Corrupt Catalog Won't Repair

[Ryder Photo]

I have a catalog that I was working in suddenly give an error of being corrupt. I attempted to repair it, but not successful. The catalog is on an external drive setup as a mirrored RAID but at this point I'm only able to mount the first drive and will call my supplier tomorrow about accessing the second drive. My hope is the second drive has a viable catalog, my fear is the catalog might have been overwritten by the corrupt catalog - "note to self to review LR backups"
In the meantime, just looking to get feedback about catalogs going corrupt while being used. I was in Develop mode with before/after split and went to zoom in at 1:4 when the error appeared.
I tried copying the catalog to my HD and was able to open the catalog but as soon as I went to backup the corrupt error appeared.
All my images are backed up in triplicate and I can go back and re-edit if necessary. It was a small catalog for a new personal project I'm beginning to work on.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

99.99999% of the time, it's a hardware error - in this case probably the connection to the external drive dropped at just the wrong moment while it was trying to write to the catalog.

FWIW, the corruption is usually limited to a small area of the database - probably just the folder you were working on at the time. As you are able to open the catalog, you may be able to rescue the rest of the catalog using Import from Catalog to transfer the rest, one chunk at a time, to transfer into a clean catalog.

And for future, you'll definitely want to let LR run its own backups too - they are there as a backup against corruption, as your normal backups could overwrite a good catalog with a corrupted catalog.

 

[Jenn D]

This has also happened to me. How exactly do you get the catalog to work again after it is corrupted? All of my catalogs are on an external drive and it seems that as I try to have LR open one they all become corrupted, even the backups won't open. I am not sure what to do at this point. I am suffering from a recent computer crash. I had to buy a new one and thought that I would just be able to get all of my data from the external but now since I am running on a different OS ( Windows 7 from XP) I am having all sorts of issues.

Any sort of tips would be helpffu

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Jenn, does it actually say it's corrupted? Considering the things you've mentioned, it could be something as simple as file permissions, as W7 is fussy about security.

 

[MarkNicholas]

There was once a programme called Lightroom
It was ever so good...
Then one day the catalogue self destructed
and now I don't know what to do

If only I had listened to Mark
I would not now be in the dark
Nor would I be stuck up a tree
If only I had saved my xmp

 

[Victoria Bampton]

LOL Mark! Thanks for the smile.

 

[Jenn D]

Thanks guys! Love the poem by the way!

I got them fixed. Turned out to be the actual hard drive. I just had to run a repair and it's all better!

 

[Ryder Photo]

Thanks Victoria for your insight. Unfortunately I can't open the catalogs (I've just had another catalog go corrupt on me this was backed up when I opened it so I'll see what amount of work is recovered). I'm wondering if I open a new catalog whether I can import the original catalog - hmmm, will give it a go.

The mirrored external is new but that doesn't mean anything. Talking of hardware issues, my iMac shut down unexpectedly (simply lost power!) while I was scrolling up while in Library module. This has happened before, exactly the same, while scrolling up the images in Library. I actually think it might have been while I was working in the first catalog that went corrupt.

Hmmm, iMac power issue or LR issue :

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yep, that could explain how it got corrupted. That sounds like a hardware issue, sorry.