descriptive folders is not a very good idea.
 
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clee01l said:
Long path names are indeed a problem in Windows environments/ However that value IIRC is closer to 255 chars and not 171. I suggest that you do as others have suggested and copy the restores catalog file and any previews folder to a location closer to "C:\" And in the future stick with short folder and file names. One more reason why organizing by descriptive folders is not a very good idea.
Click to expand...
The limit is indeed 255 characters total, and that applies to the deepest subfolder for that catalog file.

Yet another reason that long folder names that describe the subject are not a good idea.

Phil
 
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Thanks for the replies. Ok, so if I understand correctly I don't need to really do anything. It's just my backup catalog. I would never open/use it as my primary catalog. And, if I do switch to a new computer then I can just copy the catalog file and backup folders to the new laptop.
In the future, though, I will probably look at simplifying my file/folder names. I'm also not sure why Seagate gives such a long, convoluted default naming structure.

Happy New Year
Andrew
 
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Andrewjmarino said:
Thanks for the replies. Ok, so if I understand correctly I don't need to really do anything. It's just my backup catalog. I would never open/use it as my primary catalog. And, if I do switch to a new computer then I can just copy the catalog file and backup folders to the new laptop.
In the future, though, I will probably look at simplifying my file/folder names. I'm also not sure why Seagate gives such a long, convoluted default naming structure.

Happy New Year
Andrew
Click to expand...
Andrew,

You should resolve this issue now, before you have to do so urgently. Indeed, Seagate has caused this problem. They should know better.
 
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Andrewjmarino said:
Ok, so if I understand correctly I don't need to really do anything. It's just my backup catalog
Click to expand...
No, this is not correct. Making a backup is not enough, you have to test it one in a while to be prepared for an disaster.
 
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I usually solve this with programs like Long Path Tool or similar.
 
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