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Catalog Export Failure

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Charlie Woodrich

Charlie Woodrich

Member
Premium Classic Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2011
Messages
70
Location
Richmond, VA
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
15.1.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 26 Tahoe
I frequently perform initial culling and edits on my laptop and then export them as a catalog to my main system. However I've encountered a problem with one folder. I keep getting a message "LR is unable to export due to an unexpected error." The OS and LR are up to date. I've rebooted; and used a different external drive and I keep getting the same message. There are some DJI files in this folder but that hasn't been a problem in the past. Any thoughts on where I go from here?

Thanks!

Charlie
 
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Try just one photo

Try creating new empty catalog and import one photo. then try exporting it as catalog to create a new catalog

depending on how those go, could identify if the problem is specific to the photos involved, the catalog involved, or something deeper down inside of LrC
 
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Califdan said:
Try just one photo

Try creating new empty catalog and import one photo. then try exporting it as catalog to create a new catalog

depending on how those go, could identify if the problem is specific to the photos involved, the catalog involved, or something deeper down inside of LrC
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried as you proposed and it worked. Then I tried it excluding the DJI files and it didn't. Some thing is out of whack. As a work around I exported the catalog to my desktop. It went through. Then I copied/pasted into the thumb drive.
 
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As a new catalog worked OK. Did you try importing that same problematic folder to the new catalog and try from there? Maybe try without the DJI images first and if that works OK, then try again with the DJI images.
 
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I exported and imported the whole kit and caboodle. I'm still at a loss to figure out why exporting to the thumb drive was a problem.
 
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I suggest you abandon the Thumb drives…. Several issues…
1. They have been around since USB 1.0… so you may not know what Spec USB applies to the drive.
2. A lot of Thumb drives were built and used for promotional content and a lot of the underlying hardware specs and performance may be questionable.
3. Most people now circulate digital content via Dropbox link or similar and avoid using physical media,
4. It is very difficult to purchase Thumb drives with a reasonable size of storage capacity ( I tried last week and was gobsmacked at how limited the current size options were.
5. For some uses the ability to use a physical device is still essential… so you may have a very good case to use a Thumb drives.

instead, I recommend you get a modern external ssd…. Which are available in a wide range of colours and styles and physical dimensions . Decide in advance if you would like 10Gbps , 20 Gbps or more as the certified or if you would like a Thunderbolt rather than USB protocol. Use the cable which comes with the drive (label it when you take it out of the box so it does not get mixed up with your shoeboxes full of legacy old spec cables.

I use a Samsung T9 as my main external SSD ( a little bulky but that is ok) and use a Samsung Blue T7 as my travel backup device.

It is highly likely the thumbnail could not cope with the sustained i/o required for your task and was not reporting an error back to the o/s or app.

I currently have one Thumbnail drive taped to the side of my desk. It is a Windows boot drive in case my C drive fails and allows me to immediately action my System drive recovery, which is backed up every morning at approx 4.am. I was replacing this with a fresh Win 11 version when I went looking for a replacement thumbnail drive.

BTW… the price of these drives have skyrocketed in recent weeks and months.
 
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I just saw your clarification. I suggest you do an I/O test on the Thumb drive… It may work for small number office docs but may still be challenged by a sustained large data set of images, catalog and previews.

I am mainly Win so not sure what utility to use to conduct such a test on Mac.
 
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Charlie Woodrich said:
This is what I'm using.
Click to expand...
Ok.. understood..... I had difficulty getting Thumb drives greater than 64GB , which surprised me. My smallest SD cards (for comparison) are 256GB.

Just for reference ... I get 6700MB/s from internal M2 drives and close to 1000MB/s on an external SSD. LrC does not use these speeds, but useful to faster drives for copy / backup speeds etc. If you get 150 MB/s or greater on a Thumb drive you should be ok.
 
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